Schools Should Have An Additional Social Worker

The Hong Kong Council of Social Service on Tuesday called for more social workers in schools to help deal with potentially suicidal students.

It surveyed workers providing services to over 400 secondary schools and found that about seven percent of 30,000 cases they handled were related to suicide.

But the council also found such students only get an average of 19 hours of support, when they could do with around 33 hours.

Anthony Wong, the council's Business Director, said suicidal cases are more complex than others and called on the government to put a second social worker in every secondary school in the city.

"Social workers have tremendous amount of work. [They] normally spend 14 hours per case but for the actual number, its 19 hours. For suicidal attempt or suicidal inclination, it would require more than 33 hours per case", Wong said.

"For this kind of situation illustrates that social workers are having a very heavy workload and we therefore demand that the service input should be increased", he added.