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School Social Work Now!
Supporting Innovative Practice,
Effective Leadership & Applied Research
May 2013 - Vol 3, Issue 34 |
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Greetings! | |
The hustle and bustle of the last few weeks of school is upon us. As you travel this stressful path, be sure to take time to treat yourself well. The students and staff need a healthy, resourceful support person during these intense last days of the year.
Save the date!! ACSSW is hosting a multi-professional Mental Health in Schools Institute in Milwaukee, WI, on September 30, 2013. Ten 3-hour seminars will focus on trauma, motivational interviewing, and ethics and boundaries in use of technology, to name a few of the exciting offerings. Designed for school social workers, this professional development program will also be open to all pupil service providers and community mental health providers. CEUs for social workers will be available. To learn more and to register, click here.
Help prevent cuts to IDEA's Personnel Preparation program. This program supports approximately 8,000 scholars per year across the nation, all of whom are preparing for a career dedicated to addressing the needs of children and youth with disabilities. As you know, the majority funding for this program goes directly to providing financial assistance to future special education teachers, specialized instructional support personnel (like school social workers!), administrators, researchers, and higher ed faculty, as one way to alleviate the shortages in these fields. The President's FY 2014 budget proposed to cut funding by $2.5 million.
Email Congress now. Use CEC's Legislative Action Center to send a personal letter. Tell your story--email your story and share how your preparation program made you a great special educator/school social worker!
Please keep promoting Mental Health Awareness. We can help to fight the stigma that many incur due to misinformation and fear. The new ACSSW Mental Health Awareness poster along with our Mental Health Awareness campaign materials can be downloaded for free. Green ribbon pins and the two pages of Talking Points sheets are available so, please contact us if you want to order. Wear the pins year round to promote student mental health!! If you can not get a pin, make green ribbons to wear.
Lastly, a gentle reminder to please complete the GLSEN study, below. Thanks!!
Judith Kullas Shine
President |
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Recommended Read for June | |
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
by Norman Doidge
An astonishing new science called "neuroplasticity" is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. In this revolutionary look at the brain, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D., provides an introduction to both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they've transformed. For school social workers, this raises interesting issues for students with learning problems.
"Only a few decades ago, scientists considered the brain to be fixed or 'hardwired' and considered most forms of brain damage, therefore, to be incurable. Dr. Doidge, an eminent psychiatrist and researcher, was struck by how his patients' own transformations belied this and set out to explore the new science of neuroplasticity by interviewing both scientific pioneers in neuroscience, and patients who have benefited from neurorehabilitation. Here he describes in fascinating personal narratives how the brain, far from being fixed, has remarkable powers of changing its own structure and compensating for even the most challenging neurological conditions. Doidge's book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain." - Oliver Sack, MD
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Come on . . . Follow Us!! | |
Social media has become one of the prmary ways to communicate and advertise widely. Please help ACSSW to
become more widely known. Click on one or more of the links below and tell your friends about us. Thanks!!
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Practice Points | |
Measures for Screening, Assessment, and Evaluating Practice
Being able to objectively justify our choice of interventions and quantitatively demonstrate their effectiveness is becoming increasingly dire as resources available to schools are constantly being stretched. In addition to establishing job security, social workers are ethically compelled to monitor and evaluate policies, the implementation of programs, and practice interventions (NASW Code of Ethics 5.02a). [This non-exhaustive] list of resources to screening, assessment, and evaluation of practice instruments [may be of interest]. Some of the resources are measurements that are free of cost and other resources are links to compendiums of measurements with reviews. Access here.
There is an overrepresentation of African American students in special education. Research on this phenomenon has primarily focused on educators within schools. School social workers are in unique positions to impact the disproportionality. Patricia Collins' Domains-of-Power Framework is used to demonstrate how school social workers can practice transformational resistance to eliminate the overrepresentation of African American students in special education. School social workers should: 1) attend IEP meetings and conduct home visits and biopsychosocial evaluations with students who are being assessed for special education services, 2) offer to evaluate and conduct home visits with students whom teachers deem to be "at-risk" to prevent inappropriate assessments for special education, 3) create a school culture of acceptance of difference, and 4) ask themselves how they individually foster racial domination or emancipation in their daily actions. Full article.
