While schools are meant to be a place of learning and safety for children, recent incidents of violence are causing growing concern. These violent incidents have led to calls for social workers to be placed in schools around the country.
The Congress of South African Students in the Free State says schools must have social workers to provide learners with psychosocial support.
This comes as four lives were lost due to school violence between October 2021 and February 2023. Several violent incidents took place in the last few weeks.
Counselling Psychologist Sam Chweneemang believes a proactive approach is needed to address problems caused by violence at schools. They are calling for social workers to be placed at schools.
“Learners and staff come from communities that are infested with very very serious problems and they carry those problems into their school premises so it is really very important that social workers form part of the schooling system”.
They believe that the placement of social workers in schools will allow for issues and challenges to be addressed as they emerge.
Chweneemang acknowledged that placing social workers at schools won’t resolve all the issues plaguing places of learners. The responsibility of raising children and instilling values in them falls on their families.
This is especially important as there is not an adequate number of social workers serving schools in the country. If values are not instilled in children, they can be more difficult to handle when they enter a school and begin interacting with other children and adults.
They said, “Once you have not been able to lay a proper Foundation at a family level it becomes a little bit challenging when now children go to school and they start to interact with other adults in the form of Educators and then if really there were certain things that were not entrenched in their upbringing it becomes very difficult to be able to manage them.”
Chweneemang adds that social workers will assist learners with the emotional distress which manifests into violent conduct at schools.
