School Social Workers Link Home, School and Community

SPS Updates

As students returned to school post-pandemic and experienced an unprecedented number of crises, school districts around the country did not—and in many cases, still do not—have a school social worker on staff, say Kashera Guy Robinson, DSW, LICSW, and Uraina L. Scott, DSW, LCSW. They authored an article in the latest Section Connection newsletter for NASW’s Specialty Practice Section on School Social Work.

“In fact, around the country, there are reportedly more than 10 million school-aged children attending schools that have no school social worker,” they wrote. “School districts that do have them usually expect them to make academic- and attendance-related activities their top priority—while also carrying the weight of responsibility on all student matters, whether they be mental, social or emotional.”

For districts that used special COVID-19 funding to hire social workers and other mental health professionals, the current worry centers on how these districts will continue to fund the positions after federal funding ran out at the end of the 2023-24 academic year. This concern is especially felt in urban communities and in work with marginalized populations.

“School social workers are the link between the home, the school and the community,” the authors say. “Outside of teachers, school social workers are one of the oldest groups of professionals working in schools.”

Robinson has been a school social worker in an urban/suburban school district near Atlanta for almost 20 years and is currently an assistant clinical professor of social work at Auburn University at Montgomery, Ala.

Scott is a school social worker for Atlanta Public Schools and has been an assistant professor of clinical practice in the University of Alabama’s School of Social Work program.

The authors note that school social workers provide counseling and crisis intervention services. One way to work effectively toward promoting the need for more school social workers is to start by connecting—both locally and nationally—with other school social work professionals.

“This can be done by joining and becoming actively involved with our professional organizations like NASW, the School Social Work Association of America (SSWAA), and the state organizations where we live and work,” they said.