Society

Casey ‘the punisher’ Heynes video highlights need for more chaplains

The rise of a year 10 student to worldwide internet stardom for all the wrong reasons stresses the importance and need for more, better resourced school chaplains throughout the country, not less.

Year 10 student, Casey ‘the Punisher’ Heynes, rose to stardom when a group of bullies were filming their handy work and Casey retaliated with a swift and powerful move that would have made any WWE wrestler proud.

The bullies’ footage is confronting, but leaves the viewer (perversely) satisfied with the outcome.

Sadly, this incident is not rare, the school system in Australia has failed to stem the rise of bullying, and the affect on children is devastating and long lasting.

In Australia, it is sickening to observe that suicide following instances of bullying is becoming common in our school system and until recently little has been done to stamp it out.

This is why the National School Chaplaincy Program must not only be retained, but also widened to include every school in the country.

School chaplains play a vital role in identifying and supporting students who are facing the daily hurt, loneliness and perceived worthlessness that comes from the sharp end of bullying.

This aspect of the chaplains daily work in schools has become so important that state governments have called on chaplains to implement their bullying programs on their behalf.

Scripture Union Queensland, Australia’s largest supplier of school chaplains, has also designed programs to identify and support at risk students.

The reason for the success of these programs demonstrates why the atheists and psychologists have it so wrong in this debate: it is the relationship between the chaplain and the student that is makes the difference.

Scripture Union and other providers have decades of experience in providing these sorts of services in schools and they know how to build grass roots relationships with the teachers and the students.

These very real relationships allow the chaplains to identify bullying and work to support both the victim and the bully through referral to the appropriate professionals.

The constant demonising of chaplains by the atheists and psychologists has the potential to undermine these relationships without any regard for students needing to access their services.

Even more concerning is that this undermining is happening while the atheists and psychologists know they are completely inadequate to build those relationships themselves.

Clearly, any right minded person would have to recognise that the solution to this, and many other social issues in schools, will not be found through the criticism of the very people working at the coalface. Rather, a coordinated approach must be made that incorporates all service providers for the benefit of the students, teachers and society as a whole.

The federal government is currently reviewing the National Chaplaincy Program and has released a discussion paper. If you would like to access a copy of this discussion paper and formally respond to it you can do so by clicking here.

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