The Changing Role of the School Social Worker

Patricia K. Bragdon,PhD.LCSW

What Is The Role of The School Social Worker?

“With apologies to Clarence Darrow, a social worker ‘must be prepared to be demanding, outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rouge, a renegade and a hated, isolated and lonely person....  Few love a spokesman for the despised and the damned.’  So what has really changed”?

“In my experience and observation, the "role" of the

SSW is a little diffuse and hard to define in a concise

statement. It seems the definition is more driven by

a school district's needs than it is a field with a

definitive specialty that the district then uses

accordingly.”

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) has established Standards for School Social Work Services that define school social work as:

“Social work services provided in the setting of an educational agency by credentialed school social workers. This specialty in social work is oriented toward helping students make satisfactory adjustments and coordinating and influencing the efforts of the school, the family, and the community to achieve this goal.”

The School Social Work Association of America (SSWAA) describes school social work as:

“a specialized area of practice within the broad field of the social work profession. School social workers bring unique knowledge and skills to the school system and the student services team. School Social Workers are instrumental in furthering the purpose of the schools: To provide a setting for teaching, learning, and for the attainment of competence and confidence. School social workers are hired by school districts to enhance the district's ability to meet its academic mission, especially where home, school and community collaboration is the key to achieving that mission.”

 

The National Alliance of Pupil Services Organizations(NAPSO) describes school social workers in this way:

“School social workers understand that many students face social, emotional, learning, cultural, and economic barriers, which must be addressed in order for these students to be successful in school.

The student outcomes related to school social work services are increased student achievement, safety, attendance, social-behavioral competency, and family and community involvement.

School social workers provide a wide range of services to students, including assessment and screening, individual and group counseling, crisis intervention, family support, advocacy, and classroom instruction.

In addition to serving students with disabilities, other student groups commonly served by school social workers are students experiencing violence and harassment, homeless students, pregnant and parenting students, truant students, students who are high-risk for dropping out of school, and students who are transitioning between school and treatment programs or the juvenile justice system.

School social workers network with community-based organizations to ensure that students and families access needed services.

They work closely with teachers and administrators to provide

consultation related to behavior and classroom management, mental health, child abuse and neglect, crisis response, truancy, family dynamics, community resources, and other special concerns that impact student learning.

School social workers seek to develop and implement new programs, resources and policies that will maximize students’ success in school.”

 

 The School Social Work Association of America

(SSWAA) recommends a 400:1 ratio. Realistically, the actual ratio should take

into account the range of services the school social worker is expected to deliver, as well as the targeted student population, e.g.,

poverty level.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), identifies an 800:1 student to school social worker ratio

We’ve Come A Long Way From Our Role As

“ Friendly Visitors”

OR

Have We?

What are our competing priorities?

How are schools and school social workers

adapting ?

To answer theses difficult questions, I  went to my social work colleague’s working in the field to get their feedback

The School Mental Health Project/ Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA.

Range of experience – up to 25 years

Sample = 175 Nationally  

“I think the pace has tripled… you better be prepared to do three things at once all day long.”

I would say that the biggest change is the expectations to be expert in behavior analysis and data collection.

We are often overwhelmed with paperwork, data collection and processing, and keeping our certificates up to date through professional development.”

Dramatic increase in students with developmental disabilities, especially Autism Spectrum Disorders.

As expectations increase the supports for professional staff have diminished, sad but true.

 

My role is taking a substantial shift from providing direct services to students and their families, as well as to school personnel, to being more of a trainer of just school personnel.

A trainer, I might add, of a program designed, as far as the district is concerned anyway, to specifically address behavior issues or potential behavior issues within the school system.

The social worker spends more time teaching staff how to address social-emotional issues

They are taken away from direct service provision, the factor behind the decision of many to pursue school social work as a career.

One of the biggest shifts I've seen in my job--as my current employer defines it anyway—is a move toward working more and more with teachers and school personnel and less with families.

The role of the school social worker is becoming much more research and consultation-based.

Increasing occurrence of behaviorally challenged students. This point involves another irony for me in the sense that many--not all, but many--of the behavior issues seen in school stem from problems in the home.

