Sanderson Middle School Council Chair Mark Ferguson says school counsellors are spread thin servicing multiple schools with long waits for appointments

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now a lot of discussion over the school counselors. A
lot of people are really fired up over this whole situation.
Joining me on the line right now is Sanderson Middle
School Council Chair Mark Ferguson.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Good morning, Mark, Good.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
Morning Katie, and you listen. How are you? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Not too bad, bit confused, bit frustrated. I think you'd
have to say, following on from the interview a little
earlier this morning with the Education Department, Mark, did you
hear that and what did you make of it?

Speaker 3 (00:29):
I did hear that, and I don't think the Education
department knows what they're doing for a start, because we're
all confused as well. I can be price. Can I
just say that the CSC captain did an absolutely amazing job.
They spoke really well yesterday, and I must say give
them all the credit that they deserve.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
I agree with you absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
I agree with you. Do you know?

Speaker 1 (00:56):
I always think to myself when people come into the
studio for an interview, it can be very nerve racking.
Are you're talking about two young women who did an
outstanding job at standing up for their school and for
the whole student community. And I think that it was
phenomenal that they were brave enough to come in here

(01:16):
and do that.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Oh, absolutely, Katie, and they need to be commended for it.
Well done form.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
So yeah, I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Let me start by saying that we do have a
school counselor. At the moment, we don't know whether she's
moving yet. This is why we're fighting. Unfortunately, she can't
tell us whether she is moving or not because it's
all confidential still. But our counselor at Santa Fa Middle School,

(01:46):
she actually services for other feeder schools. So not only
is she doing Santa for middle school, she's doing a
Norla Primary school, She's doing Willagi Primary School, She's doing
Welgerman Primary School, Malac Primary School. That's a huge effort
for her. She's been doing that for nearly I think

(02:07):
eighteen months now.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
She does have a six week waiting list as well
of students that she sees. But she's basically based at
Sanderson and she cannot move from Sanderson at the moment
because there's so many people wanting and students wanting her.
So one of the feeder schools I will I can't name,
So one of the feeder schools had a student they

(02:31):
wanted to commit to a sign. So what that school
had to do was filling a piece of paper, send
it to the Education department. They put it in a
data base, they put it on a tree arche, and
the very next day they actually sent a counselor out.
After everyone's stomping and all that, my child who goes

(02:54):
for that school, I had their teachers in tears coming
to me going, what do we do? What you know?
Is there a counselor somewhere? Can we do this? Can
we do that? And unfortunately it took twenty four hours,
so overnight that student could have committed suicide, and yet
we were still waiting for the education department to come
and let us know much.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
It's a pretty frightening situation really, because as we know,
you know, I like I. I'm sure that a situation
like that is not an isolated one. We have got
kids that do desperately need that support.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yes, and we need counselors in schools, but we need
them to start in the primary schools as well. There
I don't think there's any counselors in primary schools at all. Yes,
we do have one that goes around, but she doesn't
have time to go to the primary school. At the moment,
we have no counselors in our primary school I believe

(03:56):
in the Northern suburbs. And yet we have to go
through that Tree Arch system and maybe get a counselor
out within twenty four hours, which is too late, Katie,
way too late. I actually think we actually had a
meeting with the CEO, Karen Weston Watson, sorry Watson. She

(04:18):
actually told us in that meeting that if we do
want to counselor for those schools, they have to fund
it out in their own profits. Goodness, we no funding
has decreased for all our schools to get rid of
one of our teachers. We could fund a counselor.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Mark This seems like a much bigger issue.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
I think then probably a lot of people realized from
the outset when we started having this discussion a bit
earlier in the week.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
You know, based on the discussions.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
That we are having, it sounds as though Sanderson Middle
School sort of already has the model operating that you
know that we spoke to the department about, so that
school counselor is already roving between Sanderson and four other schools.
But what is your response to the department's new model
that they have flagged, and do you think it's going

(05:13):
to work.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
No, I don't think it's going to work. We have
the highest rate of youse suicide in Australia and we're
actually taking a model from other states and territories. I
know for a fact, I've got friends in Victoria that
they've actually put stool based counselors back into their primary schools,
back into their schools because they knew that this funding

(05:36):
model does not work. I got off the phone this
morning to one of my friends down in Victoria who
actually told me that, yes, as of this week, they've
got school based counselors back into their schools because they
knew that the having centralized was not going to work.