The tears still come when Celeste Peterson looks back--and even when she doesn't--to the day six years ago when her daughter was killed in the nation's deadliest school shooting: the massacre at Virginia Tech. A former high school varsity basketball player and team captain, 18-year-old Erin Peterson was a daddy's girl and the light of her mother's life. . .
These tears, like those shed by the parents, children, siblings, and friends of the victims of a sorrowful succession of mass shootings and the recent attacks in Boston-the tears we see with shocking frequency on the nightly news and those we may shed ourselves in empathy--reveal the lie that grief, and particularly traumatic grief, follows a specific course and resolves at a predictable point--or that it resolves at all. As Mila Ruiz Tecala, LICSW, an authority on grief, says, "The word 'closure' was invented by the media. There is no such thing."
But there is healing--and healing again after wounds reopen--as they often do for the loved ones of the victims of mass violence. Social workers can play a significant role in facilitating that healing. More. |
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Leadership News | 
In everyday colloquial usage, leader is typically used as a synonym for top manager, as in in, "Our leaders will never go for that" or "All change starts with the leadership." This way of thinking poses at least two problems.
The first is evident when someone says, "Great idea. But what do the leaders think?" This question (and the assumption behind it) is disrespectful and disempowering to everyone in the organization who is not a top manager. It constrains innovative thinking and actions.
The second problem is more subtle: if leadership is defined as top management, then it has no real definition at all. Having two terms to describe the same thing means that one is redundant. But there are few other working definitions that would be widely agreed on. This is why even after organizations decentralize decision making, people still tend to speak of leaders as "the people at the top." This confusion affects every aspect of organizational practice, including the development of future leaders. Read more.
The Leadership of Profound Change
Faced with the practical needs for significant change, we opt for the hero-leader rather than eliciting and developing leadership capacity throughout the organization. A new hero-CEO arrives to pump new life into the organization's suffering fortunes. Typically, today, the new leader cuts costs (and usuallypeople) and boosts productivity and profit. But the improvements do not last. Many of the leader's grand strategies never get implemented; instead, people cling to habitual ways of doing things. New ideas do not spring forth from people at the front lines because they are too intimidated to stick theirnecks out. Energies are not released to create new products or new ways to meet customer needs because people are too busy competing with one another to please their bosses. Sooner or later, new crises ensue, giving rise to the search for new hero-leaders. Continue. |
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Research Highlights |
For the purposes of this volume, research is defined as the systematic application of empirical methods in social work practice for describing worker interventions in scientific terminology. This all-encompassing definition includes interventions applied to individuals, groups, communities, organizations, and societies as a whole. Although few would argue the worthiness of this goal, the functions research should serve in social work practice must be put into proper perspective. The global assumption is that research will be the salvation of social work practice only if more of it is done and done well. The thesis of this volume is that certain ideas pertaining to research are dysfunctional and go beyond the scope of what is worthy of the investment. For example, the question of whether social work is effective, which has occupied the time of many researchers and practitioners for the past four decades, cannot be properly determined through evaluative research (Dean & Reinherz, 1986; Kazdin, 1981; Proctor, 1990; Wodarski, 1981). The question is too general; it is not formulated in terms that are observable and measureable, and, thus, the question is as inappropriate as asking whether the social work profession is relevant to society. The complex question for the evaluation of social work practice consists of six components: client characteristics, worker characteristics, intervention strategies, contextual variables, treatment duration, and relapse-prevention procedures. The guiding questions for evidence-based practitioners are whether these variables lead to positive, sustainable change for clients and how they contribute to change. Read more.
