- There is a strong need to balance academic excellence and quality of life at school. Currently, due to various factors, the schools and parents are focused more on academic than the quality of life. Various studies are being undertaken to understand ‘holistic development’ of children at school as well as home.
A
field research was undertaken titled 'Children’s
mental health: Towards an understanding of school counselling practices’,
and soon after that, another study was done on ‘Wellbeing policies’. This field intervention was done in five schools of Mysore, Karnataka, India. And the
mentor for the field research (first study) on children’s mental health was Mrs
Rajashree, a faculty member and Education program head at Azim Premji
University, Bangalore.
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The
child’s wellbeing and mental health are very crucial for the child’s success at
school as well as life. In today’s scenario around the world, particularly in
urban centres, children are not getting adequate care- due to many factors such
as nuclear families, both parents working, and social media etc. We were very
curious to understand how a counsellor in a school can help children to
overcome any hurdles they might face in their school life and outside school
life. In this field research, I engaged in a mix of schools who had appointed
counsellors, and also schools who had not appointed counsellors. This way we
had an opportunity to understand the child’s mental health support in both kinds
of school settings.
According
to
How
does counselling support benefits students- it is an effective source of support for students, enabling them to function
better both in and outside of the school, enhancing their resilience and giving
them resources to manage challenges life throws at them, students gain a better
understanding of themselves and the situations facing them and strategies to
cope with change
The purpose of this study was to understand how school counsellors are helping the schools and parents to empower children’s wellbeing and mental health. During this study I spent a full day at schools, looking at the day to day affairs of the counsellors. Few schools had full-time counsellors, and few had part-time counsellors.
The period of study was from August 2015 to December 2015, the study tools were designed at Azim Premji University, and the field engagement was from 17th November 2015 to 24th December 2015. After the study, a comprehensive report was submitted as a student work for the course of M.A Education, Semester: III (2014 – 2016 Batch) at Azim Premji University, Bangalore. The final report was submitted on 20th March 2016.
We
are starting an article series on wellbeing and we would love to share with you
the entire study in bits and pieces. This is our first article on this series.
(Note:
This work was done as a student course work. We do not entertain to use this
data for professional or legal use. The founder of Credence Learning Foundation
himself is a general counsellor trained at Banjara Academy, Bangalore. During
this time of the study, the researcher himself was a certified counsellor. Additionally, the researcher worked at an American MNC before joining the MA Education
course. This research work is being referred for the series on wellbeing).