The representatives of the Central Board of Directors of Public Centers have exploded before the education commission of the Parliament of Catalonia when speaking about harassment and have denounced that the Unit for Attention and Support for Students in Situations of Violence (USAV), the main tool created To deal with these cases, it limits itself to “taking note” of the cases and “has not resolved any.”
The director of the Miquel Crusafont institute in Sabadell (Barcelona), Robert Velàsquez, has stated “on behalf of the entire Catalan public system”, that the USAV, since it came into operation “has noted many things” but that “we are still waiting for a positive response to a single address” of centers, according to the EFE Agency.
According to Crusafont, the role of the USAV is limited to “taking note” of the cases and has explained an example in which a case of harassment was notified to the management of a center with 1,600 students without identifying the victim because “there was no the family’s permission” and that, after a day of trying to locate her, USAV itself admitted to having gone to the wrong center.
“It is bureaucracy and bureaucracy what we find with the USAV,” denounced the director, who has demanded more resources, less bureaucracy and external specialists to address harassment.
This student support unit, made up of a team of professionals (psychologists, pedagogues, social educators and lawyers, among others), was launched in 2021. It serves students and the rest of the educational community by phone, email or Whatsapp and accompanies the center in addressing cases of bullying.
Last October, Educació reported that since the beginning of the school year, the unit had responded to seven complaints a day. Since the launch of the service, the USAV has attended to a total of 3,039 cases of which, according to the department, 18% of the cases were reported to the Mossos and 20% to the DGAIA.
The representative of the directors has also criticized before the education commission that, although the protocols against violence are unified into one, in schools there are another 31 different protocols for various topics and that all of them are “confusing and cumbersome.” and “they do not give clear instructions.”
In cases of harassment, “the line of action proposed by the protocol is so diffuse that you cannot apply measures against the aggressor” and the disciplinary line “is insufficient,” stated Robert Vázquez, who has recognized that this leads to Victims of harassment “many times end up changing centers.”
“The opening of the protocol is not the solution, it is only the suspicion,” said the director, who added that to solve a conflict “you have to attend to the victim, the aggressor and the families,” and that you have to do “with specialized help” and “not with a teacher whom you have rescued for a few hours.”
To facilitate the work, the director has requested an application to directly notify the different agents when a case of harassment is detected so that they can act “immediately.”
He has also demanded the presence of specialists in the centers because the training of teachers and management “is not the solution” while he has criticized that the Coexistence Coordinators (COCOVE) “cannot cope because they do not have specific coordination hours “.
In the same sense, the director of the Marta Mata institute in Salou (Tarragona), Maria Carmen Moreno, has asked for “more resources” and “more hours of guidance” because “we have the same ones as 20 years ago and society has changed.”
“In harassment, actions need time, experience and a psychologist in each center,” said the director, who has denounced that the Social Integration Technicians (TIS) that exist in some schools end their contract this March. .
“The TIS are proving to be essential in cases of bullying and suicidal ideation and self-harm among students due to the links they establish with students and families” and in addition “they have time availability, as they are not teachers,” said the director, who He has asked that the figure be “structural in the center’s staff, if we want the fight against harassment to be effective and efficient.”
Regarding the role of families, he has said that “if they are by our side, the bullying stops” but “if they are reluctant to accept that their child is an aggressor, it is very difficult.”
The director of the Joan Sallarés Institute-School in Sabadell (Barcelona), Francisco Salmerón, has also stressed the educational role of parents and the “necessary collaboration with schools.”
This director has said that “we need to dignify the profession again” because teachers “have become the target of beatings” and “we feel defenseless”, since there are cases of “harassment of professionals by the families and students.”
For this reason, he added that the department “should defend us in certain situations”, when now “it seems that parents are always right.”
Regarding the coexistence coordinator, he has considered that “it is just another piece of the machine” and “insufficient” in “very large” centers to which students arrive “with increasingly heavier emotional backpacks.”
