Deb Fraser: Mirror Services Director on the impact of counselling services in primary schools

There are calls for counselling services to be embedded across all primary schools as a pilot initiative shows clear gains.  

An Education Review Office report reveals 8 in 10 students report better mental health after receiving support from the Counselling in Schools programme.  

It also finds improvements to school attendance, behaviour and learning.  

Otago-based Mirror Services director Deb Fraser says the programme allows children to speak with someone who has the skills and knowledge to help them.  

She says support from the wider community and family is still important, but there are times where professional intervention is required. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It almost seems odd to say, but primary school counseling
services are showing promising results. Over the past three years,
more than two hundred and twenty schools have taken part
in the zero project or this pilot. Eighty percent of
the students involved, so their mental health has improved. In
more than seventy five percent of the teachers and parents
say attendance and results have increased. So counselor dead phrase Isshoes,
director of Mirror Services, and is with us dead morning

(00:21):
to you, Su and Mike, how are you doing very well? Indeed,
thank you. How many kids do you see and how
many of them would need counseling? Do you think?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Oh? How many do we see? I mean, we're in
across five different schools in the Southern district, and we're
available to students who are year eight and under, so
all of those children can have access to counseling if
it's consented to by their parents. And so we're seeing

(00:51):
at least five children a day and saying that we're
only like five hours in each of those schools or
ten hours in one of the biggest school so you know,
it's not a lot of counseling ours, but it is
making a significant difference.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
How does it actually work? In other words, Varma, five
or six year old who approaches me to say, do
you want some counseling?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, it's identified either by their teacher, the students themselves
that are made aware that counseling's available to them, or
a parent can also refer them into the service. So
it's great that there's multiple ways that they can access
the services.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Was it so long ago that, I mean, I can't
imagine as a five year old somebody coming to me
an adult going hi, Mike, I'm just wondering if you'd
like some counseling. I would have had no idea what
you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's a difficult concept for a child.
It really is positioned as a way as somebody to
talk to if there are you know, if you're not
sleeping well, or something's happened that's upset you and you're
not engaging in school or not wanting to come to school,
those sorts of things that's really doubt drilled down in

(02:03):
a basic level for children to understand. But we are
talking more year seven and eight and of course under
as well.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, so when you say it has improved. How do
you know that? And do the kids tell you that?
And how would they quantify that in their own minds?

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, So there are questionnaires that we do that get,
you know, give a baseline of where somebody comes in
and how they're functioning, what their functioning is, and then afterwards,
after they've completed, so we can see the difference that
it makes. And they do do a session, you know,
how they found the session as well, so they're able

(02:43):
to report on what their experience is like. But I
think the reporting's coming from not just the children themselves,
but parents and their teachers. So it's like as not
quite a three sixty, but it's almost you know, there's
a number of points of input into that.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Well, do you give them coping mechanisms? Because I'd imagine
a lot of the problems if the kids have problems,
a lot of the problems we're at home. You can't
necessarily fix what's going on at home. Therefore you give
the kids a coping mechanism. Is that fair or not?

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah? Yes, it is about strategies and coping and just
being able to talk about what's securing. But ideally working
with family is also important when you're working with children,
so where we can we involve family or where it's.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Needed to good stuff, I'm glad it's working well. Appreciate
the insight, did Praiser. Who's a Mirror services directory

Speaker 2 (03:33):
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