Women’s Centre trains peer counsellors
THE Women’s Centre of Jamaica Foundation is now conducting a workshop aimed at training teens to become peer counsellors in primary and high schools.
“We realise that in the regular school system, the guidance counsellors are bogged down with other duties and… will not have enough time to be with each student on a one-to-one basis,” Charmaine Johnson, project co-ordinator explained.
Johnson also argued that the move will reduce the number of teen pregnancies.
“We figured that if we train other students who are role models, then they could assist the guidance counsellors. And when they do this, it will reduce the number of pregnancies because they would then be informed about their sexual and reproductive health,” she said.
The workshop, which will end on July 18, began on Monday. This is the 12th year that the Women’s Centre has offered the course.
Participating students were selected by their schools’ guidance counsellors, with whom they will work once training has been completed.
The issues being discussed at the ongoing workshop include:
* principles and practices of peer counselling,
* etiquette and grooming,
* sexually transmitted infections,
* values and attitudes,
* drug abuse,
* female and male reproduction,
* methods of contraception and child abuse.
The Women’s Centre caters to adolescent mothers by providing accommodation and health care for the pregnant teens and their babies, and then ensuring that the young mothers are re-integrated into the school system.
“We take them here when they are pregnant and after they’ve had their babies, we send them back into the regular school system,” Johnson said.
But sometimes, Johnson said, some of the young mothers get pregnant a second time — requiring yet more help from the centre.
“The second-pregnancy rate is less than two per cent,” she stressed, “but most times it’s due to a contraceptive failure, because we recommend that the girls go on a contraceptive method before returning to school”.
Since the Women’s Center of Jamaica Foundation was launched in 1978, the programme has assisted more than 29,000 young mothers. According to Johnson, more than 1,300 girls entered the programme last year and just over 600 were able to go back to school.
“A number of the girls who have passed through the programme have done well in their external examinations and some have even gone on to become doctors, nurses and teachers,” the co-ordinator added.
The centre also provides counselling for the young fathers of the teens’ babies, as well as other adolescent males who may need help.
“What happens is that we offer remedial education, counselling and skills training, as we recognise that this is one of our preventative measures,” Johnson explained.
Last year, the programme assisted 762 young men.