School Social Work Current Practice and Research

CHILDREN'S ISSUES, LAWS AND PROGRAMS
SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK

CURRENT PRACTICE
AND RESEARCH
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CHILDREN'S ISSUES,
LAWS AND PROGRAMS
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EDUCATION IN A COMPETITIVE
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CHILDREN'S ISSUES, LAWS AND PROGRAMS
SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK

CURRENT PRACTICE
AND RESEARCH
WING HONG CHUI, Ph.D.

EDITOR
New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

School social work: current practice and research / editors, Wing Hong Chui, The University of Hong
Kong, Hong Kong.
pages cm.
Includes index.
ISBN: (eBook)
1. School social work. I. Chui, Wing Hong.
LB3013.4.S356 2013
371.4'6--dc23
2013022831
Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York

CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments vii

About the Contributors ix
Introduction and Overview xiii
Chapter 1 The Time Before Dawn – The Discursive
Nature of School Social Work Development in China 1
Charles Tong-lit Leung
Chapter 2 School Social Work Service in Hong Kong:
The Social Work Practitioner’s Perspective 23
Wing Hong Chui and Henry Wai-hang Ling
Chapter 3 School Dropouts and the Role of School Social Work
in Taiwan 39
Chu-li Julie Liu
Chapter 4 Violence Prevention in Victorian Government Schools:
The Complementary Role of School Social Work
in Australia 55
Linda Johannsen
Chapter 5 Applied Theatre: Applied Social Work in New Zealand 77
Peter O’Connor
vi Contents
Chapter 6 School Social Work in Canada: An Ontario

Perspective of Current Themes and Practice 93
Christine Bibby
Chapter 7 A Global View of School Social Work
in the United States 123
James C. Raines
Index 151
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My interest in school social work is closely related to my previous social

work training experience and my career as a youth social worker in Hong
Kong. Before qualifying as a registered social worker in Hong Kong, each
social work student is required to undertake several weeks of practicum in an
organization which delivers direct services to the needy and the disadvantaged.
I was, indeed, very lucky to be placed in a secondary school setting where I
provided individual or group counselling to students of that school. I still
remember that during recess and lunch time some wore a smiling face to talk
to me whereas others were coerced by their parents, teachers or principals to
consult me on several issues such as schooling, career planning, relationship
problems with peers and so forth. I must say that without having such a
wonderful experience as a student social worker, I would not have had the
persistence in producing this edited volume.
This edited volume had its origins in an international conference entitled
“The Fourth International Social Work in Schools Conference” in Auckland,
New Zealand in 2009. The conference provided school social work scholars,
researchers and practitioners around the world with an opportunity to explore
ways of improving outcomes for children and young people in schools by
promoting dialogues amongst those who are committed to school social work
and, most importantly, sharing best international practices. Subsequent to the
conference, I was in contact with participants who were willing to kindly
revise their papers and contribute to this collection.
This edited volume would not have been a reality without the support of
Mr. Frank Columbus of Nova Science Publishers, Inc., (New York). The
encouragement and confidence he has given us to this publication have been
most vital for completing this volume. We hope that this volume makes an
viii Wing Hong Chui
important contribution to an emerging literature on school social work, and

will open further critical debate and investigation for students and scholars
who have an interest in this topic.
Last but not least, I am grateful to all the contributors for their willingness
to play a part in putting together this edited volume, and of course, for their
excellent work. They have been very patient with me in order to see the
completion of this book project. I am also grateful to Dr. James Keezhangatte
who was with The University of Hong Kong, and is now in India, for his
constructive comments and support at the early stages of this book project.
Wing Hong Chui

April 2013
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Christine Bibby
Christine Bibby is a School Social Worker with the Grand Erie District
School Board, where she has been employed for 19 years. Receiving a
Bachelor’s of Social Work from King’s College, University of Western
Ontario, Christine also studied at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario where
she obtained a Master of Social Work Degree. Passion for school social work
also led Christine to being a representative on the School Social Work
Committee of the Ontario Association of Social Workers for eight years, most
recently as past chair. As part of the committee's work, Christine has promoted
collaboration between school social workers and the government ministry that
funds public education. With a keen interest in mental health, Christine
promotes awareness and collaboration around issues of youth, drugs and
mental health within the schools as well as the community. She has served on
several community boards for agencies promoting the wellness and safety of
the community. She is also a trained Fitness Instructor and offers wellness
workshops for young women. As a trained Applied Suicide Intervention Skills
Trainer, Christine provides workshops in schools to help prepare students and
staff for recognizing and responding to the issue of youth suicide risk.
E-mail address: christine.bibby@granderie.ca
Wing Hong Chui

Dr Wing Hong Chui is Associate Professor, Department of Social Work
and Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong. Prior to this, he was
an outreach social worker to work closely with young people who have
emotional and behavioral problems. He has published widely in criminology,
criminal justice and social work particularly in the area of youth studies,
x Wing Hong Chui
juvenile justice and probation studies. He is currently undertaking empirical

research into the effectiveness of probation supervision for young offenders in
Hong Kong.
E-mail address: ericchui@hku.hk
Linda Johannsen
Linda Johannsen has had 15 years experience in delivering a wide range
of school social work services for over 1000 individual students, their schools
and families. The work with groups and classrooms would double this number.
The key tasks involve casework, familywork, critical incident management,
consultation with school welfare staff in regard to student wellbeing issues and
community networking. After graduating with a Bachelor of Social Work at
Monash University in Melbourne, Linda began her professional career
working with statutory child protection for two years. Being employed by the
Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, she is
based in a large Victorian provincial city and part of a Student Support
Services’ multi-disciplinary team, which includes psychologists, speech
therapists and visiting teachers.
E-mail address: johannsen.linda.j@edumail.vic.gov.au

Charles Tong-lit Leung is a Registered Social Worker in Hong Kong.
Before the commencement of his academic career, he had worked as a school
social worker at a Hong Kong secondary school and provided various services
to students, parents, and teachers in the school context. He was the teaching
fellow and fieldwork coordinator of the department of Sociology and Social
Work, Sun Yat-sen (Zhong Shan) University, Guangzhou, China, from 2006 to
2009. The undergraduate social work courses that he taught included group
work (2006–2009), case analysis of social work practice (2007–2009), and
social work methods and skills (2007–2009). He also supervised under-
graduate and postgraduate social work students doing their practicum in
various settings (e.g. school, factory, and hospital). Apart from teaching, he
conducted a number of studies regarding school social work development in
China. He is now pursuing his PhD studies in Hong Kong, with a focus on
adolescent development, cross-cultural research and practice, and program
evaluation in China.
E-mail address: tlleung@polyu.edu.hk
About the Contributors xi
Henry Wai-hang Ling