Many parents do not have the means to provide mental health services for their children and we are therefore seeing “sicker” students because of the lack of early intervention.

Due to the state of the economy, there is an ever-increasing number of homeless students and their families locally, as there is nationally. It's a challenge to serve this population with the limited resources available locally - and these students' homelessness can play a major role in whether they will be successful in school. 

My role has changed over the years in that as a school social worker I am expected to be even more versatile than in the past.  With budget cuts, more and more responsibility has been placed upon the school social worker.  In many respects, I am expected to be the “go to person” for any question or concern in the building and to nurture the overall mental health of the building.

My job responsibilities have changed greatly due to financial difficulties at our school district. This year I spend approximately 1.25 hours every day in the cafeteria for lunch room supervision. I feel as though the lunch room supervision directly conflicts with my ability to provide Social Work support.

I'm a disciplinarian in the cafeteria, but then need to work with

some of the same children in a therapeutic nature.

I'm taking advantage of the time I spend in the cafeteria, by trying to get to know the "lunch time system" as best possible.

The reality of financial difficulties in our district may override this conflict as we try to make it through these lean years.

I was recently laid off after working for 13 years as a school

social worker in the Long Beach Unified School District. The

Board of Education decided to abolish the position of school

social worker in the school district. Social workers with earlier

Pupil Personnel Services Credentials (PPSC) were able to

"bump" into school counselor jobs because their credential is

more general: It is a Basic PPSC rather than a PPSC with

authorizations in School Social Work and Child Welfare and

Attendance. This change in the PPSC took place somewhere

during the late 1980's.

One of the major trends we're seeing is the cut back of mental health services (delivered by Social Workers or Counselors) at the elementary level as school district budgets get tighter.

The loss of the specific title and role of School Social Worker as districts create generic positions like "Support Specialist.“

Maybe some priorities have changed due to budget pressures and the economy but school social workers (SSW) still are generally seen (here in the West v. East Coast) as marginalized/tolerated members of the education team as opposed to educational leaders.  We are still fighting for recognition and respectability. 

Additional changes:  Increasing demand for basic needs/resources due

to the economy and keeping up with changing resources & truancy difficulties.  figuring out how to keep up with and use

technology in our work; issues regarding social networking and technology that impact students and families-- Facebook, texting, cell phones issues that

spill over into the school.

mental health therapist medical social worker county resources specialist child protection investigator financial worker special education expert behavioral intervention specialist ELL advocate mediator mentor social skills instructor children's advocate police investigator undercover reporter family/community liaison sociology student 

There are several different priorities that a school social worker must have while working with students that vary state to state.

In Northern States, priorities were set valuing education and academia which produces less conflict.

In a Southern State, there are many responsibilities to focus on outside

of the student's learning environment.

I balance attendance, economic hardship, mental health concerns, Suicide prevention, health issues, personality and behavioral problems, bullying, academic success, and familial health.

With each one of these categories I am a counselor, a consultant, a resource manager and advocate. Therefore, not only are there conflicting priorities but also conflicting roles as a school social worker.

It's all about keeping perspective in an ever changing environment in order to best serve students and their families.

Great change in the duties of a school social worker depending on the area or school district they are employed in.  As a social worker in a urban setting, duties were primarily centered on residency checks and truancy issues.  However, as a rural school social worker duties involve more mental health treatment, behavioral intervention consultation, counseling and case management.

I have observed an increase in the number and severity of students facing personal mental health and behavioral issues.  Therefore, it is essential that social workers have a strong mental health knowledge. 

There is a lot of fear and misinformation surrounding immigration. In

some schools it affects 1/3 of the families. If I had time, I would use

the US Citizenship Department more with families, to do workshops

in schools etc. to disseminate the correct information. This would

help in many ways, including with the fraud that goes on with lying

attorneys who take advantage of this particular population. It is one

of the reasons why there are economic issues. They give their life

savings to an attorney who robs them blindly. (The government is

aware of it and prosecuting when they can.)

