Need to develop counselling programme at the grassroots level, applicable to the underdeveloped areas of the country (Part 1.3):
Education is
considered to be a boon, it should help channelize the youthful energies
towards creativity and self-actualisation. It should help children understand
their abilities and personality dispositions so that they can perform at their
best in the school
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To benefit from the counselling practices, a school should have a well
planned and managed counselling system.
What is Counselling? Counselling is the means by which one person
helps another through purposeful conversation, it is not an advise giving and
advice seeking, but to help a person to take decision himself.
Further, we can think of the critical question, is counselling always
associated with overcoming deficiency or it could be for empowerment also? It
is for developmental paradigm to explain whether a child is viewed as an
asset/resource so that it has to be developed and supported. Or the child has
to be developed on the basis of morality (moral development factor).
The first child guidance clinic was started in Mumbai at Tata Institute
of Social Science (TISS) as early as in 1937, the spread of such centres across
the country has been sparse and patchy. There is an urgent need for a survey of
the mental health or counselling services for children available in the
country, as regards to the availability of trained staff, as well as the nature of
facilities provided
Compared to rural geographies, the facilities are quite developed
in urban spaces. Some urban schools adopt innovative approaches to sensitize
school teachers in identification, referral and management of mental health
problems in school settings. And some schools have even appointed full-time
counsellors for this purpose. However, the majority of school children live in
rural areas where service delivery is mostly absent except for ICDS Anganwadi
services. There is a need to develop programmes at the grassroots level, which
are applicable to the underdeveloped areas of the country