Henry Wai-hang LING is Part-time M.Phil. Student, Department of Social
Work and Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong. He was a
youth worker in an Integrated Services for Children and Young People, and
prior to this he was a school social worker.
E-mail address: ericchui@hku.hk
Chu-li Julie Liu

Dr. Chu-li Julie Liu obtained her Ph.D. in social work at Wilfrid Laurier
University and is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Social
Work, Tunghai University, Taiwan. Her research interests include women’s
traumatic issues, women’s gender identity, and cross-cultural practice. She
teaches direct practice courses and feminist perspective courses in Taiwan.
E-mail address: chuli@thu.edu.tw
Peter O’Connor
Peter O’Connor is an internationally recognised expert in applied theatre.
His research has focused primarily on using applied theatre as a public
education medium to address major social issues including public health,
gender equity in schools and the development of inclusive, empathetic and
critical school cultures. Recent applied theatre research includes national
programs on preventing family violence and child abuse and parenting
programs in Youth Justice Facilities.
E-mail address: p.oconnor@auckland.ac.nz
James C. Raines
Dr James C. Raines is Department Chair and Associate Professor of
Health, Human Services & Public Policy at California State University
Monterey Bay. He has published widely in the area of school social work in
the United States. He was Chair of the Standards & Practices Committee of the
School Social Work Association of America from 2005-2008. Currently, he is
President of the Midwest School Social Work Council.
E-mail address: jraines8@aol.com)
INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
AIMS OF THE BOOK

The primary aim of this book is to examine the role of social workers in
schools with respect to fostering children’s rights and creating better outcomes
for children and young people in seven selected countries or places: China,
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.
In this edited volume, a number of scholars, researchers and social work
practitioners share their insights on school social work service or practice in
their respective countries or places, and discuss how school social work
service can further be improved to address the needs and problems of children
and young people. In addition to examining the historical development of
school social work in their regions, each chapter will also explore the views of
school social workers regarding their successes and challenges in their day-to-
day practices. This edited volume, in many respects, provides readers with
first-hand information and innovative ways on how school social workers
around the world can improve the quality of their professional work with
children and young people.
School social work is a specialized area of youth work around the world.
It has been developed for a long time, and according to Huxtable and Blyth
(2002), ‘the earliest development in school social work is closely related to the
introduction of compulsory attendance … For example, compulsory education
began in England at the end of the 19th century, in Canada in the 1870s, and
every state in the United States had passed compulsory attendance laws by
1918 (Allen-Meares, Washington, & Welsh, 2000)’ (cited in p. 8). However,
the reasons for introducing the school social work service may vary according
xiv Wing Hong Chui
in each country or place. In addition, school social work service may take
different forms and shapes, thereby affecting how it is delivered. While school
social workers are required to complete their undergraduate degree majoring in
social work, others are trained as teachers, psychologists and counselors. Also,
while some school social workers primarily play the role of a clinical
counselor or caseworker, others see themselves as an advocate for the disabled
and disadvantaged young people in schools. Therefore, instead of making
comparisons among different practices, each chapter aims to introduce salient
features of the school social work service of a specific country or place.
When preparing for their respective contributions, each author was
requested to write his or her chapter according to the following structure as far
as possible: a brief overview of the development of school social work
services (such as from informal to formal development and the contexts for its
development); contemporary school social work practice and delivery (such as
qualifications of school social workers, role and duties of the school social
worker, and general and specific school social work practice, if any), and a
selected topic of the contributor’s interest or research area. By doing so, this
book presents readers with a snapshot of what school social work across the
world means and intends to achieve.
STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

Chapter 1 examines the development of school social work in the People’s
Republic of China. The first section presents a general picture of its historical
development since the beginning of the 20th century. Then, the contemporary
development in four selected cities: Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Sichuan
are outlined. The emphasis of this chapter is to report findings generated from
a number of focus group discussions relating to the practices and struggles of
school social workers in China. According to the accounts of school social
workers, the most significant roles played by school social workers are as a
counselor, constructive peer and mediator. Another major finding of this study
is that school social work practice among the various regions of China is
diversified. School social workers in different regions of China should then
consider their specific context in choosing and developing social work theories
and models for their praxis.
Chapter 2 examines practicing school social workers’ perspectives of their
roles and delivery of effective school social work practice with young people
in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. Based upon in-depth
Introduction and Overview xv
interviews with ten school social workers, it was found that ‘effectiveness’
was defined as the ‘quality’ of the service in response to the changing needs of
young people, as opposed to caseload measurement. Several principles of
effective school social services are identified. This qualitative study also sheds
light on how organisational and educational approaches can foster the
effectiveness of school social work in Hong Kong.
The purposes of Chapter 3 are to briefly review the development of school
social work as well as the current models adopted by the local governments’
implementation of school social work in Taiwan. This chapter also presents
qualitative findings regarding Taiwanese female dropouts’ school experiences
and factors contributing to their dropping out of school. This chapter
concludes that a holistic or ecological intervention provided by school social
workers is essential in helping at-risk students.
Recent organizational changes have strengthened the social work
profession within the education structure of Victorian government schools in
Australia. From past tenuous inclusion, overshadowed by more dominant
ideologies, school social workers are now emerging as a vital core support
service for school communities. As well as these developments, Chapter 4
focuses on violence prevention in schools, in particular, gender based violence
prevention and how broader government agenda is placing greater pressure on
schools to adopt more systemic approaches than individual ones. Social
workers are well placed to assist in school capacity building by fostering the
relationship among home, school and community. Real life examples are given
about how school social workers, working within strong collaborative and
strategic relationships, can improve their services by influencing systems to
support gender based violence prevention in schools and create safer outcomes
for children and young people.
The primary aim of Chapter 5 is to illustrate how ‘theatre’ can be applied
in facilitating school children to be more aware of different forms of sexual
violence such as child abuse and domestic violence. This chapter describes
how an educational program, Everyday Theatre, was initiated in New Zealand,
and the values underpinning this program, including strengths-based model
and creating environments for young people’s voice. The evaluation of this
program proves that applied theatre is successful as an effective early
intervention method which school social workers or counsellors, and it can be
used to protect children and young people from being victimized.
In Chapter 6, the school social work services in Ontario, Canada are
introduced systematically. This Canadian experience illustrates how social
work in educational settings improves the lives of children and young people.
xvi Wing Hong Chui
A wide range of school social work practices, including crisis intervention,

