School social workers help parents, students, and school staff identify needs that interfere with learning and work with students to get the services they need. Social Workers work with general and special education students and their families to resolve social, emotional and behavioral problems.
What a school social worker does:
- Work with ALL students to encourage a safe school climate
- Deliver classroom lessons to support the social-emotional learning of ALL children
- Facilitate small groups
- Meet individually with student to do brief, solution-focused counseling
- Help students who are struggling to make positive behavior choices.
- Collaborate with parents/guardians, teachers, support staff, and administration
- Maintain confidentiality of students and their families unless there is a need to know or a safety concern
- Provide education information about students' social-emotional needs
What a school social worker does not do:
- Work with only special ed., regular ed., or "problem" students.
- Meet individually with students to do long-term mental health counseling/therapy
- Facilitate therapy groups
- Assign grades after lessons or teach academic subjects
- Handle the discipline or assign consequences
- Tell teachers how to teach in their classrooms or tell parents how to parent at home