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School Social Work NOW!
Supporting Innovative Practice,
Effective Leadership, and Applied Research
Vol 4, Issue 35
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Many school social workers across the country soon will be welcoming new students from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, children who for the most part will be new to the customs, ways and language of the United States. About 2/3 of these children will qualify for international protection due to the violence in their home countries. While their status in the United States is being decided, they do qualify for educational services under federal law.
ACSSW has developed a list of potential resources to aid you in helping these young people. In your desire to help, please be cautious while you are being kind. The experiences these children may have had are difficult to envision. We cannot fully know their journeys nor their pain. We are, however, often happily surprised at the resilience of the human spirit even in the most dire circumstances.
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Only one more week! One more week to submit a Call for Proposals form for the 4th National School Mental Health Institute hosted by ACSSW in collaboration with Tulane University and Louisiana State University in beautiful New Orleans (NOLA). Save the dates: January 26-27, 2015.
You are strongly encouraged to consider submitting the form and sharing your wisdom, knowledge, and practice experience with your colleagues from across the country. Your wisdom, knowledge, and practice experience will enrich the learning of all attendees. You will be helping the profession to move forward!
Deadline for submission is August 15th. Don't delay! All submissions will be considered. Click here for form and more info. Early Registration is available.
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On October 6th, ACSSW will also be hosting its 2nd annual multidisciplinary, Wisconsin-based Mental Health in Schools Institute. Check out the WI Mental Health in Schools Brochure to view the topics which include: child maltreatment and related trauma treatment, anxiety and school refusal, boundaries/ethics and technology, Signs of Suicide Program, bullying prevention, assisting students in military families, managing conflict in the workplace, violence assessment, and more! Register today. Seating is limited.
President
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"There are many benefits of this activity: following rules, taking turns, impulse control, and learning how to work together. The activity also assesses dynamics of control, collaboration, and self-regulation. . . Creative activities that are mutually inclusive of all group or family members create less conflict, more cohesion, and, most importantly, more FUN!" Learn the technique.
Home visiting has a long legacy in social work (Beder, 1998; Hancock & Pelton, 1989). Social workers in many practice settings work with clients in their homes as part of a continuing social work trend of serving families in their community context. Home-based social work practice settings are many. They include early childhood intervention programs; school social work; placement prevention and family reunification programs in child welfare; community mental health services to children, adults, and their families; programs for court-involved youth; community support programs for older adults; adult protective services; and hospice care. Social work students may have field placements and early career social workers may find work in such settings, but without specialized training, these students and social workers may not be prepared for the special challenges of home-based work. This article provides background on home-based social work practice and focuses on teaching content, practice skills, and values related to home-based practice across the social work curriculum at both the baccalaureate and master's levels. The extended case example can be used with students to highlight multiple issues involved in serving clients in their homes. More.
. . .School social work is commonly regarded as an auxiliary service in the education sector. Rendering service in a "host" setting in which social work is not the dominant profession, practitioners may complain of feeling isolated and vulnerable when they are perceived as outsiders and when their work is under scrutiny by school personnel (Dupper, 2003; Harris & Franklin, 2004). They may encounter an "identity crisis": whether to be loyal to the school they serve or to the social work profession that is the source of their ethical beliefs and professional expertise. Role conflicts and power struggles may thus occur between workers and other staff (Lee, 1983; Rees, 1991). Unless practitioners can consolidate their position through political understanding and skills, as well as by strategically handling relationships with different parties, the objectives of empowerment are unlikely to be attained in a school setting. Full article. |
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Imagine that you're facing a really significant decision, which could fundamentally affect your personal life, or could determine the future of your business. Maybe you're thinking about "stretching your finances" to buy a bigger house. Or maybe you're thinking of launching a new product which you know could "cannibalize" existing sales.
Perhaps you've done the numbers, and these seem OK. But deep down, you dread what could go wrong. After all, no one has a foolproof vision of the future, and while you may have strong instincts as to how things may develop, any single projection of the future is clearly vulnerable to disruption by a range of different factors.
Scenario Analysis helps you bring these fears into the open and gives you a rational and professional framework for exploring them. Learn this strategy.