assessment, referrals and consultation, counseling, and staff training and
support are discussed. The first topic chosen for further elaboration in this
chapter is concerned with how school social work which emphasizes the use of
restorative practice plays a significant role in preventing and intervening in
school bullying. The second topic – student mental health and its intervention
– is then elaborated in the latter half of the chapter.
In the last chapter, four major epochs of public education system, namely
grammar schools, common schools, compulsory education and inclusive
education in the United States (U.S.) are firstly introduced as background
information for lay readers. These four epochs explains how school social
work has been developed in the U.S. As will be discussed in Chapter 7, school
social workers address various social problems or issues such as poverty,
racial segregation, and school violence. Chapter 8 further highlights that
school social workers in the U.S. are primarily school-employed, like teachers.
Currently, there are school social workers in all fifty states, but there is a lack
of consistency regarding pre-service educational requirements for school
social workers as there are even stronger and more consistent standards for
school counselors and school psychologists. Finally, three related future trends
for social work in U.S. schools are examined, and they are: the emergence of
evidence-based practice, a focus on early intervention, and data-based decision
making.
REFERENCES
Allen-Meares, P., Washington, R., & Welsh, B. (2000). Social work services
in schools. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Huxtable, M., &. Blyth, E. (2002). Introduction. In M. Huxtable, & E. Blyth
(Eds.) School social work worldwide (pp. 1-14). Washington, DC: NASW
Press.
In: School Social Work ISBN: 978-1-62808-334-7
Editor: Wing Hong Chui © 2013 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Chapter 1
THE TIME BEFORE DAWN –

THE DISCURSIVE NATURE OF SCHOOL
SOCIAL WORK DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR
INTRODUCTION
China is a heterogeneous state that should not be considered from a
unidimensional perspective. For example, it contains 56 ethnic groups,
each of which has its own history and customs (Xinhuanet, 2006). The
contexts of China are thus diversified in nature even though the country
has been governed on socialist principles from the time of the formation
of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 (Constitution of the
PRC, 2004). Moreover, since the implementation of the Open Door
Economic Policy in China in 1979, the influence of official ideology on
education and adolescent development has been declining. The impacts of
foreign cultures on Chinese adolescents by means of media (e.g.,
television, film, and the Internet) are at present very significant. Several
Chinese scholars share the viewpoint that China contains diversified
cultures and the very idea of “Chineseness” is debatable (e.g. Sin, 2008;
Yan & Tsang, 2008). Therefore, it is not surprising that there are
currently various modes of development in school social work service in
the PRC. To illustrate the dynamics of school social work development,
this chapter is divided as follows: The first part provides a general picture
of the historical development of school social work in China since the
2 Charles Tong-lit Leung
beginning of the 20th century. The contemporary development of school

social work in various regions of China is then outlined. The third part
discusses the research findings of school social workers’ perceptions
toward their practice. In conclusion, suggestions for the future
development of school social work in China are provided as a reference
for further discussion.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
OF SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK IN CHINA
The origin of school social work development in China can be traced back
to the beginning of the 20th century. Yuen-Tsang and Ku (2008) note that a
number of overseas-trained expatriate social work and sociology scholars
returned to China to commence social work training programs in different
universities during that period. Since the inauguration of Yenching University
in 1922, the department of Sociology and Social Work had been providing
social work practicum and services related to the school setting (Lei & Shui,
1998; Wen & Liu, 2008). With the formation of PRC, however, the
government perceived social work as a capitalist academic discipline and all
social work programs were thus eliminated in the early part of the 1950s
(Yuen-Tsang & Ku, 2008).
There was no significant development of school social work until the PRC
government executed policies to promote the growth of the social work
profession in recent years. In 2006, the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party advocated the development of social work personnel for the
construction of a socialist harmonious society. Since then, the Ministry of
Civil Affairs (MCA) of the PRC has been actively supporting the policy. They
coordinate the social work development across the state, and thus, Shenzhen
was selected as the first pilot city for social work profession development
(MCA, 2006). According to the data in 2007, there are more than 200
institutes providing various kinds of training in social work, from diploma
courses to doctorate degree programs, in the PRC (Xinhuanet, 2008). In June
2008, MCA held the first nationwide social work profession accreditation test
(China Social Work Education, 2008). All existing social work practitioners
and graduates, including school social workers, are encouraged to sit the test to
gain official recognition of their professional status. Although there is still no
specialized recognition given to the profession of school social worker, more
The Time before Dawn 3
and more Chinese people now realize the existence of the social work
professional in China.
The shift of focus in education policy with an emphasis on students’
psychological health and holistic development (Ministry of Education of the
PRC, 1998, 2001) has served to foster school social work development in
China. According to Wen and Liu (2008, pp. 134-135), the recommencement
of school social work development in the PRC in the past two decades is in
keeping with the education development policy of virtue ethics and mental
health. They also summarized the following five areas of initiative regarding
the promotion of virtue ethics that school social workers should be able to
participate in. They include patriotic education, cultivation of a value system,
moral and social norm learning, conduct training, and psychological
enrichment programs. However, Wen and Lui (2008) also admitted that all the
above-mentioned initiatives are based on the official values of ideological and
political education, rather than with reference to the professional school social
work practice in the West. As a result, all these initiatives need not be
conducted by a social worker but by teachers or other related professionals
(e.g., psychological counselor). The details and analysis of this situation are
discussed later in this paper.
Apart from the enthusiastic involvment of the government, a number of
initatives of academic institutions have also been identified. For example, the
school social work research project of China Women’s University (Ku &
Yuen-tsang, 2004), the pilot Positive Youth Development project conducted
by East China Normal University in Shanghai that replicates the practice and
experiences of the “Positive Adolescent Training through Holistic Social
Programmes” (P.A.T.H.S.) in Hong Kong (Shek, Han, & Ma, 2010, 2009;
Shek & Ma, 2007), and the joint project of Sun Yat-sen University and The
Boy’s and Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong, called “Anti-pressure
Star,” run in Guangzhou (Leung, Chen, & Li, 2007).
On the basis of the aforementioned information, it can be asserted that
school social work has developed in recent years following the macro
development of social work and education policies throughout the PRC; there
is still no official legitimated status and identity of school social work at the
policy level. Social work training institutes are the main agents to support
school social work development with their research focus. However, more and
more nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are rapidly being established to
provide school social services in various regions in the PRC, especially in the
Shenzhen and Sichuan regions. The following paragraphs will, therefore,
highlight some of the significant developments of school social work services in

four regions of China, namely, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Sichuan.
CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENT
IN THE VARIOUS REGIONS
This section discusses school social work development in four regions in