The Effectiveness of School Mental Health Services: Research, Data and References
School social workers provide direct mental health services to students, including one to one counseling, group work, classroom presentations, crisis intervention, and assessment. School social workers work as part of a multidisciplinary team in providing special education services and determining eligibility for special education and related services. they work closely with other school personnel and consult with individual teachers and groups of teachers on issues related to behavior management, classroom management, and special concerns about individual students. Read about research in school social work and related professions. Click here. |
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In the News | |
The Lessons of No Child Left Behind
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) introduced the first nationwide annual standardized testing requirement for students in grades 3 through 8. The law officially expired in 2007, and there is little or no legislative momentum to reauthorize it now. Should NCLB be thought of as a well-intentioned initiative that failed? Or did it make some progress in its stated goal of improving academic achievement, particularly for disadvantaged students? This paper reviews the basic structure of the school incentives introduced by NCLB, as well as research and data from North Carolina public schools on the effect of these various sanctions on student learning. Learn more.
Preventing School Violence: A Sustainable Approach
When it comes to protecting students from violence, it's not enough to focus only on security measures, such as hiring security guards, locking doors, or developing emergency plans, said Michelle Bechard, lead public health advisor in the Mental Health Promotion Branch of SAMHSA's Center for Mental Health Services. What's needed, she said, is involvement by the whole community - school personnel, law enforcement, the mental health system, community-based organizations, families, and young people themselves.
Multiple levels of involvement and partnership are what the Safe Schools/Healtlhy Students (SS/HS) program is all about. Launched in 1999 by the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, and Justice, the program aims to promote safe school environments, healthy childhood development, and mental health and prevent substance use in the nation's schools. As a result, each community develops a comprehensive plan that addresses five key elements. Continue here.
Public Spending Per Student Drops
U.S. public-education spending per student fell in 2011 for the first time in more than three decades, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data issued Tuesday. Spending for elementary and high schools across the 50 states and Washington, D.C. averaged $10,560 per pupil in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011. That was down 0.4% from 2010, the first drop since the bureau began collecting the data on an annual basis in 1977, the agency said Tuesday. However, when you adjust the figures for inflation, this isn't the first drop on record. By that measure, spending per pupil dropped once in 1995 and hit its highest level in 2009. In inflation-adjusted terms, spending per pupil was down 4% in 2011 from the peak. Read article. Census Bureau Report.
Tennessee Allows Trained Persons to Have Guns in School
Gov. Bill Haslam has signed a bill that allows school districts to let people with police training be armed in schools. The measure passed in the House 82-15 and was approved 27-6 in the Senate. The measure allows schools to hire retired law enforcement officers after they meet certain requirements, such as completing a 40-hour school security course. The legislation makes information about which teachers are armed or which schools allow the guns confidential to anyone but law enforcement. More.
Good News for NOLA
"Our students in New Orleans are rapidly closing the achievement gap," Recovery School District Superintendent Patrick Dobard said in a phone call with journalists. The Recovery School District took over New Orleans' worst schools -- about three-quarters of the total -- after Hurricane Katrina. In 2008, only 28 percent of its students at all grade levels scored at basic or above on LEAP and iLEAP. Officials are likely to seize upon the latest RSD results to improve the district's image as it takes over more public schools outside of New Orleans. Access article here. |
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Survey Completion Requests |
Supporting Safe & Healthy Schools: A National Survey of School Counselors, Psychologists, and Social Workers
ACSSW is collaborating with GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) and other prominent national education organizations on a research study of school social workers, counselors, and psychologists, and their roles in creating safe and affirming learning environments for our nation's youth. Your participation in this survey can provide us with the tools to advocate for safer schools, strengthen school-based health and mental health services, and raise awareness to the important role that social workers play in students' healthy development.
If you are currently employed as a school social worker working with middle and/or high school students, please share your perspectives and experiences with us. You work with students each day who may benefit from the results of this survey! While this is a very busy time of year for school social workers, please carve out a few minutes to help us gather this important information. Survey participation is completely voluntary, and should only take about 20 minutes of your time. Be assured that your participation is confidential. Access survey and scroll to bottom of page to begin.
Smith College Study on SSW Practice
Sarah Wettenstein, a student at Smith College School for Social Work in Northampton, MA, is conducting a research study about how school social workers practice and the different types of interventions they use. In particular, she is interested in looking at the barriers to participation in different kinds of school social work practice.
