Psychological services delivered at school level play a significant role in the overall educational development and health of students. Across Australia, guidance and counselling services are currently in a state of flux, with reductions or redirections of services in most states. Some critical issues are raised in regard to present and future service provision for students, teachers and families. This paper presents a ‘case study’ of Victorian services, and an Australian ‘snapshot’ of existing school guidance services, as at April 1992.

Between the mid 1940's and the mid 1980's psychology, guidance and counselling services were established and rapidly expanded within Australian state departments of education. This occurred in a socio-political context where the values of social justice and concern for the disadvantaged were regarded as important by communities looking to governments to reflect these values through appropriate policies and programs. Since then a distinct change has occurred. Economic Rationalism and the move to greater school autonomy has led to the abandonment of central structures and centralised training that supported professional psychological services in schools. Schools increasingly will be expected to “buy in” contracted services as perceived needs arise. The resulting deprof essionalisation, whilst shared at this time by psychologists in other agencies, is particularly threatening in the case of school psychology. By destroying continuity of service and the possibilities of building of long-term relationships, it will reduce opportunities to initiate those school-wide initiatives that can maximise the impact of case work. The authors are of the view that, given the prevailing ideology, governments will persist in ridding themselves of responsibility and the expense of providing psychological and counselling services to school communities. At the same time information from principals suggests that schools' will find it difficult to afford these services from their limited global budgets, despite urgent and growing need for more, not less school-based support for teachers, students and parents. As a profession we must look to old and new models of service delivery and devise practical ways of providing cost-effective, equitable and high quality services to schools. This paper attempts to bring forward the issue as one for urgent debate and planning by our professional associations. Rather than let the profession wither away or end up providing services for the wealthy only, we must take action ourselves to see that it not only survives, but thrives. ( In this paper, the terms guidance officer, school counsellor and school psychologist are used as if they are interchangeable. The reason is that education departments around Australia use different names for those of their student support workers who have qualifications in education, psychology and counselling.)

Considerable interest has been shown in the teaching of decision-making skills to Australian adolescents during the past decade. Acceptable modes of teaching are currently being researched and refined. The experiences of one Victorian co-educational school as it grapples with this task are described. How the program is adapted and modified over a three-year period is detailed. Some encouraging findings in relation to teaching methodology, ‘at risk’ students and parent partnership are described, as well as future suggestions for program refinement. The value of multi-model evaluation is discussed as it relates to the various facets of the program.