China. Although various development models are identified, features common
to the development in each region are also considered.
Shanghai Context
Shanghai became the first city to officially develop school social work
service in China. In May of 2002, 38 schools launched a school social work
service with the official support of the local government in Pudong district,
Shanghai. Moreover, in February of 2003, the first professional social work
organization, called Shanghai Le Qun Social Work Service (Le Qun), was
established with the support of the local government and a Hong Kong non-
governmental organization (NGO) to provide professional supervision and
training for school social work and other related services (Le Qun, 2006).
According to the data collected in Shanghai (Wen & Liu, 2008), the
service needs of students include those related to academic issues,
interpersonal communication problems, romantic issues, maladaptation to
adolescent development, family relationships, and relationships with teachers.
Wen and Liu (2008) also summarize the service needs of parents that include
parenting training and consultancy, coordinating the parent-school
relationship, and family counseling services. They further mention that
services requested from the school include handling of delinquency; school
crisis intervention; formation of positive school culture; counseling and
consultancy for teachers; strengthening the linkage among stakeholders, such
as students, parents, school personnel, and people living within the school
environs; and presenting the needs of the school to relevant officials to secure
better support. According to Wen and Liu (2008), local school social workers
have been trying to fulfill all of the above-mentioned service needs through
various remedial, preventive, and developmental services.
Beijing Context
School social work service was first developed in Beijing for rural migrant
workers’ children in July 2007 (Yan, 2009). In collaboration with the local
government, a group of social work graduates set up an NGO called “Yue
Qun” to provide school social work service at a primary school in September
2009. According to the department head of those social work graduates, the
provision of school social work service is to promote the healthy development
of pupils as well as the teachers’ mental health. He further emphasizes the
relatively independent role of school social workers who are neither school
staff members nor government workers, but are able to mobilize community
resources – with a lower degree of bureaucratic constraints than is the case
with government officials – to give support to their service recipients
(Xinhuanet, 2009).
Shenzhen Context
Shenzhen is another city where school social work is flourishing. Since

the national policy regarding the promotion of the professional development of
social work in 2006, Shenzhen has become a nationwide pilot site to execute
various kinds of social service, including school social work (Li, 2007).
According to my direct contact with some of the NGOs providing school
social workers in Shenzhen, almost all school social workers are employed by
NGOs, which receive local government support in the form of money and
policy development. For example, the local government subverted those
NGOs to purchase professional supervision services from Hong Kong.
Because Hong Kong is near Shenzhen, the experienced social work
supervisors from Hong Kong frequently go to Shenzhen to provide
supervision. For a more comprehensive description of social work
development in Shenzhen, please refer to a paper written by Hung, Ng, and
Fung (2010).
School social work service is provided to both secondary and primary
schools in Shenzhen. As the usual class size of an ordinary school in China is
45 students, and there are more than 10 classes in a form and at least three
forms in a school, it is common to have a worker-student ratio higher than
1:2000 in Shenzhen. There are also two school social workers stationed at
each school for students with special learning needs (e.g., children with
intellectual disabilities, those diagnosed with autism, and those diagnosed with
dyslexia), and the worker-student ratio there is 1:350. It is a common practice

for the school social workers in Shenzhen to be stationed at a school five days
a week. Generally, the workers will return to their agency for service planning
meetings and any other business every fortnight. They are willing to conduct
home visits with teachers for comprehensive intervention. Group work for
student development and parenting training are also provided. Counseling and
consultancy services for individual students are expected; however, the social
workers in Shenzhen are able to provide only limited therapeutic services
since they lack the professional competency required.
Apart from referring to the school social worker as “she gong” (the word
for “social worker” in the PRC), students and parents also like to call them
“lao shi” (the word in Pungtonghua for “teacher”), since the public is still not
familiar with the term “social worker” and people in the PRC used to call all
school staff, including administration staff, “lao shi.” School social workers
mainly cooperate with the class master to implement various kinds of group
work and educational programs for students and usually take leadership roles
in these programs, while the teachers handle student discipline.
Sichuan Context
After the earthquake of Sichuan in 2008, a number of school social work

service projects were formulated to provide various supports to the local
students and their communities. For example, with the professional support of
the social work trainers and teachers of Sun Yat-sen University, an NGO in
Guangzhou, called Qichuang, has been providing school social work services
in Shuimo, Wenchuan County, since June 2008. The service rationale is to
establish a school-family-community mutual support system so as to create
healthy interaction for community reconstruction (Qi Chuang Social Work
Service Center, 2008). The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Beijing
Normal University collaborated in pioneering a catastrophe management
initiative (CMI) in July 2008, and part of this project is to provide special
preschool educational programs for children aged 3–6, and psychosocial
intervention for other children and youth. Moreover, supports to teachers and
other professionals helping victims to recover from the psychosocial traumas
caused by the disaster are also provided (The University of Hong Kong, 2008).
The Department of Applied Social Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic
University (PolyU), has also been providing school social work services in
four schools of the affected areas, which aim to facilitate community
networking, enhance student participation in school and community life, build

the psychosocial capacities of students and their family, as well as increase the
capacity of local teachers, government officials, and volunteers in handling
community development needs after the disaster (PolyU, 2009).
Common Features
On the basis of the review of various situations of school social work

development in different regions of China, three shared features were
identified. First, although NGOs provide school social work services, almost
all of them do so with government support so that they are officially
legitimated to provide service as well as receive government funding for the
service provision. Second, supports from the social work training institute are
still critical for the setting up and capacity building of the NGOs. Last but not
least, the main professional support and reference for school social work
development come from the resources and experiences of Hong Kong.
PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL WORK PRACTITIONERS

