The demise of counseling services in secondary schools: Why there is a pressing need for more open doors of help for troubled teens

In many secondary schools guidance counselors are becoming quasi -administrators and being forced to abandon their personal counseling role. For example, a new state law in New Jersey, The Anti Bullying Bill of Rights, demands that beginning in September, 2011, all public schools adopt anti bullying policies, increase staff training, and adhere to tight deadlines for reporting episodes.The law requires that a school must designate an anti bullying specialists to investigate complaints and each district must have a bullying coordinator.

In most cases schools are tapping guidance counselors as the new anti bullying specialists, raising the question of whether they have the time to look into every complaint of harassment and write the detailed resports required. In my opinion one more step in the bureaucratizing of the guidance counselors' role and further distancing them from their role of counseling students.

Given this development it is critical that schools create other open doors for help such as reorganizing the assignment of counselors so there is a cadre who are designated as individual and group counselors' for students and parents, serve as trainers to ready teachers as advisors, and students as peer helpers. Many teens need intervention now and the pathways to sources of help must be easily accessible, welcoming, and trusting.