Kerala to train school counsellors to keep students off drugs
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With simpler entry to suppliers over cellphone, drug use amongst students appears to have gone up
Prema V.T., a school counsellor at Government High School, Chala, says her understanding after talking to students and their dad and mom is that drug abuse amongst schoolchildren has elevated for the reason that begin of COVID-19. “Earlier, students would go to school, and studies and various activities would keep them engaged. Now, they are at home, with lots of time on hand and not many ways to burn their energy. They are also hooked to mobile phones. It does not take much time for substances to reach them…all students and drug suppliers need to stay in touch is a mobile phone.”
Prema’s concern is just not an remoted one. In yet one more initiative to test the growing prevalence of substance abuse amongst schoolchildren, the Women and Child Development Department and the Social Justice Department have joined palms to equip school counsellors to establish early and handle high-risk behaviour of schoolchildren.
950 counsellors
Being held in partnership with Project Venda (‘No’), a programme of the Fourth Wave Foundation, an NGO, the initiative goals at reaching out to youngsters by means of school counsellors. There are round 950 school counsellors within the State, and the departments plan to equip the counsellors to detect and forestall students from falling into the drug entice by means of workshops as a part of the National Action Plan for Drug Demand Reduction.
C.C. Joseph, founding father of the muse, says students are at high-risk from three elements – as customers, as peddlers, and due to the influence on them from somebody shut to them who’s utilizing such substances. From their coaching programmes, he estimates 10-15% prevalence of drug abuse amongst students. However, the remaining pupil inhabitants can also be susceptible, and therefore focus must also be on preventive elements.
Master trainers first
Six counsellors from every of the 14 districts, and some others comparable to Our Responsibility to Children (ORC) trainers, Integrated Child Protection Scheme counsellors and so forth participated in a web-based workshop for grasp trainers. The coaching was performed by specialists comparable to docs, psychiatrists, and little one psychologists. The classes focussed on function of lecturers and counsellors in early intervention, care and safety; school, group, and residential influences; child-related points main to habit and abuse; managing drug-related incidents with out main to stigmatisation; group participation, and so forth.
The grasp trainers will, in flip, train different counsellors on-line for efficient interventions, starting subsequent week. A handbook for counsellors has additionally been introduced out as a part of Project Venda.
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