Professor Shelley Hymel:

I would like to echo some of that. I am not familiar with the system in Ireland. In our system, there are guidance counsellors but they do not focus on the social and emotional end, especially at second level. They focus on college preparation and things like that. We have to talk about the kinds of counsellor training and the kinds of counsellors who are available. In Canada, at least, the counsellors are completely stretched. They have way too many clients and not many kids go to them. Kids go to the person they trust. My experience is that if they go to anybody, it is a peer or a person in school such as their teacher, if they have the trust with the teacher. It has to be done at many levels. One counsellor with 2,000 kids will find it very difficult to satisfy that need. We have several problems. Teachers will also be at the front line. They are most likely to see what is going on and to be the person the kids will go to initially, and then they need help to figure out what to do. I was head of a department that trained counsellors. Frankly, we did not train them in these types of therapies. We need to consider what we are training them to do.