With de­mand for so­cial work­ers and coun­selling ser­vices in schools and through­out the pub­lic sys­tem in­creas­ing as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic rages, the chron­ic short­age of qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als has be­come glar­ing.

There are cur­rent­ly 127 School So­cial Work­ers (SS­Ws) at­tached to the School So­cial Work Unit, Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE). How­ev­er, a doc­u­ment from the MOE list­ed the ide­al num­ber of SS­Ws need­ed to ser­vice the pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion (EC­CE) sec­tors at 334. This shows a short­fall of 207 SS­Ws through­out the sys­tem.

The largest short­fall of SS­Ws has been record­ed for pri­ma­ry schools which need 183 pro­fes­sion­als but op­er­ate with 73. At the sec­ondary lev­el, they need 67 more SS­Ws to bring the num­bers up from the 54 that cur­rent­ly op­er­ate. While at the EC­CE lev­el there are no SS­Ws as­signed and they have made a rec­om­men­da­tion for 30 qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion lead­ing to in­creas­es in pover­ty, de­pres­sion, sui­cide, anx­i­ety, crime, nar­cotics us­age, do­mes­tic and sex­u­al abuse, men­tal dis­or­ders, and ner­vous break­downs. As the need for ur­gent coun­selling grows dai­ly, the de­mands be­ing placed on the shoul­ders of so­cial work­ers are al­so in­creas­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, the Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Di­vi­sion has spent a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time coun­selling vic­tims of crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly fam­i­ly-re­lat­ed is­sues in­clud­ing vi­o­lence.

Of­fi­cials re­vealed that in fis­cal 2020, 3,719 peo­ple had been coun­selled and that for fis­cal 2021 thus far, 2,292 peo­ple had ac­cessed coun­selling af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some form of abuse or vi­o­lence.

MOE: School So­cial Work­ers pro­vide in­te­gral ser­vices to stu­dents, par­ents, com­mu­ni­ties

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, SS­Ws are a piv­otal con­nec­tion be­tween stu­dents, schools, par­ents, com­mu­ni­ties, gov­ern­men­tal so­cial ser­vices agen­cies, and oth­er civ­il so­ci­eties for the best in­ter­est of stu­dents.

They pro­vide the ser­vices need­ed to as­sist stu­dents in reach­ing their full po­ten­tial so they can per­form at their best.

As­signed to the sev­en ed­u­ca­tion dis­tricts in Trinidad, the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD) said some of the is­sues so far ad­dressed by SS­Ws in­clude child abuse, men­tal health, home­less­ness, teen par­ent­ing, chron­ic ab­sen­teeism, grief and loss, vi­o­lence, so­cial skills, cop­ing and re­silien­cy.

In re­sponse to COVID-19, the MOE said SS­Ws con­tin­ue to pro­vide in­te­gral and nec­es­sary ser­vices to stu­dents, par­ents, fam­i­lies, ed­u­ca­tors and com­mu­ni­ties.

As a re­sult, of­fi­cials ad­mit­ted, “Ad­di­tion­al ser­vices were nec­es­sary to meet the needs of our stu­dents, par­ents and com­mu­ni­ties.”

Sandrine Rattan

NGO: Civ­il so­ci­ety & State must join hands

Con­firm­ing there is an ur­gent need for so­cial work­ers and re­in­forc­ing just how im­por­tant this cadre of work­ers are for non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN) said "There are women and fam­i­lies and even men who are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a lot of hurt, pain and anger in our so­ci­ety as a num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als feel chal­lenged by not hav­ing re­sources to pro­vide for their fam­i­lies, in par­tic­u­lar, peo­ple who have been af­fect­ed by the new lock­down mea­sures."

Pro­vid­ing coun­selling to peo­ple who con­tin­ue to flock to them dai­ly, IWRN’s pres­i­dent San­drine Rat­tan said they had seen hun­dreds of cas­es in the ar­eas of men­tal health, pover­ty, in­ti­mate-part­ner vi­o­lence, sui­ci­dal thoughts, un­em­ploy­ment/un­der-em­ploy­ment, and on­line chal­lenges with chil­dren par­tic­u­lar­ly those un­der age 13.

Rat­tan said, "There is now an ur­gent need for the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment to con­nect with civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions who are cur­rent­ly en­gaged in pro­vid­ing psy­choso­cial sup­port such as the IWRN and Fam­i­lies in Ac­tion."

She be­lieves if the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion is not tak­en "there can be a rise in sui­ci­dal deaths, in­creased in­ci­dents of de­pres­sion among both adults and youths, com­pound­ed by in­ci­dents of self-harm among the youth pop­u­la­tion."

Rat­tan said even though her of­fi­cers are "stretched thin and over­worked" as they try to re­spond to every case that comes to them, the lack of re­sources has been ham­per­ing ef­forts to pro­vide the type of as­sis­tance some peo­ple ur­gent­ly need.

Pro­grammes de­vel­oped by So­cial Work Unit due to COVID-19:

1. Hot­line ser­vices–The SSSD hot­line was cre­at­ed to ad­dress the need for ur­gent as­sis­tance to stu­dents. Through the hot­line, SS­Ws are able to re­ceive calls and re­fer­rals. The hot­line ser­vices are avail­able to all stu­dents, prin­ci­pals, school ad­min­is­tra­tors, par­ents, ex­ter­nal help agen­cies and oth­er con­cerned cit­i­zens seek­ing sup­port and as­sis­tance. All hot­line calls are con­sid­ered re­fer­rals that fol­low the SSSD re­fer­ral process. This hot­line ser­vice is man­aged by the se­nior SSW and the So­cial Work Spe­cial­ist.

