‘Strengthen Guidance, Counseling Unit’

THE Guidance and Counselling Coordinator of the Accra Metro Directorate of Education, Ms Sylvia Aboagye, has called for the establishment of counselling units in schools to strengthen the guidance and counselling section of the Ghana Education Service (GES).
Currently, she said, most of the counsellors in the schools were teachers who had combined teaching with counselling sections without any recognised office.
She made the statement on the sideline of a day’s workshop organised for Guidance and Counselling Coordinators in the Accra Metropolis.
The workshop was organised by the Ghana Education Service in collaboration with the Virginia State University and LAWA Ghana with sponsorship from the United State Department to highlight on some of the challenges that children face. 
Ms Aboagye explained that students had challenges hence the need for specialised counsellors in the schools, stressing that counselling was a sacrificial job and that counsellors also had challenges. 
Counselling for parents
Ms Aboagye said most parents did not have time to monitor the activities of their children and left them at the mercy of their peers.
That, she said, paved the way for children to engage in sexual exploitations which jeopardised their future.
She explained that most children did not report sexual abuse against them because of the threat and stigma attached to it.
As counsellors, she urged them to nurture children to be assertive to give them the confidence to voice out their problems for the required assistance.
A participant in the workshop, Mrs Rose Kissi, also told the Daily Graphic that if a desk was established, it would make the section more efficient and effective for the students to confide in counsellors and added that the setting up of counselling units would make the task more respectable to gain the recognition and acceptance of parents and guardians.
She added that combining teaching with counselling was tedious because both duties demanded attention.
 In her address, the Coordinator of LAWA, Mrs Barbara Ayesu, stressed that parents also needed counselling in order to help in the upbringing of their children.
“Most parents give out their children for child trafficking without even knowing its consequences”, she said.
Out of ignorance and poverty, she stated that some parents gave out their children to friends and relatives to help in their upbringing without monitoring their upkeep.
With counselling, she said, the parents could learn to cater for their children even with the little they had to keep their eyes on them. 
So far, Mrs Ayesu said LAWA had rescued more than 353 children from 2010 to 2012 who had been enrolled in school.
“We have been able to track some parents and supported most of them with training and capital to assist the upkeep of their children”, she said.
LAWA Ghana is a nine-member group of women lawyers who aim at mounting sustained public education on women and children’s rights.