Stu­dents who are dis­play­ing con­cern­ing be­hav­iour may be re­ferred to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Stu­dents Sup­port Ser­vices di­vi­sion which is trained to de­liv­er coun­selling ser­vices on­line and al­so does out­reach to rur­al ar­eas, Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Clarence Ramb­harat said yes­ter­day.

Ramb­harat was re­ply­ing to a ques­tion from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards who asked about the type of as­sis­tance avail­able from the min­istry to stu­dents suf­fer­ing emo­tion­al chal­lenges es­pe­cial­ly at a time when they are do­ing class­es from home.

His ques­tion came fol­low­ing the deaths of two boys.

Ramb­harat said, “On be­half of the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, I would like to of­fer con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of young Jaden Joseph and the com­mu­ni­ty at AS­JA Boys’ Col­lege, as well as the fam­i­ly of Em­manuel Po­teon and the com­mu­ni­ty at Ca­roni Hin­du Pri­ma­ry School. Both deaths oc­curred un­der ex­treme­ly trag­ic cir­cum­stances.”

He said the Guid­ance Coun­cil­lors and School So­cial Work­ers of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD) have been trained to de­liv­er coun­selling ser­vices on­line, and “have been do­ing so through­out the time of phys­i­cal school clo­sure.”

“Stu­dents who are ob­served to dis­play be­hav­iours which cause con­cern may be re­ferred to SSSD through teach­ers or the prin­ci­pal, how­ev­er, the SSSD records do not in­di­cate that nei­ther stu­dent was re­ceiv­ing in­di­vid­ual at­ten­tion at this time.”

“At the start of the COVID-19 school clo­sure, stu­dent sup­port groups were in­sti­tut­ed to as­sist stu­dents in mak­ing the tran­si­tion to be­ing away from school, and sup­port their men­tal health.”

He said the Min­istry recog­nised some rur­al ar­eas do not have on­line ac­cess and the SSSD has com­mu­ni­ty out­reach work­shops to pro­vide train­ing for teach­ers and par­ents to help stu­dents.

“At this time, Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices utilis­es var­i­ous on­line and face-to-face pre­ven­ta­tive and re­spon­sive in­ter­ven­tions at the in­di­vid­ual and group lev­els that as­sist stu­dents in man­ag­ing vary­ing life chal­lenges, as would be pre­sent­ed by the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion.

“These in­clude in­di­vid­ual coun­selling, ther­a­peu­tic group work, psy­cho-as­sess­ment and in­ter­ven­tion, de­brief­in­gs,

Sup­port Groups (par­ent and stu­dent, par­ent­ing in ed­u­ca­tion ses­sions,psy­cho-ed­u­ca­tion­al ses­sion for stu­dents, teacher in­for­ma­tion ses­sions, sen­si­ti­sa­tion and aware­ness work­shops, sem­i­nars, train­ing,” Ramb­harat said.