- Country
- Belgium
- Target Audience
- Youth/pupils/studentsEducators/academicsLocal community organisations/NGOs
- key themes association
- (Early) preventionFormal/informal education
- Year
- 2016
Organisation
The Central Helpdesk
Is a cross-educational network Pupil Guidance Centre project, that unifies counsellors from the 4 major educational networks in Antwerp; It is led by a coordinator and a council of the 4 directors of the pupil guidance centres.
Funded by the city of Antwerp and supported by the Flemish department of education to enable the pupil guidance centres to attach highly skilled staff to the Central Helpdesk.
Type of Organisation: Other
Project description
The city of Antwerp invested in an education policy division with following strategic goal / mission.
‘All schools in the city of Antwerp work together with the city services to ensure that children, teenagers and youngsters get and take the opportunity to develop competences and obtain qualifications that lead to a wide personal formation and gives them access to higher education and or / the labour market.’ Together with our partners in our support and prevention network we tackle unqualified and early school leaving, grade retention, truancy and cross border behaviour, radicalisation, expulsion, inequality (poverty, language, …) and the gap between education and labour market.
The partners in the network are:
- Local educational forums and projects
- Schools and Pupil Guidance Centres
- (Local) welfare facilities and health services.
- Justice dep. and police
- Flemish employment services / job centres
Together we’ve build a very close knitted network for detection and follow up of youngsters with a problematic school career with all relevant partners.
Since 2003 we work with a central helpdesk to link the youngster mostly within one week to a partner/ project in the support and guidance network (coaching, time out, training) to avoid expulsion from school or when already expelled we work towards reintegration as quickly as possible. In 2013 the CHD started monitoring and follow up of possibly radicalised youngsters / groups of youngsters in schools. Part of the CHD-team got specialized training to enable them to identify and follow up on these phenomena.
Today the CHD can be consulted by the schools and the pupil guidance centres as well as by the ‘radicalisation antenna’ in the culture, sport and youth departments of the city.
Deliverables
A number of flows to ensure follow up and cooperation between the partners in the network as well as cooperation agreements between partners in the network.