VIOLENCE IN SCHOOLS may have gone past what psychologists and guidance counsellors can deal with, and social workers say they are ready to come to the rescue.
?In making a plug for one social worker to be placed in every school, president of the Barbados Association of Professional Social Workers, Bertram Bispham, said yesterday that while the guidance counsellors and psychologists played “very important” roles, social workers would take a more “holistic” approach to the growing problems in schools.
“If we get the social workers in the schools now, we will be able to . . . lessen some of the problems we have. If you work with the kids now, we wouldn’t have to worry about them later. If you do maintenance work now, you won’t have to repair it later,” he argued.
Speaking after a service at St Luke’s Anglican Church in Brighton, St George, where his members were in corporate worship, Bispham said a look around the community would show the state of affairs in the country.
“You walk anywhere in Barbados and see schoolchildren, you see how they behave – ain’t know what to do. You see young people 17 and 18 and 19 in murder cases. The average age of the persons who commit the murders is about 21 to 23 . . . . These people just left school,” he pointed out. (YB)
