Childhub Facilitates the Training of 500 School Professionals in Albania

At the beginning of 2020, MASR in cooperation with Tdh, finalized, published and distributed the Work Manual for the Employees of the Psycho-Social Unit in School which serves as a guiding tool in the work of these employees. As a further step, in order to support young professionals, and not only, in their duty as employees of the Psycho-Social Unit in Schools, Tdh with the support of MASR, in May 2021, began organizing trainings with groups of professionals of these units.

Due to the high number of PNJPS and additional participants from other categories of school actors (teachers, principal / deputy principals, assistant teachers, etc.) they were organized into 7 groups of about 100 members. Each group went through a 2-day training process for seven consecutive weeks. As foreseen in the methodology, all training days were conducted online, facilitated by the zoom platform and made available by Childhub.

The training lecturers were the experts involved in compiling the manual, namely Artemisi Shehu and Irida Agolli. Each training day included the time frame 09:00 - 12:00 organized in two sessions of 90 'which covered the theoretical material based on the Manual. Eight tests aimed at measuring knowledge were administered to social workers and nine tests to psychologists during training sessions. From the results most of the participants gave correct answers.

As defined in the methodology, the first day of the training was followed by the organization of two focus discussion groups led by Blerta Bodinaku for psychologists and Rudina Rama for social workers. Thus, 10-12 employees for each profile attended for each training group these meetings which aimed to create a discussion space for professionals to share their concerns and challenges at work as well as their need for further training and assistance. The findings and recommendations, made possible by a representation of around 90 professionals, will be summarized in a report which will be shared with MARS for considerations in September 2021.

The whole process was successfully finalized on June 29, 2021, with a participation of about 500 professionals, where the vast majority consisted of employees of psycho-social units at the national level. At the end of each training, for each group, an evaluation test was administered with a scale of 3 options respectively: 1- very valuable in my work, 2- somewhat valuable and 3- non valid at all. The data showed that more than 98% of the participants considered and evaluated this training very necessary for their work; 2% somewhat valid and 0% non valid.

For all training participants who are interested in obtaining a certificate of participation in this activity will be issued a certificate previously agreed with MARS. Meanwhile, after each training, the presentation materials and a copy of the manual were distributed by e-mail throughout the unit employee database.