Duties
Position Objective
The school social worker will identify children in need of services and assess their needs. The social worker will utilize professional and personal skills to intervene with individuals or groups to ensure those needs are met. The school social worker will facilitate communication between school and home and will serve as a liaison between the school and home community.
Essential Functions:
- Serves on assigned schools’ RTI problem solving team
- Participates in the case study evaluation process by obtaining a social developmental study on each new referral (may be during a RTI problem solving meeting)
- Documents data obtained during the social developmental study to be included as part of the child’s record
- Participates with other members of District teams in the multidisciplinary conference and in writing the IEPs when appropriate
- Identifies children in need of services who require social work intervention
- Keeps sufficient records on student to provide on-going evaluation and targeting of specific problems
- Provides individual counseling to children and parents to assist them in solving social/emotional problems which prevent optimum school performance
- Provides supportive counseling to individual children to encourage development of more positive self-concept, appropriate goal-directed behavior and appropriate social interaction with children and adults
- Facilitates groups of children with similar concerns in order to provide a learning environment wherein the group members can enhance problem-solving skills and increase communication skills, while giving and receiving support from one another
- Organizes and facilitates topic-oriented groups for adults regarding parenting skills, needs of special education children and their parents and other group concerns
- Makes home visits to understand the family composition and the student within that context
- Shares knowledge of child development and methods of coping with student/family difficulties through contacts with families
- Facilitates referrals regarding family needs to existing community agencies
- Acts as communication link between school and home regarding aspects of the case study evaluation; supportive and education services available through school
- Acts as an advocate on behalf of families to assist parents and other family members in verbalizing their perspective or needs to educational or community agency professionals
- Participates in identifying and resolving problems between school and community
- Represents the school in social concerns of the community and communicates to the community school social work services
- Acts as a liaison between families, school, and community agencies
- Continues professional growth through reading, workshops and conferences and membership in professional organizations
- Keeps appraised of current rules and regulations in the areas of special education and social work. Understands public laws which affect education process
- Shares knowledge of school social work issues and services with other professionals by providing consultation and in-services to them
- Attends staff meetings and in-services at specified times
Additional Functions:
- Assists school personnel in recognizing unmet needs of students by providing consultation and/or in-service experiences to school personnel, parents and students
- Assists in developing resources to resolve problems and interface these with school and community needs