Decrease in school counselling will see escalation in psychiatric problems [clarechampion.ie]
- Published: 05 December 2011
CHANGES to the way guidance counsellors are allocated in post-primary schools could result in greater numbers of young people presenting at psychiatric outpatient clinics, it was claimed this week.
Guidance counsellor positions in post-primary schools will now have to come from the school’s overall allocation of teachers, a move that the Teachers’ Union of Ireland described as a “disaster”.
“It was a bit of a shock, that guidance teachers are going to be cut. They were ex quota, that meant they were outside your timetable. This change means they have to be put on the timetable but the guidance teacher is usually a trained counsellor and there is usually one in every school, dealing with kids aged 12 to 18 helping them with their career choices and their CAO choices and so on and while maybe some of that can be done in a class, that isn’t the case for it all. There are students with special needs, students with dyslexia perhaps and there are programmes designed specifically with these students in mind but you wouldn’t pick out a student in a class and say they might be suitable for programme X or Y. That has to be done in private,” said Shannon teacher and president of the TUI, Bernie Ruane. This will hit disadvantaged children whose families don’t have the money to pay for a private consultation with a career guidance professional outside of school hours.
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