IN SCHOOL SETTING
Despite the macro picture about the development of school social work in
China being outlined, the practitioners’ viewpoint should be explored so as to
gain a more comprehensive understanding of the reality. Thus, a study about
the experiences and reflections of school social workers in the following five
areas is conducted: the expected roles of school social workers, difficulties of
the practice, focus of diary practice, intervention approach identified in
practice, and the diversified conditions of service development.
METHOD
This is a focus group study with three interview sessions conducted by a
research team led by the author in 2008.1 All questions asked in these
interviews are semi-structured (please Table 2.1 below).
1
Two postgraduate social work students of Sun Yat-sen University, Ma Li-xia and Yu Wan-wen,
comprised the research team.
Table 2.1. Questions Asked in the Focus Group Discussion
1. What were you expected to do at the beginning as a social worker at

school?
2. How did you introduce your roles and identities to the school personnel?
3. What were the perceptions of various school stakeholders about you (e.g.,
student, teacher, the school management, and parents)?
4. What were the differences between your expectation and the reality of
being a school social worker?
5. According to your experiences of being a school social worker, what task
should be accorded the highest priority in performing well?
6. How did you perform your duties?
7. Are you optimistic about school social work development in China? If
this is so, then please specify the reasons.
8. What were the significant factors in support of school social work
development?
9. What was your expected salary on becoming a school social worker in
China?
The sampling includes 10 members in total. Eight of them are social work
students and graduates of Sun Yan-sen University. The remaining two
participants completed their social work training in other regions of China. All
of them have already completed their practicum in a school setting.2 The
rationale in inviting those participants with school social work experiences
outside Guangzhou is to elicit a more diversified and in-depth discussion of the
findings.
At the stage of data analysis, all the audio-recorded interview files were first
transcribed by two research assistants. All of them are social work undergraduates
of Sun Yan-sen university. The transcripts were then checked for accuracy by two
social work postgraduate students. The two students and the author conducted the
transciption-based analysis together by means of a number of debates and
comparisons with regard to the codings of the three researchers; intra- and inter-
coder reliability were thus verified.
2
During the entire research period, there was no formal school social worker profession in
Guangzhou, whereas these placement students performed the exact service that future
school social workers would provide. Therefore, all of the participants are labeled as
“school social worker” in this study.
FINDINGS
On the basis of the transcription analysis, the role of counselor was
identified as the one most of the focus group participants expected to play in
their school social work practice. Constructive peer and mediator were the
other two roles identified. However, the focus of their practice was identified
as the promotion of school social work functions and services. The ignorance
of school personnel as to the nature and characteristics of school social work,
as well as their equating of social workers with psychotherapists, are among
the factors that hinder the development of school social work. Problem-
oriented and development-oriented intervention approaches for school social
work practice in China are also identified in this study. However, the
diversified contexts of the various regions of China make the transference of
practice models and experiences within this country less meaningful. The
following paragraphs provide more details.
The role of counselor is the most significant one that is expected and
practiced. Due to participants’ social work training, they perceive the school
social worker as able to help those students experiencing difficulties and
maladjustment at school. It is then reasonable for them to use the
psychological counseling skills that they learnt in helping students to achieve
better personal development. In the following quotation, a participant justifies
their role as counselors in a school setting:
When we come into SSW, we are more likely to posit ourselves as

psychological counselors or instructors. In our minds, we’re always going
to face or deal with problematic students as well as all the problems or
situations that shouldn’t happen at schools. But we’re also fairly sure that
we’re neither teachers nor school representatives. Hence, we’ll put
ourselves in the students’ shoes and try to see things from their angle.
Although some of the participants experienced the practice of school

social worker as possibly different from that of psychotherapist, they still share
the idea that school social workers should mainly support those students
labeled as “problematic.” Therefore, problematic students become the most
frequently served clients of school social workers. When the school social
work practitioners recognize themselves as counselors, they often emphasize
their capability in counseling or problem solving, as is evident from the
following quotation:
I had an opportunity to do my practicum at a NGO in Hong Kong

and thus had a chance to visit their school social work service. The social
workers there spent much time explaining to us what their ideas or
concepts are, from which I got the idea that social workers work very
differently at school from psychological counselors, and I got the idea
that social workers should give more space to those students who are
labeled to develop. That’s my first impression. As most people in the
area, however, have no idea about what social work is, we’ll explain it as
simply as possible. For example, ‘Well, it’s a kind of psychological
counseling service, which offers instruction through individual interviews
or group activities.’ We explain it in that way, giving teachers that
impression. That’s why people would see us as counselors.
Labeling school social workers as counselors presents a dilemma. As the

education policy in China has focused on students’ psychological health for
more than a decade (Ministry of Education, 1998, 2001), the concept of
counseling is relatively common and recognized in the educational
community. Some of the schools in China even provide for the post of
counselor, which is mostly a duty shared by teachers already at the schools. As
a result, it is understandable that participants would like to establish an image
and identity that people are familiar with. School social workers are also able
to raise the public’s awareness of their professional status by referring to
themselves as counselors. However, this approach of school social work image
building induces a number of misunderstandings about the profession. First,
students, teachers, and other related personnel, who are able to access school
social work service, have no opportunity to explore the alternative possibilities
of the service. In this case, the internationally recognized values of social work
such as human rights and social justice (International Association of Schools
of Social Work, & International Federation of Social Workers, 2001), as well
as related community-level practices, are not exploited. The more serious issue
that needs to be considered is the overwhelming focus of school social work
on the therapeutic role of counselor, which further stigmatizes the service
recipients as problematic. This is actually a dilemma most of the participants
shared during the focus group interviews. Besides, if they introduce mainly the
counseling function of social workers at the schools, they will be treated as
psychological counselors. This means that the school social workers are
capable of solving students’ psychological problems, and thus will gain
recognition from teachers and school management more readily. However, the
schools also unrealistically expect that school social workers should be able to
solve all students’ behavioral and related problems. Technically speaking,

some of the participants realized their limitations and thus tried to manage the
expectation of school personnel so as to minimize the negative impact.
Of course, we [social workers] showed our empathy to the teachers

first. That’s to say, we understand they’re very stressed, especially those
teachers working in the schools that classify students into top classes and
general classes, according to students’ academic performance. Top class
teachers have their specific targets, while general class teachers have to
expend much effort on discipline, students’ behavior, and so on. We also
told the teachers that school social workers are their working partners. If
they have any problems or they feel they’re about to fail, they can come
to us and we will work it out together. We also give the teacher our
assessments of what the social worker can offer to improve students’
behavioral performance or to meet the school’s standards… We probably
overstate it a bit, but actually they understanding clearly that we school
social workers can only provide limited help for them. However, they still
view us as offering them hope anyway, and they pass many complicated
cases on to us.
It is evident from the aforementioned quotation that even though the

dilemmatic situation can be handled in a technical manner, the predicament
still exists. The over-dependency of the school on the school social worker to
solve their problems can lead to the social workers suffering burnout. More
collaboration and support from school management and teachers should enable
the fostering of the provision of school social work service in a more effective
way; on the other hand, better service is still possible if social workers seek to
organize teachers and related personnel to identify the common difficulties
that they face. However, the pattern of school social work service identified in
this study is that schools will accuse the students of making trouble and then
demand that social workers solve the problem. For example, they may refer
those problematic students to social workers. In such circumstances, social
workers are isolated, making it hard for them to initiate various changes to
support their clients. At the same time, because of the public stigma attached
to those receiving counseling services and the lack of support from the school,
students may be further labeled and find it hard to improve.
Consequences of the emphasis on the counseling role. Since most of the
participants emphasized their counseling role in the practice, a number of
consequences are identified and illustrated in the following quotations.
From the perspective of the teacher, they’d like someone to support

