In the theoretical part of the paper I describe the theory of counselling services. I especially focused on the collaboration between the teachers and counselling workers, on the preventive and crisis models and on what benefits social work can attribute to the schools’ counselling services. In the empirical part I presented my research. It consisted of a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods. I conducted 5 interviews with counsel workers in a primary school, an interview with a social worker employed at a primary school with a special adjusted program, and 10 question polls with teachers. The results showed that these schools employ few or no social workers. Social work can greatly benefit counselling services, especially from a social problems’ perspective. The knowledge and skills of a social worker consist manly of empathy, accepting without judgment, acting “here and now” and collaboration with the family, teachers, and leaders where decisions and problem solving takes place. It is important to gain on competence especially in the field of pedagogics and working with special needs children. The counsel workers are trying to work mostly with the preventative model but sometimes this is not possible, especially in cases where they are overworked. The relationship between the counselling service and the teachers is seen as collaborative from the perspective of the first, and in most cases they do not view themselves as only a professional service, as it is their role to assist when trouble arises.
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