Breaking news: “A 19-year-old attacked a school in Patisia: He injured a principal and a student with a knife and a hammer.” The alert tone momentarily interrupted the steady ringing of a call waiting.
“A 2022 study by the University Mental Health Research Institute showed that one in three students has been involved in an incident of violence in the last year. Children have not been developed the skills to manage potential conflicts, to be able to set their limits.
Violence has always existed. Now, there is a qualitative change, with the violence of the incidents being extremely intense. The daily presence of a social worker and a psychologist in every school is really what we need to effectively manage violence.
The solution is not to go to bureaucratic measures to combat it, such as complaint platforms. Management and above all prevention”, it is the first words of Kostas Vagiatis, Social Worker and Organizational Secretary at the Board of Directors of the Association of Social Workers of Greece.
It took 36 years for the social worker to enter schools
The social workers have been institutionalized in schools by presidential decree since 1978without this implying the establishment of positions.
Since the 90s, social workers have started staffing special schools and we reach 2014 for the first social workers and psychologists to enter mainstream schools (formal education).
EUROKINISSI/VASILIS PAPADOPOULOS
The paradoxes don’t stop here. A social worker and a psychologist work as a team and supervise five schools (either primary or secondary), one for each day.
When they started in 2014 they may have had to go to even seven schools, a condition that after their own pressures was reformulated, ending up at five so that there is also a repetition per week.
The simple mathematical calculations required clarify the proportions. One social worker and one psychologist correspond to 800-1000 students. And of course social workers and psychologists are not available in all schools.
Fire engines are working
“What we are doing is to focus on the most urgent problems that need immediate intervention and not on doing other preventive actions.
The social worker he has six teaching hours at his disposal every day, in which he should see a parent, a second parent, see the student. Who will he get to see first?
Let me give you examples. Will he see the student who may be behaving aggressively? Will he see the student who has learning difficulties?
Because the role of the social worker and the psychologist is not only for the student who has problems with his behavior, it is also for the student who has difficulty in the lessons. These two are related and interconnected.
In this case the social worker will talk to the student and then talk to the family to give them advice on how, for example, the child’s room can be set up so that they are not distracted if they have ADHD.
As you understand, this whole process requires the cooperation of the social worker and the psychologist with the student’s family so that the intervention can take place.” Kostas Vagiatis reports to BIMA.
The way the “chasing” system is structured, they are forced to operate fire brigades and leave the crucial part of prevention in the background because the numbers simply don’t work out.
Despite their honorable efforts, they are so few that they cannot act as they would like with the ultimate victims being the students and the educational community as a whole.
Social workers are the connecting link between school – student – family and community and their interventions are aimed at assessing, improving and regaining the social functionality of the above systems.
Multi-complex and multi-factorial role
“Social workers work a lot with students on an individual level, providing them with psychosocial support to help them cope with and manage any personal or family problems, emotional difficulties or behavioral problems.
They also work a lot with the families of the students because there are not a few times when the parents also need support from a professional, such as a social worker.
It provides them psychosocial supportmediates between the family and the school and often provides information about some resources and services that may be available and in need of them.
For example, a family may be facing financial difficulties and the social worker can connect them with a municipality service that can grant them some financial support, some allowance, some basic goods such as food, basic necessities.
It even helps with more practical things, like getting them an appointment at a health facility, because they might find it difficult to do it on their own.
The social worker is in close cooperation with parents for the adaptation of children to school and with the aim of helping them to then be able to help their child integrate into the school community.
EUROKINISSI/VASILIS REMBAPIS
Another very important activity of social workers concerns the support of school teachers. They may provide them with some basic information to better understand some factors (cultural, social, economic, health reasons) that may affect a student’s performance and behavior.
Of course always with respect to the privacy and personal data of the students the social worker helps teachers a lot to better understand some behaviors and give advice on how to manage these students.
Also, the social worker, in collaboration with the teachers, identifies the signs in the students’ behavior that need further investigation. Some behaviors may indicate neglect or abuse of the student.
And the reverse course can also be followed, with the teacher reaching out to the social worker and talking to them about a student behavior they have identified in order to be further explored by the social worker on an individual level with the student and with the student’s family if needed along the way.
In this way we can prevent cases of abuse or neglect but also cover basic needs, through interconnection, such as when a family does not even have food for their child, adds Mr. Vagiatis, explaining the complex role of a social worker to school.
The social worker in the fight against juvenile violence
I insist a little more on the part of juvenile violence, with Mr. Vagiatis being more than clear about the importance of the systematic presence of a social worker and psychologist in schools.
«Prevention is the most important partbut there are more times when we are finally called upon to manage a violent incident after it has already happened.
There the social worker can manage it on an individual level as well as on a group level within the classroom for the students to talk about this incident and process it. To have a feedback about the consequences of their actions and led for example to the injury of a student.
Have the students talk about their feelings, how they felt, how they can manage their anger in a different way.
School is the place where the child socializes, spends most of his day. Thus, it is the first link in the chain to prevent such violent incidents but also to quickly deal with incidents of child abuse.”
How easily do they ask for help?
Is it the parents positively approaching the specialized professionals within the school community. Are they ready to ask for help, when they need it, or is it still a kind of taboo that Greek society has not yet overcome?
“Most parents are positive because they realize that many times they themselves need specialized help. But there are also many parents who are negative about accepting help, either themselves or their children.
This very condition needs management from the social worker’s side. You need to let the parents know that there is a behavior that is troubling. That is, even accepting a student’s difficulty is the job of the social worker. Let’s accept the problem and then work on it.”
ΤΑΤΙΑΝΑ ΜΠΟΛΑΡΗ/EUROKINISSI
And the students; Will they easily turn to the expert to talk about a personal issue, or an issue that concerns them?
«Students in recent years are more familiar with the presence of a social worker, a school psychologist and they are positive to talk and express the desire to discuss a problem they have.
Younger children will not usually come this way on their own, there will usually be a referral from the teacher. Older children come on their own. Especially in adolescence, they enter into issues of relationships, understanding and acceptance of themselves in relation to others, issues of identity, issues of difficult relationships with their parents.”
The great void
The work of the social worker cannot by its nature be procedural. It takes time, in-depth study and the “weaving” of a relationship of trust.
Once a week is one problem with the second being found in the working relationship of social workers and psychologists in schools.
“You have to learn and be taught by students and teachers. To build a relationship of trust, a relationship of reciprocity. You must also have time to watch and observe the children’s behavior during recess and in the classroom. This is not possible to do when you go once a week.
And that’s not all. 90% of social workers and school psychologists are substitutes. This means that they are hired from the end of September to the beginning of October and in June they are fired.
Next year they may be hired at other schools and have to start the process all over again with new students, new teachers, new parents. They have to trust you and that can’t happen overnight.
It requires effort and time until they get to know you and convince them to talk to you and listen to you. Valuable time is wasted and there is no continuity. In other words, it is completely opportunistic and temporary while the needs are acute and in many cases extremely serious”. reports Kostas Vagiatis.
He adds: “We may have been trained not to internalize problems and manage emotions, but being by a student’s side, working with them, putting in the time and effort, seeing their progress and suddenly everything for this to be interrupted and to go to another school, it upsets and frustrates you.
An expectation is created for the students as well and yet the system is structured in such a way that you necessarily break the relationship and this is disappointing and traumatic for them as well”.
Just before the call ends, I ask Mr. Vagiatis what is his own message, his own expectation, after so many years of experience in the field.
«The state should really create interdisciplinary social services in every school with permanent and stable staff and not selectively in a few schools, so as to prevent many incidents from occurring. To invest in prevention, that’s what is needed.”
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