5 Types of Leaders: What's Your Management Style?
If you asked 10 entrepreneurs about which management style they found the most effective, you'd likely come back with 10 distinct answers, each as unique as the entrepreneur that provided them. While no one management style is ideal or applicable to every business, it's important to be mindful of what management style is used in yours. Identifying your management style means taking inventory of how you approach your business, especially in regards to employee interaction and crisis management. Knowing your management type can help you change it if necessary, as certain circumstances may call for such a shift. Five of the most common types of managers.
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The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has launched an online access tool of national data gathered from the "Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4: Report to Congress." The NIS-4 data, collected in 2005 and 2006 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, provide updated estimates of the number of children who are abused or neglected. NIS-4 data combine information about children whose incidence rates of maltreatment was investigated by child protective services with data on maltreated children identified by professionals. NIS-4 also provides information on the nature and severity of the maltreatment, as well as the characteristics of children, perpetrators, and families involved. More. Full report.
...A major component of the knowledge base necessary for urban school social work practice is an understanding of family history and cultural norms as fundamental components of assessing children's social and psychological development in the determination of special education placement (Allen-Meares et al., 2000). According to Frey's (2000) review of the literature, school social workers lack appropriate knowledge in this area, particularly in working with urban minority youth, because of inadequacies in social work education programs. Frey maintains that the curriculum in social work education programs places too much emphasis on the need for therapy and not enough emphasis on the need to understand cultural differences in behavior and the tendency for educators to misunderstand children of color. Study. |
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October 6, 2014
A multi-professional perspective
Pewaukee, WI
January 26-27, 2015
ACSSW National Institute on
Mental Health in Schools for School Social Workers
New Orleans, LA
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Recommended Read for August
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from the children's viewpoints...
Our New Home: Immigrant Children Speak
by Emily Hearn and Marywinn Milne
Our New Home is a collection of writings and drawings by children from around the world who have immigrated to Canada. The editors have divided the collection into four sections. They are: leaving their homelands, American differences, adjusting to a new culture, problems they experience, and their feelings about different topics. The children are from many different countries such as China, India, Argentina, Germany, Pakistan, Russia, Vietnam, and many more. Their words and pictures show their excitement, fears, and challenges about moving to a new country.
 Making It Home: Real Life Stories from Children Forced to Flee
by Beverley Naidoo
"We took flight from the war a long time ago. . . . Nobody tells me why. . . .We saw lots of people dying and houses burning down." Displaced by war, children from Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo, Liberia, Sudan, and Burundi talk about the horror left behind, the family separation, and the struggle to adjust to a new place, whether as a refugee in a camp or as an asylum seeker in the U.S. Their first-person accounts, many with full-color photos, have been collected by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which runs programs to aid war-traumatized children, and anonymous writers supply short introductions to each war zone. Many of the kids' voices sound the same, and there's too much politics for one small book. But the aching personal details will grab readers, as will the global connections. As Beverly Naidoo points out in her foreword, these stories challenge the racism against today's asylum seekers."
Living As a Refugee in America: Mohammed's  Story (Children in Crisis) by Helen Howard
Now in an American high school, Mohammed, 15, tells the story of how he fled the Taliban in Afghanistan and wandered through Iran and Turkey before coming to the U.S. with his mother, brother and sister. Living as a Refugee in America weaves Mohammed's story with facts about Afghanistan's recent history and discusses the plight of refugees driven by war and famine across the world. The moving first person narrative, printed in italics, features full-color, captioned photos of Mohammed, his family and friends. It also discusses issues such as discrimination, cultural barriers and maintaining dual identity.
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Free 1.5 CEUs for School Social Workers
ACSSW is very pleased to offer an opportunity for any school social worker to earn 1.5 FREE CEUs due to ACSSW's sponsorship of an excellent program:
Plan, Prepare, Prevent: The SOS Online
Gatekeeper Training Module
The SOS Signs of Suicide® Prevention Program is an award winning, nationally recognized program designed for middle and high school-age students. The program teaches students how to identify the symptoms of depression and suicidality in themselves or their friends, and encourages help-seeking through the use of the ACT® technique (Acknowledge, Care, Tell). This course is available free to school social workers. With sponsorship from ACSSW, all learners will receive 1.5 contact hours upon completion. Click to Learn More. To register call 781-239-0071 or email SOS Registration and mention that you'd like to register.