(05:56):
I just want to touch on a couple of other things.
Is confidentiality. The biggest thing is where's the confidentiality in
these students going to the Mittell Center. So we put
in a form so the teacher gets to know, then

(06:16):
maybe the principal, because the principle normally sends it off.
Then you've got the person who receives the information, and
then they put it in a database and then one
of five apparently five or three educators will have a
look at it, and then they it's a tree yard
system where they go, Okay, this one's a red, this
one's an orange, and this one's are green. So the

(06:37):
green ones can wait a week, the orange ones can
wait a couple of days that we have to get
to the red one. What kind of system counseling system
actually works like that?

Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah, you're right, I mean, the point you're making is
an incredibly good one. There's no confidentiality in that situation
for a kid that's potentially suffering, and you know it's
then going through all those two front steps before they
actually get to the point of actually seeing a counselor.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Look, this whole situation is it's unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Really, it's a huge It does sound like it's a
huge concern. I mean we've spoken, of course, to the
department a little bit earlier this morning. They spoke about
just how many counselors we've got. So these thirty school
council excuse me positions, twenty one of those are currently filled,
three are going to be filled by the end of May,
and six of those are still under recruitment. Now mark

(07:34):
correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe we've got
one hundred and fifty two government schools in the Northern Territory.
Those numbers don't seem to stack.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Up, No, they definitely don't. I remember when my first child.
I've got four daughters, May one of them has just
finished school, yep. One of them's in the high school,
one's in the middle school, and one in a prime
So I can actually see the whole progression of this.

(08:07):
When my eldest daughter was at school, she was going
through some bullyings and we actually had a school counselor
that was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. And then I found out
later that they've been taken away from the primary schools
and put into a little bit of a hub of
Sanderson where they are feeder schools, and then we're getting

(08:29):
so many problems. The biggest, the biggest thing that I've got, Katie,
is if you start early, you can actually get on
top of it. You know, when we look at crime,
when we look at mental health, when we look at
all that, if we start in our primary schools and
we can actually see it in our primary schools, we

(08:50):
can actually get help to them a little bit quicker.
Than Oh, they've just come into middle senior school and
now we're having problems. There is an eighteen month wait
to see a psychiatrist. I believe there's also an eighteen
month wait to see a pediatrician. We're actually lucky at Sanderson.
We've actually got a doctor, a pediatrician that is actually

(09:14):
donating his time. Wow, I believe once a month just
to help our students out or a legend.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
What an absolute legend.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
Else we're going to have to have pay for that
out of our budget as well. He's absolutely a brilliant,
brilliant pediatrician that's helping us out. And he didn't actually
realize how extensive all this stuff is.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Mark, I am going to have to get ready to
wrap up. I really appreciate you sort of giving us
that perspective certainly, you know when you talk about the
model and and just how many different schools some of
the counselors are already looking after, and in terms of
that weightless time as well, that it probably is providing
a lot of our listeners perspective that they simply would

(10:04):
not have had previously. I know, even for myself and
I am a parent, and yeah, I just had no
idea that in some situations you've got kids waiting up
to six weeks to actually see a school counselor and
the process that they need to go through, even if
it is an emergency.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yes, And can I just complete by saying that if
we do put it into a centralized hub, which I
believe the Education Department could not answer today. But I
know that there are some that are going into a
centralized hub, and I've got on good authority that they're
going to be doing this with all our counselors. But

(10:46):
I'm hoping that you know, we can all band together.
We can all talk to our local MLAs, send them
a letter asking them to keep our counselor there. But
the biggest problem that I have is if the Education
Department was very serious about the well being of our students,
they would put counselors in each of the primary schools,

(11:09):
in each of the middle schools, and the high schools. Said,
I know, in twenty seventeen, you just need a degree
in counseling, Well they change that to having a degree
in social what was it social in basically psychology and
social work, which actually got rid of a fair bit

(11:32):
of our counselors, so they weren't allowed to have a
degree in counseling, so it had to be social work
or psychology where the counseling, especially in a degree of counseling,
they will be able to push the student onto a
lot more help as well. So why don't we start
with that.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, well, look, I actually think it seems like a
sensible idea. I'm not an expert in that space, but
it seems like a sense sable idea. Mark. I really
appreciate your time this morning. Thank you so much for
having a chat with us.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
More than happy to talk to you. Thank you, you
and your listeners.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
No worries at all,