Ekaterine Dgebuadze, First Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Georgia held a working meeting with social workers of the education system, where the parties summarized the results of the two-month activities of social workers at schools and discussed the challenges and achievements during the process. Nino Shatberashvili, Deputy Head of the Resource Officer Service of the educational institution took part in the meeting.

Ekaterine Dgebuadze informed the guests about the future plans and measures to be taken by the guests in terms of providing a favorable working environment for social workers in schools. The participants of the meeting, in turn, shared their experience of working with adults.

As the First Deputy Minister noted, supporting the students and providing them with a healthy educational environment is the main priority of the Ministry and in this regard, it is of paramount importance to enhance the social component at school.

It should be noted that the emergence of social workers in the education system helps to eliminate the factors hindering the involvement of children in the educational process. This is evidenced by the fact that, according to the latest data, the number of adolescents left out of school has decreased by 34%, which is a large share of the intensive work of social workers with beneficiaries.

In order to provide psycho-emotional and social support to students and their families, as well as the return of out-of-school children to the education system, social workers have emerged in the education system since April 2021. Currently, the psycho-social service centres of the Resource Officer Service are active in: Tbilisi, Kakheti, Kvemo Kartli, Adjara-Guria, Imereti and Racha-Lechkhumi, and employ about 50 social workers and their number will increase from next year. Finally, the centres of all regions of Georgia will have a social worker who will provide appropriate social services to adolescents and their parents.