Parents reaching out to Supreme Counselling for assistance

As the new school term got under way this week after a two week delay on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, some parents have already been reaching out to Supreme Counselling for assistance with challenges which they have encountered, mainly in relation to having adequate devices or materials which their children need for school.

Shawn Clarke, CEO of Supreme Counselling for Personal Development (SCPD), a charitable organisation assisting youth who need interventions noted the above, as he spoke with The Barbados Advocate this week.

“Obviously, there are still some challenges, where some students still don’t have devices. We know that there are still problems with some households not having electricity or not having adequate Internet and so on. So the few calls that I would have received here at the office, especially from children enrolled in the Supreme Programme, were primarily from parents seeking assistance from the organisation, in providing devices for the students,” he explained.

“We have been trying to have an initiative where I can provide some computers here at the office. Obviously, given the whole social distancing and so on, we can accommodate five students with all the protocols in place, especially the ones who live close to the office, where they can come and use our computers, the Internet and so on, to still be able to attend class. We have not yet been able to get that in place as yet however, because we’re trying to reach out to corporate Barbados to assist us with those devices,” he pointed out.

“So we’ve been getting calls from parents more so to assist with materials, more so than to do with any psychological fall out from COVID-19,” he acknowledged.

Clarke meanwhile noted that given the need to go online for teaching and learning once again on account of a rise in COVID cases, Supreme Counselling has nonetheless been doing its part to maintain contact with schools enrolled in its school-based programme and to assist parents and students collectively who may need the interventions it offers, which include counselling services for youth.

“We are still early in the school term, but we have been making plans and communicating with the schools to create our daily and weekly sessions online, to be a part of the online platform, so we can continue the sessions as much as possible, in the same way that we would have done with face-to-face,” Clarke stated.

“We have also been doing a lot of virtual sessions with PTAs (parent-teacher associations). We recently did one with the parents and students from Princess Margaret Secondary School, in terms of adapting to the new normal and how parents can prepare themselves and prepare their children for the online learning. Our advice to parents is that although it is happening at home, they  still need to see it as school and treat it as school. Treat it with the same level of respect that they would, if they had to leave home and go to the school plant. So those are some of the things that we’ve been doing,” he told this newspaper.

He meanwhile indicated, “The Supreme Office also remains open. We have informed the schools of this. We have remained open to be able to do any face-to-face counselling sessions that are urgent, again, taking into consideration all the protocols. We do have a hand sanitizer here on the spot and we have a temperature gun. We have the things that we need to put in place, (already) in place and for those who cannot get to us, our psychologists have also started virtual sessions, to assist in this area.”