By David H Blah
As a parent, the only time that I would trust a stranger to play a significant role in my daughter’s life is when they carry the title ‘teacher.’ Teachers are in most part our second adults that we look up to and they take the place of our parents when we are in school. With time, we are inspired by them and their passion, and grateful for their attention and care.
In the growing problem of drug use and addiction, the Government’s move to formally train teachers to protect the children that they have committed to devote their lives to, is a great step forward. Not only are they up-skilling teachers but they have also found a way round the structural and financial challenges that may have stalled the mission to keep children from drug use and addiction. Parents are once more assured their children will be in good hands and their fears addressed.
It is with a spirit of sincerity and collaboration, that I offer suggestions aimed at strengthening this initiative by building upon it a multi-dimensional framework to address the issue, taking into consideration the expressed concerns of professional counselling bodies. These thoughts are limited by the fact that I have not seen the overall strategy of the government or the contents of the month-long training or any Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that teacher-counsellors would use in their schools.
My first recommendation would be to develop a multi-tiered system of support in schools to address the issue holistically. Structurally, school level psychological interventions are tiered into three levels- the universal level targets the school students, staff and parents on key mental health literacy and developing protective skills and environment. The second level targets groups of students who are at risk of using drugs or experiencing mental illness by planning group activities, clubs or workshops. The third level is individualized intervention by trained professionals. The overall framework aligns with the early identification and intervention for mental health problems in school going children and adolescents released by the Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education.
If this is the structure, where will we find the individuals for it? Collaborative engagements and smart resource utilization is the key. Schools and Government departments can engage teachers and especially future social workers and counsellors in various educational institutions. This will open up opportunities to fill in the human resource gap in schools and also bridge the field for prospective counsellors and social workers effectively. To achieve this we would need only to map out ways to leverage existing resources, adopt standardized protocols and manuals of practice to be used in schools, and set up a robust monitoring system to track progress, gaps and challenges in the pursuit of measurable effectiveness of the program.
The second recommendation is: Adopt Specific Titles for Teacher-Led Support Roles. This will clarify roles and respect professional distinctions. It is recommended that the terms counselling and counsellor or teacher-led support initiatives may be replaced with more specific titles. Designations such as Well-Being Coordinator (WBC), or Allied Professionals for Psychological Services (APPS), could better reflect their primary role as teachers, while respecting the professional aspect of their work and distinct professional domain of counselling. This change is proposed for the following reasons: Firstly, the word counselling and counsellor are common terms with diverse meanings- from informally helping conversation with someone we respect to conversations with trained professionals. Using distinct titles for teachers performing supportive roles helps everyone—students, parents, and staff to understand the precise nature and limits of the help offered. Not all doctors do similar things. Each one specialises in an ailment. This differentiation of terms is seen in the Allied and Health Care Act of 2022. One needs to complete a required amount of training to be able to carry out specific counselling and therapeutic interventions, and to earn a name that matches their training and ability.
Secondly, the change in name may also reflect the training they will receive from SANKER, a reputed institution that has served the community for decades with professionalism and effectiveness. I would assume that they will be trained as the first responders to address any mental health or specifically drug related issues, and the training will not be comparable to a full 2- year counsellor training program.
Thirdly, teachers are more like mentors rather than counsellors. I see this emerging from their desire to teach and from the years they had spent learning on how to be teachers. The academic and experiential process of being a teacher is different from that of a counsellor, right from the courses taught; the internship experienced to the initial decision to enrol in a B.Ed. program rather than a M.Sc. counselling program. Clear evidence of this is when teachers express their desire to help but express their inability to do what professional counsellors can, on account of their lack of knowledge and training. Fourthly, the space for professionally trained counsellors to be employed in a school is left open when structural and financial constraints are no longer an issue for a particular school. This recommendation may address the concerns raised by professional counselling bodies and individuals when teachers step in as counsellors.
The third recommendation is to develop an application that leverages the network that facilitates holistic care from use to dependence to recovery to new path. There are many people and organizations working to address the issue, with each bringing their specific expertise and offering diverse services. However, their resources are limited to only those who know them or are aware of them. That such life-saving knowledge is available but is not known to many in need of counselling is of deep concern.
I have heard several people speak of the struggle to locate a particular type of service or to identify a particular type of expert. With the Government’s push for IT and AI applications, and with the pool of talent that we have in government institution, private IT firms, and educational institutions, resource can be allocated to speed up this development and a beta version of the app can be released within a year’s time, to enable people in need to connect with the right counsellors.
The fourth recommendation is to create a popular culture of abstinence, moderation and responsibility via existing media related platforms and schemes. People are creatures of habit that are shaped by the culture they live in, and drug use is shaped by a sub-culture. Those in the outside may not understand it and only have stereotypes of it. When we act on these stereotypes it will push drug users to that sub-culture and encourage them to be subsumed in that culture. If we are to engage with that sub-culture, two of the most proven mediums are that of art- expressed through songs and movies- and the market.
This recommendation entails a sustained, long-term engagement but it is one that will create lasting change in future generations. This is executed through collaborative engagements with different key stakeholders, smart resource utilization and creation of teams all moving towards the same agreed goals.
To conclude, these recommendations have been suggested because they do not entail huge effort, cost or reorganization to execute. These are pertinent issues and areas of engagement that are complex, time-consuming and where costly bottlenecks exist. That said, we should not be disheartened but continue to celebrate the lives gained when the young stop using drugs.
(The writer is Educator and Counsellor) Lecturer, St. Edmunds College)