Time to Move School Social Work to Proactive Services for Students

Introduction

Through the expansion of trauma research and potential manifestations that can affect individuals, families, and communities, more schools are moving to a trauma-informed model in how they interact with students scholastically and behaviorally. This constitutes a system-wide, educational organization dedicating itself to providing a holistic approach to students to ensure optimal scholastic results. Education has long recognized that dynamics outside of the educational settings can significantly affect a student’s academic pursuits, both in positive and negative ways (Baez et al., 2019; Boatwright & Midcalf, 2019; Gherardi & Whittlesey-Jerome, 2018; Herrenkohl et al., 2019; Naik, 2019; Prothero, 2020; Shultz, 2020). Therefore, with the surge of information concerning the negative effects of childhood trauma, school administrators, staff, and teachers find themselves providing a significant increase of social services to their student population. In doing so, school personnel are seeing positive ramifications in educational outcomes (Ball & Skrzypek, 2020; Teasley, 2018; Weber et al., 2017), but also realizing that overworked school staff struggle with a lack of training, time, and resources to provide the trauma-informed services required. Fortunately, there is a group of underutilized professionals that can significantly assist schools with their mission to be trauma-informed and benefit students and families with new skills to approach life challenges: School Social Workers (SSW).

The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with a call to action for schools to use SSW more effectively in their pursuit of providing trauma-informed services to the educational community. The chapter is centered on educational systems in the United States of America, but concepts may be applicable in other countries. The chapter will begin with a discussion of the commonality of trauma and aftermath that can create physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral challenges that could interfere with a student’s educational career. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study will be discussed, concerning Felitti et al.’s (1998) discovery of high correlations between experienced childhood trauma and future negative medical and social problems. Additionally, the chapter will provide an explanation of the possible neurological changes that can result from childhood trauma and lead to challenging behavioral presentations in the classroom.

The chapter will also discuss the movement of more schools to become trauma-informed and what this means for school administrators, educators, and school staff. Educators understand the correlation between life difficulties of students and spillover of negative behaviors in the classroom, however, most educators have neither the training, nor class time to address the mental health needs of students. SSW, however, are uniquely trained to provide individual, group, family, classroom, and community services to support the trauma-informed mission. Unfortunately, there are barriers to schools using SSW as frontline staff for trauma-informed services, such as (a) not enough SSW to provide for the demand; (b) not enough money in school budgets to hire the proper SSW to student ratio; and (c) not enough time in the classroom or SSW’s schedule to provide proactive, school-wide trauma-informed services.

Additionally, the chapter will discuss the timeliness of trauma-informed schools and services in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the blanket of trauma that students, educators, and families have experienced since the beginning of 2020. Trauma-informed care is a proactive approach to help students who have already been touched by traumatic events. However, a goal of trauma-informed initiatives is to also present students with proactive techniques to increase resiliency and coping skills. This produces students who are equipped to handle stress and future difficulties more effectively across their lifespans. Research indicates that proactive services are more efficient at addressing social problems (Segal et al., 2018), which can benefit students long after they leave educational institutions for adult life.

Lastly, the chapter will discuss possible innovative methods for addressing the barriers to obtaining SSW and providing the level of trauma-informed services, including methods of hiring and sustaining SSW in school districts, new and creative funding opportunities, and use of scheduled and spontaneous opportunities to provide trauma-informed growth techniques and coping skills to students.