them since they do not have much capacity to do the psychological
counseling. They might neglect some other things except the mental
health part. What they expected from you [school social workers] most
was that you would provide sufficient psychological education support to
students. In accordance with the prominence of the students’
psychological problems, the above-mentioned demand would be raised
increasingly.
I think truancy is very common and has been existent for quite a long
time. However, the reason why I do not handle truancy cases is that the
school that I worked for has taken actions. For example, the school
informs the parents or punishes the students. Only when the school is
unable to handle the situation do they pass the cases on to school social
workers. They do expect me to be able to solve the problem effectively.
Second, I think truancy is only a personal behavioral problem that doesn’t
affect all the other students seriously. Therefore, other problems that have
an impact on many students, say school violence, will always be passed
on to me as the first priority.
Most of the time, students who were labeled as problematic are referred
for the intervention of the school social worker. In such cases, teachers and
parents seem unable to handle those so-called “problem students,” and they
expect school social workers to be able to deal with them. It is a fact that
handling psychological problems can allow the school social worker to meet
the school’s and parents’ expectations as well as providing support to those
students in need, and thus, the social worker readily receives acknowled-
gments. However, school social workers should be cautious about the labeling
effect on the students whom they help. One of the possible consequences is
that if school social workers focus only on solving psychological problems,
students with other developmental needs may not be willing to ask for support
and help from them.
To develop an independent role for school social workers in the PRC,
school social workers should handle behavioral problems differently. They
need to find out the reasons behind those problems. Only when they find out
the cause will they be able to handle those problems appropriately and cease
the labeling of students as “problematic.” From this point of view, the role of
school social worker is distinguished from that of teacher and psychological
counselor, as the latter put their focus on the misbehavior itself and pay less
attention to the cause behind the misbehavior in general, whereas school social
workers are able to get to the crux of behavioral problems.
Alternative roles of school social worker. Although most of the
participants identified themselves as counselors, they have demonstrated two
other roles of the school social worker in their practice. The first one is that of
constructive peer. Some of the participants shared that in that role they are
devoted to fostering students’ personal development and enhancing their
potential by listening to them, knowing the obstacles the students face, and
providing adequate support to them. As a result, the students can reach their
potential. The reasoning can be understood from the following quotation:
Well, I got my first touch with school social work service in my third
year of undergraduate study. Before that, I learned some related theories
and knowledge about it. When I had my attachment program in Hong
Kong, I had already been exposed to many reflections about the practical
experiences of Hong Kong practitioners. So, when I went to the school as
a social worker, I intentionally hid my identity from teachers. Because I
am a school social work professional, I am expected to treat all students
equally in keeping with those theoretical assumptions I had learned. As I
believe a social worker is to stimulate students’ potential and pay close
attention to their all-round development, I hope to take care of more
students as a school social worker. Apart from focusing on problematic
students, I hope I will be able to keep an eye on the other aspects of their
development. Because I found that adults would turn a deaf ear to kids’
voices and kids might have no chance to get a word in, or be clamped
down on by teachers even when they got a chance, I formed the idea then
to serve the students, focus on the students.
The implication of this quotation is that some participants really

understand what the nature and characteristics of social work are, and they
have tried their best to practice their belief. Apparently, the professional
mindset gives them a clear vision of their role positioning. They are aware that
social workers should pay attention to more students instead of the so-called
problematic students; they should focus on students’ strengths and potential
rather than their problem(s), and they should look at various aspects of the
students’ development and encourage them to fulfill their potential. Actually,
school social workers in China would be able to introduce themselves as
constructive peers as described as follows.
When introducing myself, I’d say that everybody will come across
some difficulties or some limitations during his or her lifetime. For
example, we’ll fall out with friends sometimes or have arguments with
teachers or parents. Those things will depress us to some extent. That’s
why we need someone to stand by us. Also, I emphasized that people
might not have realized all of their strengths or potential, and may
probably not be doing well at some stage of their life, but everyone is
able to do better and be stronger at some things than others. So, social
workers are here to help them help themselves.
Mediator is another role also identified in the study.3 Being a mediator, a

school social worker takes environmental factors into account (i.e., the
perspective of the person-in-situation). In this case, the school social worker
needs to explore what the environment means to the students, pay attention to
the interactions between students and the environment, and that among various
environments. Then, the school social worker will promote the win-win
interactions as a mediator in the students’ development. Members of the focus
group also shared their ideas on the role of mediator:
There are some students whose needs can’t be met in the

environment of school, family and where they live, because schools are
for studying, whereas parents think schools should take care of
everything related to their children as the students spend a lot of time at
school. Then, schools and parents blame each other and no one takes care
of the youngsters for whom a service gap has been identified. Actually, I
think school social workers ought to be and are able to fill in these gaps.
School social workers should consider the different environmental impacts

on students. Therefore, as a school social worker, the working focus should be
on the psychosocial interaction of students. Lack of interaction or bad
interaction will often restrict the healthy psychosocial development of
students. When students are in an environment without sufficient support,
school social workers might need to take the mediator role, being an active
agent to improve the communication between different environments and
therewith create a more supportive environment for the service users. In such a
3
The original Chinese wording, which is translated as mediator in the paper, is “xie tiao zhe.”
This wording can be translated as either coordinator or mediator. On the basis of the
referent during the focus group discussions and the consensus of researchers, a mediator
was finally chosen.
role orientation, school social workers can emphasize their partnership with
service users:
Sometimes, you get into a situation that has few problems and the
teachers themselves feel good too. Then you can’t say, “Oh, I’m coming
to save you! I’ll solve problems for you.” Teachers will feel disgusted. I’d
rather say, “We know you’re working hard and feel sad sometimes, and
we’re hoping that we can share some of your responsibilities,” instead of
telling them that we’re going to sort something out.
From this quotation, it is evident that negotiation and lobbying skills are
essential for social work practice. We can see from the above quotation that
the school social worker is aware of the importance of the environment to the
individual, as well as those obstacles that affect the clients’ growth or room for
improvement in that environment. The worker cannot, however, create an
authoritative image to command school personnel to collaborate with the
school social worker. Therefore, the worker introduces his or her service
tactfully to give the audience the feeling that the school social worker will stay
with them and work hard with them as a partner. In this case, social workers
can prevent themselves being excluded from the school system, and also
obtain support easily in future interventions.
A shift of practice approach from problem-oriented to development-
oriented. A problem-oriented practice model means school social workers
focus on solving students’ problems, including maladjustment in the school
setting. Many participants adopted this approach in the initial stage of practice.
My first impression of school social work is that it is about solving

