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NWSD brings in counsellors after shooting death

Nov 14, 2017 | 4:04 PM

The shooting death of 17-year-old Kegan McCallum has rocked the community of Meadow Lake and counselling is now available for his fellow classmates in the school division. 

McCallum was a student at Carpenter High School in Meadow Lake, and officials from Northwest School Division said counsellors are available to both students and staff at all city schools.

Jennifer Williamson, Superintendent of Students Services, said the division has a response team for traumatic incidents.

“Counsellors and additional support staff have been training in critical incident stress management (CISM)” she said. “Whenever there’s an incident that could impact our school community, our CISM is activated and made available to our school sites.”

The team can provide a general brief to students, and then one-on-one or small group counselling is provided to those in need of additional support.

“The division makes this team available based on student and staff need, and will have team members available on an as-needed basis for the rest of the time being,” Williamson said.

At the time of the interview, Williamson had just returned from Carpenter High School herself and said classes are running as per usual today with students and staff trying to stay to routines as best as possible. She said while she didn’t speak to students directly, she said it’s an emotional time.

“It is a close-knit community,” she said. “It affects all of our schools, students, staff, families, so whenever an incident happens like this the response is huge. Unfortunately, that’s what we train for when an incident occurs not if it occurs.”

 

kathy.gallant@jpbg.ca  

On Twitter @ReporterKath

-With files from Chris Vandenbreekel/650 CKOM