Helping our at-risk students...

This week’s email comes from Debora Chisala, our School Support Manager. In her role, Debora supports our most at-risk students, ensuring that they have access to a trusted adult who will serve as an advocate for them in the midst of a crisis. This work is incredibly challenging, often requiring many case visits and coordination with various referral agencies. Thank you, Debora!

In Impact Network’s school support and child protection model, counselling is very important part of how we help learners and parents. Counselling provides learners with skills and methods necessary to manage their emotions; it helps them understand problems, develop necessary coping skills and make positive choices. Offering counselling sessions to learners can also help children and parents work through stressful underlying problems such as unplanned pregnancy, early marriage, abuse and other issues which effect their schooling.

Counselling is especially important for the survivors of abuse or gender-based violence. Many times, students who have experienced abuse will blame themselves, and be hesitant to open up. Parents will sometimes even ask the child not to talk about the incident with anyone, especially if it happens within a family setting. However, with support, many parents are willing to help their children through this difficult time and keep them safe.

Recently, I was working with the family of a student who had been assaulted, and the girl’s father said “As a father I am much grateful that you came, and we had this talk about my daughter’s situation. I had no idea on how to help her cope in this. We don’t usually talk about such things as family or with outsiders.” Traditionally, when handling such an incident, families of victims and families of perpetrators would come together to discuss the incident and agree on restitution and payment to injured parties. However, the ongoing safety and emotional needs of the child can often be overlooked in this process. The father I worked with shared, “talking to you has helped me realize that we, as parents, feel that when we have family discussions with the perpetrator, we are solving the problem. But now I see we are not putting into consideration the child’s well-being.” These family counseling sessions after a child protection incident help parents see the importance of medical check-ups to protect the long term health of their children, the need for reporting cases to traditional and government authorities to ensure perpetrators are stopped, and the need to discuss the incident with the child and encourage them. After counselling sessions with this family, that girl’s father has been able to ensure her return to school.

One of the many reasons for counselling is that we create a safe space where both parents and learners are able to seek guidance and advice in order to come up with positive decisions. A safe space is created in order to talk through their challenges, and once parents have been engaged in these sessions, they can begin to help their children cope with difficult situations and help them build emotional resilience. These counselling sessions give guidance on how to communicate in a healthy and positive way so learners can have a healthy and positive future.

The work we do in child protection, especially to support our girl students, can be incredibly difficult. I am so grateful to Debora and our child protection team who lead this work with resolve, determination, and a strong conviction that all children deserve the chance to learn and live safely.