Crisis Counseling

Helping children cope with life's tradegies is an important job for parents. But because more parents than ever before, work, many can't be there for their children when they are needed the most.

In "Assignment: Education", Bill Ratliff shows us a way schools are helping children in need, with the use of a special team that has become a model for the state.

Two teachers shot to death, after stopping to help out at a traffic accident.. a young girl murdered near her home.. three high schoolers killed in a New Year's Eve accident.. a beloved principal fights and loses a heroic battle against cancer.. a popular and gifted teacher killed in a traffic accident on the first day of school. These all represent the darker side of life that more and more young people are forced to face. But handling these tradegies can be tough for them. That's why many school districts now provide help in the form of counselors and crisis intervention teams.
Psychologist Marsha Alcorn, Social Worker Chuck Jaksec and nurse Sandy Gallogy are three of the 18 members of the Hillsborough Crisis Intervention Team.
Alcorn says when a tradegy does happen it's important they give kids ways to cope.. quickly.

[--Marsha Alcorn says:] "If you don't deal with the emotions, the anger, and the loss, and the sadness then what happens is that it just builds up inside and it keeps building up."--

Gallogy says in all crisis interventions.. team members try to give strength to the children.

--[Sandy Gallogy says:] "We try to tell the children they are a strong group to themselves, and they can give each other support."--

And according to Jaksec, they also tell the children dealing with death is like treating a cut or a wound.. it must be treated properly.

--[Chuck Jaksec says:] --"We try to teach the children to clean that wound with tears."--

But Jaksec and the other Hillsborough C-I-T members say the best place to clean that wound of sadness and grief is on the shoulder of a loved one.

During the first three months of this school year, the Hillsborough C-I-T was called out 10-times. During all of last school year, it was called out 21-times.. providing help to more than one-thousand students, 200-teachers and 50 families.

This article was brought to you
straight from the desk of

in the Newsroom of