According to a survey done on troubled youths, they run away either because feeling, anger or drug and alcohol abuse. When teens and teens get involved in substance abuse, they leave home to hide it so their parents don’t find out. Most troubled teens run away because it’s easier to live on their own than to live in a critical home.
The most important prevention from runaway is to equip teens with problem solving skills. Apart from that, we must give the troubled youths support to change themselves through peer counselling. It is where they share their unhappy moments at homes and learn ways to cope with stresses.
The most important thing the school can do is teach their students problem solving skills. Reward teens when they are able to solve the problem successfully. As much as possible, praise teenagers when they do something positive.
The more rebellious teenagers would rather attend peer counselling than adult counselling programme. Almost every youth dislike revealing any personal information to adults. They feel safer talking to people in the teenager years. Youth peers can understand better and relate their experience during the counselling.
These youth counsellors can come from various tertiary institutions in Singapore which offers volunteering programme to organise weekly mentorship to troubled youths. These youths can help can help their counterparts in several ways. The counsellors can help troubled youths to improve their academic grades and social behaviour through guidance and mentorship. This will help at-risk teenagers to learn from their older role models on how to be a responsible and resilient growing adult.
The group of youth counsellors can also include those teenagers who were once rebellious. In fact, more once-rebellious person should be invited over to schools or counselling centres to give a talk on becoming successful individual. This is to make the talk more convincing.
Finally, I hope that the Ministry Of Education (MOE) can bring peer counselling programme into realistic to help more at-risk youths to change their lifestyle.