Guidelines

The welcome period consists , for headteachers, of different actions :

• Creating a working group ( teachers, other actors involved in the school activity)
• Designing an annual plan of activities for new students, with clear and fixed rules
• Organizing an internal - relational and administrative - communication system ( see also step 3)

The welcome period lasts all the year round, so the headteacher needs to meet students, teachers and families when the problem is coming out: cooperation and quick information are of course required. In building the annual plan of activities, the headteacher will consider all possibilities, formal and informal, which can help identify and solve the problem. The headteacher cannot manage all the different aspects of students' risks: he needs to have a strong group to cooperate. One of the most important aims of the working group is to organize counseling actions, define when these actions can take place and how students in need of a counseling action can be identified. (Do we need to have different levels of counseling? Shall we start with a general action covering all students? And similar questions) The ways and the times of internal and external communication are also very important. Such aspects are specifically dealt with in step 3.