Barbados Urged to Prioritize Funding for School Counseling Services in Budget: Former Guidance Counsellor Highlights Need for Early Interventions at Primary Level

As Barbados grapples with rising youth crime and delinquency, a guidance counsellor has urged the government to prioritise funding for school counselling services in its upcoming Budget, particularly at the primary school level.

As the government prepares to deliver the Budget on Monday, former president of the Barbados Association of Guidance Counsellors, Saul Leacock, suggested that early, focused, and well-funded interventions are crucial in shaping positive behaviours before students transition to secondary school. He cited Jamaica’s model, where some schools have two guidance counsellors at the primary level.

“Apart from the Sandy Lane Trust Fund, which [supports] one counsellor for five schools, some other funds should be allocated in order to have a counsellor attached to every primary school. I am also of the view [that] Jamaica has two school counsellors for every primary school as well, because it’s at the primary level that many of the problems surface and they are carried over into the secondary schools. By the time you reach them, the children are almost settled in their ways with attitudes and so on,” he told Barbados TODAY.

“So something for the primary schools having at least one counsellor on the ground to deal with the cases at the primary level when they [arise].”

Leacock also outlined the financial constraints faced by school counselling programmes, noting that many initiatives are stalled due to a lack of resources. Given this unfortunate reality—especially with government agencies being swamped with at-risk youth who need intervention—he said that a fund should be created to help schools in this regard.

He said: “I would love to and wish that there could be a fund donated to help plan career showcases, rather than guidance counsellors having to beg for assistance from corporate Barbados or NGOs. A fund to help plan career showcases as well as other programmes that guidance counsellors can [use to] reach students in the area of career development, and even in dealing with attitudes and behaviours.

“A lot of the programmes are handicapped by financing, and they have to beg for corporate Barbados and wait and wait till people respond to get into gear for any career showcase at the national level. A fund to help the government agencies that are swamped already dealing with counselling of at-risk children.”

(SB)