The Child Guidance & Wellbeing Centre (CGWC) of IMHANS in collaboration with Samagra Shiksha Jammu Kashmir held extensive training programmes across all the 20 districts of the Union Territory to enhance the capacity of teachers dealing with children .
Amid COVID-19 pandemic, the mental health of children has assumed much importance with experts calling for catering to the physical, emotional, psychological and other needs of the youngsters. The training programme for teachers is part of efforts towards mitigating the effect of the pandemic on students.
“The training programs were conducted district wise from last 4 weeks and covered several themes like identification of psycho social issues among children and adolescents and the role of teachers,” said Prof Dr Zaid Wani, Incharge CGWC.
He said during the programme, stress was laid on providing psychological first aid to children, highlighting the role of teachers and stress management amid COVID-19 pandemic.
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Dr Zaid said that for the better interest of children’s mental health, the helpline numbers were shared with all the participant teachers so that they could timely refer the students to the CGWC for early intervention.
We are also in a process to work with schools wherein our counsellors use the virtual platform to address various issues of students during their online classes,” he said.
Training Coordinator at CGWC IMHANS-K Syed Mujtaba said the capacity building plays a vital role in integration of mental health into other streams like education, general health, child protection, etc.
“The recent National Educational policy has laid importance on the mental health of students, and for the same, capacity building of teachers is the first key,” Mujtaba said.