2. Stu­dent Sup­port Groups–The pur­pose for the cre­ation of vir­tu­al sup­port groups for stu­dents and fam­i­lies is due to the on­set of COVID-19 and the clo­sure of schools. Stu­dents and fam­i­lies may be placed at fur­ther risk with the ab­sence of face-to-face sup­port that is usu­al­ly pro­vid­ed to the fam­i­lies by SS­Ws. The main aim of the sup­port groups is to treat with the psy­choso­cial dis­tress stu­dents and their fam­i­lies may ex­pe­ri­ence. It will fur­ther pro­vide stu­dents and par­ents with sub­stan­tial ed­u­ca­tion­al, emo­tion­al, men­tal and ex­pe­ri­en­tial sup­port.

3. Com­mu­ni­ty Voic­es–This project is geared to­ward fos­ter­ing a bet­ter work­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween the com­mu­ni­ty and the school. It was deemed nec­es­sary to im­prove this re­la­tion­ship be­cause of the many chal­lenges faced with­in the school sys­tem. Com­plex cas­es in­volv­ing ‘at-risk chil­dren and vic­tims of abuse war­rant greater col­lab­o­ra­tion among the pro­fes­sion­als di­rect­ly in­volved in as­sess­ing and in­ter­ven­ing in those cas­es for the best in­ter­est of the na­tion’s chil­dren.

4. Par­ent Sup­port Group–Dur­ing COVID-19, fam­i­ly func­tion­ing is es­pe­cial­ly crit­i­cal to stu­dents’ per­for­mance and well-be­ing and as such, prop­er par­ent­ing is cen­tral to en­sur­ing that stu­dents are so­cialised in ways that al­low for their holis­tic de­vel­op­ment. It has been ac­knowl­edged that var­i­ous chal­lenges dur­ing this time may hin­der stu­dents’ ca­pac­i­ty to de­vel­op in healthy ways.

A MOE of­fi­cial ex­plained, "Some fam­i­lies are in­creas­ing­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing trau­mat­ic cir­cum­stances such as the death of a loved one, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, job loss and the com­pli­ca­tions that fol­low these is­sues. Yet oth­er par­ents are in­creas­ing­ly faced with chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances and strug­gle even more to main­tain fam­i­ly equi­lib­ri­um. They, there­fore, need as­sis­tance to cope and as­sist their chil­dren with what has be­come our new nor­mal. A Vir­tu­al 3 Par­ent­ing in Ed­u­ca­tion (PIE) Sup­port Group is an ap­pro­pri­ate in­ter­ven­tion strat­e­gy which can be utilised to as­sist par­ents who are faced with these chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances."

Verna St Rose Greaves

EDISON BOODOOSINGH

For­mer min­is­ter speaks:

Po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist and hu­man rights ad­vo­cate, Ver­na St Rose Greaves who is al­so a so­cial work­er said "so­cial work­ers should un­der­go psy­cho­analy­sis and psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sess­ment be­fore grad­u­at­ing and ob­tain­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and re­new­al li­cen­sure."

The for­mer gen­der, youth and child de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter called for ad­vo­ca­cy to be a big­ger part of their learn­ing.

"We con­tin­ue to train so­cial work­ers in mal­func­tion­ing agen­cies. They have to be trained in com­mu­ni­ties. We should not be pay­ing for spaces."

In­sist­ing that va­cant gov­ern­ment hous­ing can be used in such set­tings in or­der to reach a wider au­di­ence, she said "We look out­side the com­mu­ni­ty for so-called ex­perts to come in…leav­ing no data­base or struc­ture in place. We need to ac­knowl­edge the ex­per­tise of res­i­dents in these com­mu­ni­ties who can help."

Re­fer­ring to what she de­scribed as "di­vid­ed loy­al­ties," St Rose Greaves ex­plained, "When you work for the State, you serve the peo­ple, not the par­ty. So­cial work­ers are torn by di­vid­ed loy­al­ty in that they will choose an em­ploy­er over a client.

"At its sim­plest, so­cial work is about help­ing peo­ple to cope. There is no doubt that in times of dif­fi­cul­ty there will be ex­po­nen­tial growth of the client pop­u­la­tion. Un­for­tu­nate­ly the peo­ple most af­fect­ed are usu­al­ly left out of dis­cus­sions and de­ci­sions that will im­pact their lives."

In ex­pect­ing so­cial work­ers to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties and spaces where mar­gin­alised voic­es get a place for ex­pres­sion, St Rose Greaves said this would en­tail so­cial work­ers be­ing present at the ta­bles of de­ci­sion mak­ing in dif­fer­ent places and at sev­er­al lev­els.

"As key play­ers in the de­vel­op­ment process, so­cial work­ers en­gage with peo­ple who are most like­ly to be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by the eco­nom­ic down­turn. In T&T, the ma­jor­i­ty of so­cial work­ers are em­ployed with or at­tached to pro­grammes fund­ed by gov­ern­ment."

St Rose Greaves said this pan­dem­ic has un­der­scored that "not on­ly do we need so­cial work­ers, we need them to be strate­gi­cal­ly placed. The pan­dem­ic has on­ly height­ened the need for strate­gic and crit­i­cal so­cial work in­ter­ven­tion. There is a bit of a dilem­ma be­cause more than ever, we need a hands-on ap­proach while COVID dic­tates de­mand hands-off."

Ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment that so­cial work­ers are yet to be de­clared front­line work­ers, the out­spo­ken ac­tivist said while some adapt­ed to an on­line pres­ence very quick­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly, too many have been stymied by what is lack­ing.

Re­fer­ring to this cadre of work­ers as re­source de­vel­op­ers who need to ad­vo­cate more for what is need­ed now, she sug­gest­ed an in­sur­ance haz­ard al­lowance for them.