School Social Work in Geesthacht: 2025 Annual Report - Violence, Space Shortage and Overwhelmed Children

At Otto-Hahn-Gymnasium, students come for counseling not because of poor grades, but with social phobias and depressive episodes. The range of what social workers encounter there daily is enormous. These are no longer exceptions. This is everyday life. Anyone who needs a therapy appointment waits months. Not weeks. Months! During this time, social workers try to fill the gap. They give young people tools to stabilize their own mental health. Mindfulness. Self-care. What they have. It is not enough, and they know it. For the future, the report at OHG forecasts a further increase, which is why stress management, resilience promotion and early detection of stress are classified as indispensable.

At Alfred-Nobel-Schule, performance pressure is the most common trigger for mental health crises. Children who are afraid of not passing their exams. Who consider themselves not good enough. Fear of failure, exam stress, deep self-doubt, a shattered sense of self-worth – these are the terms that appear in the report. Social work works intensively in individual sessions on relief strategies, realistic goals and the strengthening of personal resources. But the pressure comes from outside, and it does not stop.

At Bertha-von-Suttner-Schule, school social work reports self-harming behavior. Young people lack basic strategies for coping with stress. Difficulties in emotional regulation cause suffering. The specialists offer so-called "anger workouts" – structured physical exercises as an outlet, as an alternative to self-harm. And the older students at BvS are no longer just asking which career to pursue. In view of the current political situation, they are asking whether there is any worthwhile future at all.

This is written in the report. Not as interpretation. As a finding.

And it has reached even primary schools. At the Grundschule in der Oberstadt, children no longer enjoy going to school. They actively avoid it. Drastic school aversion, general avoidance behavior – these are the formulations in the report. This is not defiance. This is a warning signal. Early psychological overwhelm right at the very start of the school system.

The report explicitly warns of a trend that experts call "parentification". It means: more and more children are taking on roles at home that belong to adults. They carry emotional burdens that their parents cannot or will not bear. They function outwardly, while breaking inwardly. Their own emotional development is massively left behind, which directly leads to insecurities in social behavior at school.

At Alfred-Nobel-Schule, children reported in counseling sessions about violence at home, emotional and physical burdens in the domestic environment. These experiences have a direct impact in the classroom: on concentration, on behavior, on the ability to learn.

Closely connected: emotional neglect. Several students said they had received almost no attention, affection or understanding at home. No adult who cared about them. No person to whom they could tell anything. This leads to profound feelings of loneliness and a strong desire for a reliable adult attachment figure. School social work tries to fill this gap through open counseling offers, helping to sort through feelings. But a social worker responsible for hundreds of children cannot be a mother or a father.

At Bertha-von-Suttner-Schule, conflicts in the parental home – particularly in separation situations – repeatedly come to the fore. In some cases, the general social services had to be called in, due to suspected endangerment of a child's welfare, due to suspected sexual abuse. These are not abstract terms. These are children in this city who were denied protection until someone looked. School social work had to act as a bridge to the support system in order to initiate protective measures.

And the parents themselves are at their limit. At Grundschule Oberstadt, parents openly admitted in conversations that they feel overwhelmed. That they no longer know how to meet the demands of raising children. This exhaustion transfers directly onto the children, in the form of school anxiety and withdrawal. School social work must increasingly act as a counseling authority, mediating support options and fostering understanding between home and school.

What the report writes about primary schools is difficult to read. At Buntenskampschule, the majority of the student body is barely capable of playing without physical confrontations, across all year groups. It starts as play – fighting, hitting, kicking as supposed fun – and ends in real, serious physical altercations.

At Waldschule the same picture. Break-time conflicts that escalate. "Gang war games" or simply teasing other children that rapidly turns bitter in earnest, because constructive solutions are simply absent. And then there is the most shocking passage in the entire report: children report that their own parents advised them to respond to conflicts with physical violence. Not as a last resort. As a first response.

At Silberbergschule, teachers name inadequate conflict resolution skills and violence as the primary problems. Getting along socially in groups is extremely difficult for many children. According to the report, the main cause lies in a lack of empathy and low self-confidence. At Buntenskampschule, conflict resolution sessions reveal: many children can neither perceive nor name their own feelings. This is not a trivial matter. Whoever does not know what they themselves feel cannot understand what another person feels. At OHG too, emotional competence is emphasized as an absolute prerequisite – without it, conflicts, performance pressure and bullying cannot be addressed. Training empathy is therefore a central component of prevention work.