Being spread out over a high school, middle school, and elementary school each week does not lend itself well  to embedding social learning and wellness skill development in each school environment. 

I have become more active in grant writing to

work toward changing the infrastructure of student supports. 

Now, with RTI, the role of the social is changing significantly. We have to now be more like behavioral analysts in our approach with students, able to define the functions of behavior and develop appropriate interventions. I, for one, have not been trained as a behavioral technician although I have always used some behavioral modification techniques in my counseling with students.

Social workers definitely have to attend more meetings and be facilitators of the RTI, functional behavior assessment process for many students. This takes away, in my opinion, valuable time from the more in depth counseling  with students and families that we were able to do 5-10 years ago.

There is more and more pressure with NCLB to more directly "prove" how social workers raise academic achievement in students, especially since the social workers' positions are directly funded by Title 1 here. Much of this sentiment is fueled by school district budget constraints coupled with NCLB expectations  - i.e., should we replace social workers with staff who do more direct instruction?   And due to the state of the economy, I know that there is an ever-increasing number of homeless students and their families locally, as there is nationally. It's a challenge to serve this population with the limited resources available locally - and these students' homelessness can play a major role in whether they will be successful in school. 

Be prepared to: promote yourself from day one. Get familiar with the micro and macro politics.understand how to collect and

interpret qualitative and quantitative data that

demonstrates your effectiveness to your

administration, the district central office and

the board of education.

The Department of Public Instruction partners with the Wisconsin School Social Work Association to conduct a survey of school social workers every three years to determine what issues school social workers are addressing and what strategies and programs they are using to deal with these issues. By administering the survey over time, we are able to track changes in school social work practice that allows us to accurately describe the state of the profession in Wisconsin and plan professional development activities that will meet current needs.

  The seven services identified below have consistently been shown to

be most frequently provided on all four of the Wisconsin school social work surveys beginning in 1998, indicating a high degree of reliability. On average, Wisconsin school social workers report spending 44% of their time in the provision of special education services, i.e., referral, assessment, case management, IEP teams, related services identified on IEPs, consultation with teachers, work with families, and coordination with community-based services.

 

Consultation with teachers & administrators

Over 95% report engaging in this activity (at least) weekly.

Assessment, evaluation & screening

School social workers provide a wide range of assessment, evaluation and screening services. Over 85% of Wisconsin school social workers are involved in assessment and evaluation at least weekly.  

Counseling School social workers provide professional

counseling as a common strategy to address the social, emotional, behavioral, educational, economic, cultural, and mental health needs of students within the interconnecting environments of the student’s home, school and community. Over half of Wisconsin school social workers provide group counseling at least weekly and 85% provide individual counseling at least weekly.

 Casework/management 

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) has established Standards for School Social Work Services. Within that document, case management is defined as “organizing, coordinating, and sustaining activities and services designed to optimize the functioning of students and/or families.”

Many students experience barriers to learning that 1) involve circumstances outside of the school, or 2) require the cooperation of people or organizations outside of the school. School social workers regularly enter the greater community to engage families and representatives from community agencies, e.g., social services, juvenile justice, mental health, Birth-to-3, developmental disabilities, vocational rehabilitation. School social workers are familiar with family and community agency systems and are comfortable interacting with members of these systems on their “home turf” as a critical strategy to elicit support for students and the school.

   While crisis is typically considered a low-incident

phenomenon in schools, almost four out of five Wisconsin school social workers report (at least) weekly involvement in crisis intervention and coordination. This percentage is up over 10% since the original school social worker survey in the 1998-99 school year.

More than three out of four Wisconsin school social workers report (at least) weekly involvement in building consultation teams and almost two out of three report (at least) weekly involvement in pupil services teams.

LET’S NOT FORGET

These are times of opportunity for school social workers. We must remember that the training that we receive allows us to mediate and build bridges. We are listeners, we are systems specialists, we are able to be flexible in our approaches to problems and to identifying solutions….we are sounding boards, we are hopeful, we have witnessed changes that surprise us….and we know that all situations are unique, and the variety in our experiences allows us to be good resources for both families, schools, and communities.