More counselling services needed in schools to tackle deviance

Chief Executive Officer of Supreme Counselling for Personal Development Shawn Clarke says more psychological and counselling services are needed in schools to help address the current wave of deviant behaviour among students.

Though acknowledging that law enforcement intervention is sometimes needed to deal with particularly serious infractions, Clarke said the lack of holistic counselling services in the island’s schools is a major concern.

“I think what is lacking is the resources being made available for these young people in terms of counselling intervention and so on. I am not sure enough resources are going in the direction of psychological services for young people to help them with their rehabilitative process,” he said in an interview with Barbados TODAY.

“I still do believe that when young people are suspended from school that there should be a facility that they go to, as opposed to going home unsupervised. With that said, I also know that there is need sometimes to look at the legal aspect of it, because if it is violating the laws of the land then you cannot necessarily allow young people to violate the laws of the land thinking that there will be no consequences to it.”

He was responding to president of the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) Rudy Lovell calling for stiffer penalties to be imposed on secondary school students who commit violent acts at school.

Clarke stressed that although there must be a balance between punitive measures and physiological assistance, appropriate resources should be dedicated to early intervention to prevent troubled youth reaching the law courts in the first place.

He suggested that partnerships between the public and private sectors could help in that regard.

“There are other organisations and other non-governmental organisations on the island that have the resources as well that can assist. So, I think that there needs to be a public-private sector partnership where some of these services can be outsourced.

“It’s not a situation where I think that the Ministry [of Education] needs to hire all of these people onto their payroll when you have other organisations on the island with the resources [and] the facilities which could assist in the process,” Clarke said. (SB)