Youth violence is so grave that the municipal youth welfare service has founded its own working group. This is a city-wide problem, not just a school one. And it will remain a key focus going forward.

One bright spot: At Alfred-Nobel-Schule, systematic countermeasures were taken. A risk and potential analysis produced a school-specific intervention guide with clear procedures, responsibilities and binding rules. In addition, a boxing project with an external trainer was carried out – not to make children into boxers, but to train respect, fairness and self-control, to make non-violent communication tangible. The result: in 2025, ANS had fewer violent incidents than in previous years. The school grounds felt calmer. It is possible. When you actually address it. At OHG and Silberbergschule too, the focus is on social training for non-violent communication and strengthening the class climate.

Overcrowded schools make burdened children even more burdened. This is not a hypothesis – it is the finding of the report. With the sharp rise in student numbers, pressure on schools is growing massively. Cramped conditions foster tense atmospheres and manifest directly in aggressive coping strategies, conflicts and rule violations.

At Waldschule, the rooms have reached their absolute limits. Classrooms so small that neither movement nor group work is possible. The only alternative space for the entire school is the assembly hall. Children who are emotionally unable to sit with the class all day have literally nowhere to go. Quiet retreat spaces are missing, and this directly limits the quality of social work.

At Buntenskampschule, a container complex was erected in autumn due to space shortage and the transition to an all-day school. The complex takes up almost the entire school yard. Play equipment: barely any left. Children lack space to move, to let off steam, to interact socially. The result: numerous break-time conflicts.

And then there is Bertha-von-Suttner-Schule. Since the fire in the science wing in October, there has been no normal school routine there. The school community is in a sustained crisis mode. Students alternate between homeschooling, a so-called "cube" container building, and a provisional self-learning center in a vacant care home. A different location every day. No fixed structures. No reliable daily routines. No stable attachment figures.

For children who are already struggling with disorientation, this is blow after blow. Social work records a rapid increase in exhaustion, lack of motivation and anxiety. Frustration tolerance drops, conflicts increase.

Particularly affected: the new fifth-graders. These children arrived at a new school in summer, barely had time to build stable relationships or settle into their new school environment – and then came the fire. Since then, they have had to start over socially again and again. A sense of belonging simply cannot develop this way.

Smartphones have reached primary school children. And with them, everything that comes along. At the Grundschule in der Oberstadt, school social work observes growing problems with media use and phone usage among children who are not even ten years old. As a countermeasure, workshops were introduced for fourth-grade classes, focusing on cyberbullying and the safe use of smartphones, social networks and online games. External alcohol and drug counseling additionally conducted special units on media and phone addiction. At Silberbergschule, conflicts around social media and the promotion of media literacy are established priorities in counseling work, especially in third and fourth grades.

At secondary schools the situation becomes more serious. At Bertha-von-Suttner-Schule, cybergrooming – the targeted, abusive online contact of adults with minors with sexual intent – is no longer an isolated case. It belongs to the recurring themes in individual casework. Cyberbullying as well. At OHG, students are grappling with the limits of digital media and artificial intelligence – not as an abstract question about the future, but as lived present reality.

The report formulates a clear mandate: media literacy must be expanded. Information offerings and targeted workshops on cyberbullying, data protection, fake news and the responsible use of social networks are urgently necessary to protect children from virtual exclusion, addictive behavior and digital dangers. This is not optional. It is obligatory.

To all social workers, teachers, educators, specialists and everyone who stands in this system every day and still does not give up: Thank you. Sincerely. From the bottom of my heart. You catch what we as a society let fall. You are there when no one else is. You read these reports, write these reports, live these reports. And you keep going. That deserves more than recognition. It deserves change.

Five thematic areas, any one of which would alone be cause for concern. Together, they paint the picture of a city whose schools have long since ceased to merely teach, but replace families, stand in for therapists and weave social safety nets that have been torn elsewhere. The challenges are no longer academic in nature. They are profound psychosocial crises that shape our children's everyday school lives.

There is further good news: Additional positions have been approved for 2026. Four new school social workers have taken up their posts at secondary schools. Two positions at BvS, one at OHG, one at ANS. The city of Geesthacht and its politicians have recognized the urgency. Those who worked alone are finally getting team structures. That is the right signal. It is not yet enough. But it is a start.

And there is a further approach that is at least being discussed: the introduction of a Class Zero, in which children would receive early support in language, social and motor skills – before they start school. No decision yet. Not yet. But at least a thought written into the report. A thought that shows at least some have understood where the problem begins.