Social worker

What can you contact the social worker for?

The social worker offers psycho social help, advice, support, problem clarification and emotional support. He can motivate you for counselling, referral and guidance to the right special and indicated care and institutions, and help you to make the right choices, to have (and keep) control over your own life. Think for example:

• Struggling with life between two cultures
• Problems with parents, caretakers, relationship partners or others, e.g. because of quarrels, threats, domestic violence or abuse.
• Addiction problems.
• Unintentional or unplanned pregnancy, you suddenly become a mother or your girlfriend is pregnant unplanned and what happens next?
• Unpleasant sexual experiences.
• Financial problems, debts, where to go for your specific question.
• Housing, in the sense of looking for, why is it not possible, what possibilities are there, so no mediation and housing.
• Sexuality and gender.
• Problems in identifying boundaries within a relationship or at work/traineeship/training.
• Lover boy issues, sexting, stalking, involuntary sex.
• Loss handling, e.g. difficulty coping with the death or absence of an important person.
• Domestic violence.
• Aggression problems, you quickly become angry and get into trouble again and again.

Make an appointment

Usually you will be referred to social work by the Dean of Students or the education coordinator. If so, you can send an e-mail to smw@tilburguniversity.edu to make an appointment.  You can also do this if you want to talk to the social worker directly.

Mention in your e-mail (briefly, no details) what you want to discuss. Also, mention if you have been referred by someone and if so, by whom.

The social worker Peter Ermen works for the university on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 8.30am - 2.30pm.

Follow-up

Depending on the nature of the request for help, there are a number of possibilities:

• Sometimes one-off advice and providing information is sufficient.
• A short, individual counselling program is also possible (an average of three interviews).
• It may also be necessary that a referral is made to other organizations, for more specialist or longer-term assistance. In some cases, you will also need a referral from your general practitioner or an indication from the municipality in which you live.

Costs

Interviews with the social worker are free of charge.

Privacy

The social worker works occupies an independent position.  The social worker follows the guidelines of the professional code of social work and thus follows the privacy AVG guidelines of the professional code of conduct. The social worker is SKJ (Stichting Kwaliteitsregister Jeugd) registered as a Youth and Family Professional.