problems. What kinds of problems? The first should be those problematic
students, whom teachers can’t handle. Social workers must then handle
these students. Crisis intervention should be the second problem that
school social workers should handle. For example, students are fighting
one another or something bad happens suddenly in the school. Another
kind of problem is those students with family problems. The emotional
problems of teachers as well as their relationships with students are also a
kind of problem I have handled… Then, I think, the school still has many
needs; if I always think in terms of “problem,” I’ll surely see them as
problematic ones… that’s my first impression. Later on, I felt the word
“problem” did not seem quite appropriate.
There are various reasons why the participants tend to be problem-

oriented in their practice. First, there is a high expectation from school
personnel that the school social worker will be able to solve students’ complex
problems. Since some of the respondents are placement students, they have to
make a proper intervention plan according to the needs of the schools they are
serving. Another reason is participants’ understanding and expectations
regarding the profession of school social work. We can see from their
comments that they agree that those students who are labeled are the ones that
need help the most. Third, participants are inclined to exploit the recognition
and understanding accorded to a psychological counselor, whose profession is
more familiar to those working in schools, for their identity building. As a
result, those school personnel equate the role of school social worker with that
of psychological counselor and expect them to serve as their counselor. In
addition, since some participants are placement students who need to finish
assignments, including casework, group work, and mass programs, these tasks
will inevitably shift their focus away during the initial stage of service
provision, that is, they will focus on finding some suitable targets for their
assignments within limited time. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand
why they are problem-oriented at the beginning when seeking to identify
clients early on. Of course, the span of the practicum, the assessment and
impression of the service users, also, influence placement students in choosing
the problem-oriented intervention.
However, as the participants experienced the real needs and difficulties
students face in the school context, they began to shift their practice approach
to developing the capacity of students to fulfill their own needs themselves.
This development-oriented approach to practice is evident in the following
quotation.
… I think I was…, well, a bit utilitarian in my first practicum. I was

anxious to go over my cases and group assignments, just focused on those
things… now I’m not a placement student but really work at a school
now… I realize very keenly, uh, that the very important thing, the point
is, there are many students unable to cope with the conventional
education system, but they are really talented, having potential in various
fields, except the academic. So I suppose social workers should foster and
develop their potential and help them become more self-confident and
increase their sense of belonging to the school.
From the quotations above, one learns that school social workers organize
activities, mainly in the form of casework, group work, and mass programs, in
those schools they serve. All of these are the techniques the workers learnt
from their training. Originally, they concentrated on work at the individual
level, to foster the personal development of students in various dimensions,
such as emotional management, behavioral performance, and interpersonal
relationship. The usual practices involve casework and developmental groups.
However, according to the evolution of their practice, they pay more attention
to the concept of “person-in-situation,” so as to shift the working focus from
the individual to the environment of the individual. They also focus on the
interactions between the individual and the environment, and begin to create
an environment to foster personal development. However, it is reminded that
the research participants are no intention to use the intervention approaches
separately. In reality, in their practice, both approaches are applied
simultaneously. For instance, one of the participants mentioned as follows.
When I contacted the school management and teachers, they asked

me what projects I would do. I had replied quite casually at that time. I
said my partner and I would help those students who had emotional
problems or conduct problems by offering counseling services, inquiries,
or group work, to assist them to improve in their development. I had also
said that we would able to help the kids handle some difficulties and
problems in their daily life through the provision of a developmental
group. Moreover, I explained quite casually at that time, also, that I
needed the cooperation from teachers, and even the parents. Therefore, I
had a great deal of direct contact with teachers to obtain more detailed
information on the students and even dealt with the parents when my
project developed to a certain stage.
In conclusion, no matter what intervention approach school social workers

apply, their choice of intervention approach reflects how they present
themselves to the stakeholders (e.g., teachers, students, and their parents), and
affects the public understanding and acknowledgment of the profession.
Intervention approaches are always linked with the role of school social
workers. School social workers often appear as counselors for problem-
oriented intervention approaches, whereas they act as constructive peers or
mediators for development-oriented intervention approaches. Certainly, this is
not an absolute classification because social workers always appear in multiple
roles in real practice.
Promotion is the focus of school social work practice. Even though the
main role of the school social worker is that of counselor, the focus of their
practice has been identified as promoting their functions and services. The
meaning of promotion discovered in this study is not only to stimulate students
and school personnel to use school social work service but also to educate all
of them about the uniqueness of school social work service. As a result, an
independent image of the school social worker is constructed. There are many
possibilities for promotion, and three quotations identify these as follows.
I remembered what we thought about most at that time (we were

doing the social work practicum at a school) was which games we had to
play or what things to wear and how to decorate our office to attract those
kids’ attention. Therefore, they would like us and build up rapport
easily… [italics added by the author]
… for one thing, promotion, we did it through different means. At the

beginning, we distributed a leaflet, “A Letter to Students,” to every
student through the teachers. The leaflet introduced what a school social
worker was, under which circumstances they could come to us. I guessed
we all did something like this at the initial stage. And then, we utilized
the public announcement system of the school, and we also displayed
posters. All these were common ways of promotion. We also took part in
their weekly flag-raising ceremony, and went into their classroom to chat
with them during their noon break. Those are our promotional methods....
[italics added by the author]
…if you present yourself as a professional, showing a professional image

to the school, you should advertise all around once you get into it, and
give all the teachers, students, management body, and other staff an
overall idea…[italics added by the author]
According to the above quotations, school social workers must promote

themselves and their services in a precise and concise way. However, it is
usually not easy for the recipients of the information to gain a comprehensive
understanding within the time available and from the limited information
provided. Therefore, organizing activities to attract the attention of students
and related personnel is another strategy identified in this study. For example,
most participants shared that they like playing games or talking with students
during their breaks to encourage them to come to the social workers’ room.
Further promotion is then possible, which thus enhances the likelihood of