This is yet another opportunity to inform the school social work and related educational communities about the profession! It costs nothing but your time--which often is in short supply. But original research about what we do and how we do it is so very important. Please assist in this research by learning about the project or, for more information, email Sarah or call 860-604-1204. |
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Webinars | |
Archived
Creating Trauma Sensitive Schools
In collaboration with the IDEA Partnership, the Quality and Evidence Base Practice (QEBP) Practice Group hosted a webinar on Wednesday April 17, 2013 titled "Creating Trauma Sensitive Schools" that featured two presentations. The first presentation featured Nic Dibble from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction who shared how Wisconsin is building on existing mental health initiatives to use a Response to Intervention (RtI) framework to help schools support students affected by trauma. Mr. Dibble shared resources including Wisconsin's toolkit for schools, links to publications and websites that describe how schools can become more trauma-informed, and specific strategies schools can adopt to be more trauma-sensitive. The second presentation featured Erin Butts from the University of Montana Institute for Educational Research and Service who discussed secondary traumatic stress (STS), burnout, and self-care. She identified STS signs and symptoms, discussed their significance, and provided recommendations for self-care. Her presentation included an interactive exercise that can be used during stressful situations. The webinar recording as well as the powerpoint. Please note that the webinar recording started a few minutes late so the introduction and first few slides were not audio recorded. The PowerPoint slides include the entire presentation. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Comprehensive School Mental Health: A Partnership Among Families, Schools, and Communities (A PDF)
In a webinar sponsored by the Maryland Coalition of Families for Children's Mental Health (MCF), CSMH Co-Directors Nancy Lever, Ph.D and Sharon Hoover Stephan, Ph.D. hosted a webinar titled Comprehensive School Mental Health: A partnership among families, schools, and communities on March 11, 2013. Since 1995, the National Center for School Mental Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine has been working to promote successful policies and programs to advance school mental health in the United States. The recent school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut has heightened the nation's awareness of the vulnerability of our children and communities to violent actions. However, it is important that we not respond by merely addressing security in schools. Rather, we must attend to comprehensive school mental health - promoting students' social-emotional learning, mental health and positive school climate; early screening and identification of youth mental health concerns; and effective school-based prevention and intervention. In this webinar, presenters discussed what comprehensive school mental health is and the role of families and schools in their partnership to address children's mental health. PDF here.
Free Podcast
Memories and experiences from childhood can have good and bad long-term effects on a person's physical and emotional well-being. A recent CDC study in five states found that more than half of respondents reported some type of adverse childhood experience that continues to affect them today. In this podcast, Dr. Valerie Edwards discusses the lingering effects of adverse childhood experiences. Access here. |
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Grants & Funding | |
Champion Creatively Alive Children
Crayola Creative Leadership Grants 2013
Crayola, in collaboration with the National Association of Elementary School Principals, is accepting applications for the 2013 Creative Leadership Grant program. The program will award up to twenty grants of $2,500 to elementary schools working to develop a team of leaders who can help increase arts-infused education within school and beyond. In addition, each program will receive an in-kind grant of Crayola products valued at $1,000.
Applications will only be accepted from principals who are members of NAESP. Every school that submits an application by June 10 will receive a Crayola product Classpack. Click to access application. Deadline: June 21, 2013. |
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SSW Job Links |
Colorado Springs, CO Coney Island, NY Cumberland, RI Danbury, CT Denver, CO Des Plaines, IL Elmhurst, IL Fayetteville, NC Flint, MI Fort Lee, NJ Henrico, VA Johnston, IA Libertyville, IL anticipated Little Canada, MN Mankato, MN
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ACSSW Activities | |
ACSSW's present activities include:
- supporting research projects and their application within the school environment;
- developing a national school social work role framework paper;
- establishing a National Center for School Social Work Practice, Leadership and Research, a long-term goal,
- designing professional development opportunities that address current issues and real job challenges. Watch for details to come.
- staying on top of national educational reforms and trends.
If you have interest in participating in any of these activities, contact Judie Shine. ACSSW strives to be inclusive and transparent in all of its activities and welcomes, whether lengthy or short, the participation of its members. |
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