July 2013


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Dr. Sandra Celestine began her remarks to the Youth at Risk Conference by telling participants right off the bat that they were not embarking on an academic exercise. “I am,” she said, “first and foremost a clinician. The UWI At Risk Youth Project is about providing real world solutions to real people.”

She was speaking at the Youth At Risk Conference hosted by the Department of Behavioural Sciences. The densely packed room included company representatives from bpTT, Republic Bank, UNDP, the Trinidad & Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce, The National Security Mentorship Programme, YTEPP, Trinidad & Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association and the Ministry of National Security. By the end of the day, several organisations began discussing additional funding for the Trinidad & Tobago Youth At Risk Project.

The Project, which is active in schools and in the community to bring about real change for youth at risk and their families, defines an ‘at risk’ student as one who consistently breaks the rules of the Ministry of Education.

Their study on the efficacy of using a multi-modal therapeutic counselling approach to help stem the tide of increasing youth misbehaviour, school violence and school crime quickly revealed multi-faceted problems requiring multi-faceted solutions. Sustainable solutions could only be found by making changes in the country’s educational, health care, national security and national development policies.

More than 50% of school youth involved in school crime and violence were found to be afflicted with health problems. These health problems include depression, emotional, verbal, or physical abuse, and unresolved grief and loss (caused by witnessing or experiencing the death of friends or family). These mental health maladies show up daily in school settings as unrepressed anger, disrespect for authority, fighting, sexual misconduct as well as acts of stealing and robbery. The often-unseen impacts of these mental health problems are hopelessness, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts and suicidal attempts.

The immediate successes of the Youth Project were improved student behaviour for nearly 40% of students and 95% identification of the specific issues causing a student to misbehave. Group counselling produced faster results than individual counselling for most students and parent guidance sessions improved therapeutic outcomes. Music therapy proved to be a very strong intervention method for getting youth to become engaged and talk about issues such as sex, aggressive behaviour, problems with parents and issues surrounding bad choices that lead to violence and criminal activity.

The White Paper that came out of their scholarly research provides government, businesses, professional service providers and community leaders with information and tools that could help them to analyse and develop policy to direct needed funding toward understanding and correcting school misbehaviour, school violence and school crime issues.

Counselling, she pointed out, is only a tool and not a panacea for correcting youth misbehaviour and school violence. If Trinidad & Tobago is to stem the tide of increasing youth misbehaviour, counselling has to be supported by school disciplinary policy, teacher training and responsibility, community and economic development. These, in turn, require co-operative business, community and multi-sector government action and the involvement of mental health practitioners. To this end, The UWI Trinidad & Tobago Youth Project is committed to working with the Ministry of Education in training and developing supervision methodologies for their mental health practitioners. The country must also be prepared to invest in research to develop evidence-based solutions.

For more information, please contact Dr. Sandra Celestine, Principal Investigator and Head of UWI At Risk Youth Project, sandra.celestine@sta.uwi.edu or Dr. Shelton Jefferson sheltonj@atriskyouthtt.com The complete White Paper can be found at www.atriskyouthtt.com.