Columbia University Teachers College Press published 4 guides geared to support teachers, administrators, student personnel staff, and parents. For a limited period, and as supplies last, TCP has agreed to provide FREE copies of the guides to social workers and educators working with military kids in schools including: teachers, school administrators, PPS workers, and military parents. School social workers should be aware of this wonderful, time-limited, FREE offer from TCP. Many school social workers will benefit from these guides.
The process is simple. Each individual desiring a free book would need to click on the link, select the type of book s/he desires, and fill out name, mailing address, etc. on the Qualtrix form after selecting the book desired. The book will be mailed in a few weeks.
Helping Traumatized Children Learn, vol. 1 & 2, are available for purchase or free download on the website. Click here to learn more about this.
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School Social Work Positions
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Continued - listed by state abbreviation
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Mt. Diablo, CA
Denver, CO
Connecticut (various)
Washington, DC
Savannah, GA
Chicago, IL
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Lewiston/Auburn, ME
Harper Woods, MI
Carson City, NV
Las Cruces, NM
Lancaster, PA
Ohio Univ Assist/Assoc/Full Prof-Athens, OH
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Bluffton, SC
Austin, TX
Georgetown,TX
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Schools across the USA are bracing for as many as 50,000 immigrant children who would start school this fall, most of them unaccompanied by their families.
"We haven't started school yet, so we are all just holding our breath to see what's going to come on the first day of school," says Caroline Woodason, assistant director of school support for Dalton Public Schools in Georgia.
Under federal law, all children are entitled to a free public education, regardless of their immigration status. It's nothing new for public schools to serve immigrant students. But Francisco Negron, general counsel for the National School Board Association, says, "One of the challenges here, though, is the large number of unaccompanied minors...This is a whole new wave of immigrant students that are coming without any guardians whatsoever," Negron says. Continue.
from Opportunity/Action
Billions Behind: New York State Continues to Violate Students' Constitutional Rights
"New York state's public schools have suffered devastating budget cuts over the past several years. As is so often the case around the country, the burden is overwhelmingly placed on the students and communities who most need support. The details of this tragedy are described in a new report released today by the Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) in partnership with Opportunity Action. Billions Behind: New York State Continues to Violate Students' Constitutional Rights does more than illuminate the problem: it also lays out solutions to New York's school funding crisis. There is a way to more equitably distribute school aid across the state - it's a formula called Foundation Aid - but seven years after its unveiling, policymakers in Albany have still refused to fully fund it." Full report. |
Archived
The CSMH and the IDEA Partnership presented a webinar, School Mental Health: A Federal Perspective, on January 30, 2014. Following the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, the President put forward a number of initiatives aimed at making schools and communities safer and to increase access to mental health services in his plan, Now is the Time. As he said, "We won't be able to stop every violent act, but if there is even one thing we can do to prevent any of these events, we have a deep obligation, all of us, to try." This webinar provided an overview of federal efforts that have already been put in place, as well as those that have been proposed for the upcoming years. Presenters David Esquith, Director for the Office of Safe and Healthy Students (OSHS) Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE), U.S. Department of Education, and Ingrid Donato, Branch Chief, Mental Health Promotion, Center for Mental Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), provided participants with information about other existing federal initiatives to prevent youth violence and promote positive student outcomes. Strategies that support students, schools, and communities as well as the importance of cross-system partnerships were highlighted. The webinar recording is available as well as the PowerPoint. Access here.
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Grants of up to $500 are available for "innovative programs, events, or projects" from the Meemic Foundation. Apply online using their easy application that takes less than 30 minutes to complete. These grants are open to any employee of a K-12 public or private school. Universities and colleges may also apply. Fill-in-the-blank application.
Grants are accepted year round, but the third quarter cycle ($500 max per grant) ends September 30. Funds will be available in mid-November.
The foundation says it supports "basically anything that supports teachers and enhances the student's educational experience" - from field trips to books to behavior modification programs; science, music, or art equipment to professional development.
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