More social workers recommended for schools
A PIECEMEAL approach to helping those schools that have been identified as needing intervention by a recent Jamaica Constabulary Force study will not work, social workers and educators have said.
Eva Forde, president of the Jamaica Association of Social Workers, said a multifaceted approach is needed to assist schools, and the time for lip service has expired.
“To be honest, this report, to me, is redundant. We already knew this,” Forde stated, adding that for years, social workers and educators have been calling for intervention in these schools.
She said the Government already has the solution, but whenever requests for assistance have been made for these schools, they have been told there’re not enough funds to deal with these problems.
Forde said the answer must start with social workers being placed in each of the schools identified as needing immediate attention.
“The support that is needed needs to come from outside with trained professionals ... . We don’t have persons assigned to address the preliminary issues, address the home issues, the community issues, the behavioural issues, [ and] we don’t have someone in the schools whose primary job it is to look after the emotional and mental health of not just students, but teachers also,” she argued.
Forde’s view was supported by social work educator in the Sociology Department at The University of the West Mona, Sandra Latibeaudiere, who argued that greater focus must be paid on supporting the teachers and students in some of these institutions.
Latibeaudiere said based on her work with young men in several inner-city communities, she has concluded that greater effort should also be placed on the communities from which these troubled teens originate.
“We have to engage the communities because the communities themselves are thirsty for information and they are eager to learn because they really don’t know ... . [ We] have to understand that students are a microcosm of the larger community,” she posited.
‘REFERRAL CENTRES’
She said the ministry’s proposal to create ‘referral centres’ to help these students should be done in controlled environments, with mechanisms that will ensure that the children are getting the help they require.
A dean of discipline from an inner-city school, who requested not to be named said teachers are often struggling to deal with these students, especially since they are inadequately trained to do so.
He said part of the solution should be to reduce the teacherstudent ratio in these schools, as the students at these upgraded high schools demand more attention.
“The teachers who end up at the traditional high schools and those that end up at the non-traditional, more than likely, received the same training, but the students they face are different,” he said.
He said teachers come under a lot of pressure in trying to correct anti-social behaviour, when they are not trained to do this. He is recommending that great focus be placed on this problem as part of the ministry’s intervention policy.