6 minute read
On The Frontlines
ON THE FRONTLINES
School placements offer changing landscape, growing edge for SSW interns
BY LAURIE LOISEL PHOTOS BY SHANA SURECK
Maggie Foster, A ’20, leads students in an activity about helping someone who is being bullied or harassed.
Maggie Foster, A ’20, leads students in an activity about helping someone who is being bullied or harassed.
No doubt about it, schools are a microcosm of the most pressing social issues in society— which makes them a crucible for the issues facing social workers. Schools are seeing skyrocketing rates of serious mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and suicidality among students. Those mental health challenges are exacerbated by stressors that include bullying, social media, the threat of school violence, and, in some schools, fear of family separations caused by immigration issues.
Meanwhile, startling research showing the impact of trauma on learning and brain development means more schools are searching for more effective ways to respond to the variety of traumas students bring into the classroom. NO
“Schools can no longer say it’s none of our business,” said Megan Harding, M.S.W., senior lecturer and chair of the SSW policy sequence. “Schools need to address the whole child now—while responding to the realities of their home and community contexts.”
All of these factors make schoolbased placements rich and unparalleled opportunities for Smith College School for Social Work students. Emerging social workers can hone skills in individual and family work while also navigating highly complex family and school systems.
RESPONDING TO SERIOUS CHALLENGES
Social work placements of the past tended to focus on working with identified students who often were on individualized education plans, consulting with teachers and minimal family work. Much of the clinical focus was on behavior management.
Those days are long gone. Schools— and, increasingly, social work interns within the schools—respond to serious mental health challenges in students and complex family problems. Students serve both as clinical individual and family therapists as well as case managers.
“Schools are the primary place where children are receiving mental health treatment in this country,” said SSW Director of Field Education Katelin Lewis-Kulin. “There aren’t those services available for families , so the school needs to meet the needs.” SSW alumni are seeing the increased stressors firsthand. Nichole Wofford, LMFT, LCSW, Ph.D. ’19, manages a centralized student support system in a large K-12 school district in Sacramento. She provides training and consultation to school social workers and manages a suicide risk assessment team.
Wofford said in the eight years in her position, she has never experienced the frequency of calls for student suicide risk assessments, nor has she seen the complexities of the problems facing the families of the students in need of services.
“We used to get single-issue referrals and now, every referral is multi-layered and complex,” she said. As staff, she noted, they work hard to meet the family’s needs because they see that as the very best way to support their students. “If we stabilize and support the parents and families, they, in turn, are going to be in a better position to support their children.” Melba Tatum, M.S.W. ’75, works at a school-based, independent clinic in a Houston public school system. She also reports increasingly high levels of serious mental health diagnoses among students seen by social workers in the nine clinics based in schools across the city.
SSW Senior Lecturer Megan Harding, M.S.W. (second from left) and Elise Boland, M.S.W. ’19 (second from right), meet with students and teachers at Amherst Pelham Regional High School as part of the BRYT (Bridge for Resilient Youth in Transition) program.
School-based clinicians, Tatum said, are working with much more intense caseloads than ever before, leading to the creation of navigator positions, whose role is to help families get their basic needs met. This allows Tatum and others in positions like hers to see students for individual psychotherapy, offer group therapy and develop relationships with families.
Both Tatum and Wofford said the issues facing parents and caregivers—which trickle down to impact their children—include economic stressors caused by unemployment, lack of health insurance and housing insecurity. In recent months, parents who are not documented have also faced very real threats of deportation. Another factor adding to the complexity of needs students exhibit today is technology, according to Wofford. “Social media has really changed the landscape and students are being bombarded with information 24/7, without the ability to process much of it.”
—MEGAN HARDING
Online engagement has raised the stakes in bullying situations, increasing the damage done to students who are targeted and causing hurt to the harm-doer. “Kids are being brutalized online and in person,” said Wofford.
Maggie Foster, A ’20, is hugged by students on the last day of her internship.
GROWING INTEREST, DIVERSITY IN SCHOOL PLACEMENTS
Among SSW students, there is a growing interest in school-based placements, with a corresponding expansion in the number and variety of placements.
“Schools are really at the forefront of developing and providing preventative services and crisis services, so really all levels of care to keep students living in their communities, in their homes and in schools,” said Lewis-Kulin. “Embedded in the role is case management, advocacy, group theory and anti-racism work.”
These are all central tenets of a SSW education.
This fall, 37 percent of first-year students are in school placements, compared to a rate of about 20 percent 10 years ago, according to data from the SSW Field Education Department. At the same time, a small but growing group of second-year students are asking to be placed in schools. This fall, 6 percent of the second-year class will be placed in school settings.
School-based placements are all over the country, in nine different states, including California, Colorado, Vermont and Massachusetts.
Erin Matthews, M.S.W. ’05, has worked as a school social worker in Chicago public schools for 12 years.
She believes her education at Smith and her school-based field placements fully prepared her for the work she is doing today in schools with student populations with high needs.
“I feel very fortunate to have that trauma lens that I came out of Smith with because if I didn’t have that, I wouldn’t understand there’s more underneath, driving the issues,” she said. “I’ve learned from being in the field that many people don’t have that lens, leading to misdiagnoses.”
Another lesson from Matthews’ time at Smith is seeing her students within their life context—and then advocating for systems change that might help them. Understanding the role that race, trauma, marginalization and microaggressions play in the lives of students gives a more accurate picture of the issues at play.
Director of Field Education Katelin Lewis-Kulin, M.S.W. ’00.
When it comes to systems-level work, Lewis-Kulin and Harding say school settings are full of learning opportunities, given that there are so many overlapping systems within a school district.
—KATELIN LEWIS-KULIN
Historically, school systems have not always been inviting of family engagement for a variety of complicated reasons. Social workers, with training in group dynamics and family systems, can work to help change those systems.
“Social workers are the key piece to that partnership. They have the family system training, and families don’t always feel welcome (in school),” said Lewis-Kulin. “I see social workers as a really key bridge.”
“It’s an incredible place to work on micro, mezzo and macro levels,” said Harding. “It takes a lot of skill to be a good school social worker.”
Meanwhile, Maggie Foster, A ’20, has every intention of being a school social worker after she graduates. At 22, she spent last year in a field placement at a charter school in Rhode Island, where she did individual therapy, group therapy and other interventions such as psychoeducational group work.
“I loved every minute of it,” she said. “Even when it’s really hard it feels really rewarding and important.” And because of the increased levels of mental health issues among students, she maintains that the role of a school social worker is more important than ever. “We’re seeing a movement in the field toward trauma-informed schools and education that has a lot to do with social workers in the schools,” said Foster. “I think what makes school social work so wonderful is the entwined nature of case management and clinical work.”
She intends to be a part of it. ◆
