JOIN USThis exam season, parents can invite counsellors home if they find anxiety and stress among their children.
Child rights organisations in the City will, in co-ordination with the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR), take up large-scale awareness programmes on stress and anxiety related to performance in exams among students. The counsellors will assist the students in managing stress.
If children are taken to clinics to meet counsellors, they might feel conscious about it. Hence, Child Rights Trust (CRT), a city-based organisation, has come up with the idea of sending counsellors to the homes of students who require assistance.
For this purpose, the Trust is training students pursuing Masters in Social Work (MSW) and is roping in child rights organisations in the city, apart from seeking the assistance of KSCPCR.
A meeting of child rights organisations with members of the KSCPCR will be held on February 25 in this regard. “We want to ensure that no student attempts suicide owing to pressure or tension,” said CRT director Nagasimha Rao. The meeting is open to all interested stakeholders.
With the exams fast approaching, calls from anxious parents have begun flooding the Trust. Already, the organisation is receiving three to four calls every day with parents complaining about tension and anxiety among children. This will only increase as the exams come closer, going by the statistics of previous years.
Apart from professional counsellors, CRT has trained about 20 MSW students to help them counsel the students. Twelve more colleges across the city have been identified and letters have been sent to these colleges to include participation of more student volunteers. Another 30-40 volunteers are likely to be trained for the purpose.
The focus this year is also on active participation of teachers in the process. A series of workshops for teachers is being planned over the next two months.
The awareness programmes will include distribution of pledge forms to students. Ten to 20 phone numbers are given to students in this pledge card. “If students find any of their classmates or friends depressed, they can call these numbers,” Rao said.