Newsflash

Crisis Negotiation on School Grounds Suicides

Crisis events on school grounds have increased both in terms of frequency and severity in recent years. In fact, some incidents demanded teachers and social workers to exercise their communication and negotiation skills right on the spot. In view of this, our School Social Work Service and the Hong Kong Police Negotiation Team organized two forums in March and May. The subject was about crisis negotiation on school grounds suicides. The response was overwhelming with a total of 542 attendees. These included secondary school principals, teachers, social workers, educational psychologists and school liaison officers from the police force.

Besides basic negotiation skills introduced by the Police Negotiation Team, there was also role-play by the colleagues from our School's Social Work Service. They re-enacted a scene where a negotiation team had to work with a student who was contemplating jumping off a building. Previously, after an in-depth discussion on certain crisis-handling experiences, the Negotiation Team and our School Social Work Service had together come up with an article on "School Crisis Intervention - suggestions for cooperation between schools and the Hong Kong Police Negotiation Team". Copies of the article were distributed during the forum to the attendees and explained in detail.