AN increasing number of children with behavioural problems are being referred to the Mico Youth Counselling Centre for assistance, but the under-funded agency says that it is really only catering for a small proportion of those who need help.

“Part of our problem is finding finance for the centre, so we have to keep the numbers at a manageable load,” says Hermena Davidson, the director of the centre, which last year counselled 268 students from Jamaican schools, the highest in its six-year history.

While it looks to increase its own staff, it is seeking to find ways to put skills where they are needed — starting with schools.

It is now preparing the island’s first guidance and counselling manual, which it hopes will help school staff to handle disciplinary problems, rather than having, in the first instance, to go outside.

So tomorrow, the centre will host a workshop of teachers and guidance counsellors to get feedback on the outlines of the manual being developed with funding from the Jamaica Social Investment Fund and with support from the education ministry.

“The aim is to ensure the manual is reflecting everybody’s ideas,” she says.

The 268 handled by Davidson’s organisation last year do not include occasional mass counselling of entire classes or the cases on the waiting list, not yet dealt with. Nonetheless, it represented a 13 per cent increase handled in 2001 and a hike of 80 per cent on four years ago.

“The number of students referred to us is growing each year and now that we are on the PASS programme I think this academic year the numbers are going to be even higher,” says Davidson, who is also head of the guidance and counselling division at Mico, the teacher training college in Kingston where the counselling centre is located.

The Programme for Alternative Student Support (PASS), introduced by the Ministry of Education in January 2001, utilises a scale to measure delinquent behaviour and provides a means of referral and treatment for students.

Since its inception, the Mico Counselling Centre has tapped the skills of lecturing staff from the Mico Counselling Division who volunteer hours to the programme. Students at the Social Work Department at the University of the West Indies (UWI), as part of their practical course work, assist at the centre.

Part of the reason for the increasing numbers of cases, Davidson says, is that schools now more readily refer children for professional help.

Professionals also point to the difficulty of coping in a society with high levels of crime and violence and the impact this can have on children who see some of the trauma up close.

Often too, according to Davidson, some of these children have parents and teachers who are themselves the problem. Sometimes, they need as much help as the children.

“Guidance counsellors are struggling with students with low self-esteem, some not managing relationships properly, truancy, illiteracy and other problems,” says Davidson. “Boys will tell you that the teacher doesn’t like them, so they won’t do any work for the teacher and it compounds the problem.”

In many instances, too, she says, there is evidence of sexual abuse, incest and physical abuse. Girls are often abused knowingly and unknowingly by mothers’ boyfriends.

“Child abuse is rampant,” she adds.

In fact, says Davidson, some of the most emotionally taxing cases have to do with violence in the home.

She recalls a 17-year-old who was brought in for his very aggressive behaviour. He was often fighting and sometimes threatened to kill other students.

The boy had reportedly seen his father killing his mother and a sister.

“In many of these children, you could ask, ‘If we went through what they went through what would we become?'”

Sometimes, too, she says, students get the blame of the shortcomings of their teachers or parents.

“One of the common complaints is that the children are noisy,” Davidson explains. “(Then) we discover that quite often the teacher is not attending classes.”

Many of the problems in schools with children can be helped with early intervention, Davidson and others point out.

But there are not enough guidance counsellors in the system to provide the support to children in need of help, they say.

High schools are allowed to employ one guidance counsellor, but one is likely to be inadequate for populations in excess of 1,000 students. Guidance counsellors are not on the staff complement of primary schools, although a school can specially request one from Ministry of Education.