providing school social work service.
Diversified contexts of school social work practice. Although the picture
of school social work practice in China has been outlined, it is mainly based
on the experiences and reflections of the practitioners in Guangzhou region.
Participants coming from the other regions shared totally different experiences
from those identified in the preceding paragraphs. First, there is no post of
school social worker in their region; they are social work students who happen
to conduct their practicum in a school setting. No significant role of a school
social worker can be identified; the school social worker is a teaching assistant
who provides support to teachers. It is impossible to consider a long-term
relationship with school personnel since all the services are project-based and
task-oriented. There is no opportunity to practice the knowledge and skills of
social work since they are treated as volunteers whose only task is to organize
recreational activity and academic tutorial classes for students. There is no
clear development of school social work in their region as there is no related
policy or NGO to develop the service.
CONCLUSION
To summarize the ideas shared in this paper, it is identified that at present,
there is no extremely cohesive picture of school social work development in
China. The Central Policies of the PRC provide direction for education and
school social work development. However, based on the literature reviewed
and information collected in this article, polarized situations and imbalance of
school social work development across different regions of the PRC have been
identified.
In spite of the experiences and resources from Hong Kong that have
played a significant role in the development process, most of the practices are
just a trial by some enthusiastic social work practitioners and researchers. In
the light of the feedback from local practitioners, it is necessary to conduct
more studies and trainings for the indigenization of school social work practice
in the PRC. Of course, the Sichuan experience focusing on building networks
among school, family, and community for community reconstruction could be
claimed as an authentic school social work practice in the PRC. However, the
experience in Sichuan has developed within a specific context and condition
(i.e., community reconstruction after a gigantic earthquake); therefore, it
cannot be replicated directly for implementation in other regions of the PRC.
On the basis of the findings of this research, it is suggested that the

direction of school social work development should vary across regions of the
PRC. School social workers in the different regions should consider their
context in choosing and developing various social work theories and practice
models for their praxis. Of course, policy support is still necessary, but the
leadership of school social work practitioners, who are keen on constructing a
suitable practice model for the paramount benefit of service users, is the key to
success. Therefore, training for the school social workers in China should not
focus only on technical drilling; it is necessary to cultivate practitioners who
have a systemic and flexible mindset toward the future development of school
social work in this diversified state.
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(In Chinese).
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– 512 earthquake roundtable. Hong Kong: The Author. [Available at:
http://www.hku.hk/chinaearthquake/events.html].
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of Social Workers (Ed.), Report on the development of social work in
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gov.cn/test/2006-04/17/content_255861.htm] (In Chinese).
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(In Chinese).
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http://news.xinhuanet.com/employment/2009-
09/02/content_11981825.htm] (In Chinese).
Yan, M. C., & Tsang, A. K. T. (2008). Re-envisioning indigenization: when
Benthuhuade and Bentude social work intersect in China. In M. Gray, J.
Coates, & M. Yellow Bird (Eds.), Indigenous social work around the
world: Towards culturally relevant education and practice (pp. 191-202).
Aldershot: Ashgate.
Yan, W. (2009). ‘School social worker for migrant workers’ children in
Beijing’, China Social Work, 2009 (12), 15-17. (In Chinese).
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Relevant Websites
China Social Work Education http://www.chinaswedu.com

Center for Studies of Adolescents &
Social Work, East China Normal http://www.csasw.org/
University
Guangzhou Qi Chuang http://www.qichuang.org/newslist276692
Social Work Service .htm
Rebuilding Post-Earthquake Sichuan, http://www.apss.polyu.edu.hk/sichuanpro
APSS of PolyU jects/projects.php
Shanghai LeQun
http://www.lequn.org
Social Work Service
Chapter 2
SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK SERVICE

IN HONG KONG: THE SOCIAL WORK
PRACTITIONER’S PERSPECTIVE
Wing Hong Chui and Henry Wai-hang Ling

Department of Social Work and Social Administration, Faculty of Social
Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR
INTRODUCTION
The study reported in this chapter has two purposes: to overview the
development and function of school social work service in Hong Kong, and to
understand the roles school social workers are required to perform by the
schools and organizations. It is hoped that this analysis will highlight how
organizational change impacts on the delivery of the school social work
service in the contemporary Hong Kong context. In the eyes of administrators
and managers, these changes are intended to improve the cost-effectiveness of
the service delivery. However, the social workers interviewed are more
concerned with the increasing emphasis on ‘managerial control’ and ‘quantity
of output’ which negatively correlates with the time spent providing direct
services to individual students, working with families and other liaison work.
This chapter is structured into six parts. The first part overviews the
development of a school social work service in Hong Kong. Based upon the
24 Wing Hong Chui and Henry Wai-hang Ling
official documents, the second and third parts examine the major objectives
and purposes of school social work service and introduce the roles of school
social workers in Hong Kong. The fourth part describes the research
methodology used in this small-scale qualitative study which intends to
identify effective school social work practice. The fifth part reports the major
findings generated from the individual semi-structured interviews with the
practicing school social workers. Implications for school social work practice
are discussed in the final part.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK

SERVICE IN HONG KONG
Before the formal inception of the school social work service in the late
1970s, pilot projects were initiated by some non-governmental organizations,
mainly with a religious background, to deploy social workers in a small
number of secondary schools in Hong Kong (Chiu & Wong, 2002). These
social workers were originally employed to provide direct services to families
in need instead of working with children and youths in the school setting. This
is why the school social work service is rooted in family service, and
emphasizes the importance of working with both children and their families to
resolve problems. Subsequently, both the Education Department and the
Social Welfare Department joined hands to provide an experiential school
social work service in selected schools in order to explore the feasibility and
benefits of extending this service widely in Hong Kong (Ko & Wong, 1990).
The commitment to expanding the school social service was still minimal
until the Green Paper on Development of Personal Social Work Among Young
People in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Government, 1977) and the White Paper
on Social Welfare into the 1980s (Hong Kong Government, 1979) were
published. In these documents the contribution of school social work services
for children and young people was recognized in an explicit way by the Hong
Kong Government. In particular the White Paper formalized the delivery of
school social work in both primary and secondary schools by making
government funding available to those non-governmental organizations that
provided such services. It is important to note that a formal qualification in
social work was a pre-requisite for the position of a school social worker in
secondary schools, whereas student guidance officers in primary schools were
mostly teachers who were graduates of the Institute of Education and had
School Social Work Service in Hong Kong 25
some counseling knowledge and skills. According to Chiu and Wong (2002),
in the early 1980s the provision of the school social work service was fairly
limited due to the scarce government subvention:
Student guidance officers were allocated to primary schools at a ratio

of 1:3,000 students in urban areas and 1:2,000 students in rural areas. …
one qualified social worker was provided for every 4,000 students in
secondary schools. … there were 93 student guidance officers serving
477 primary schools, and another 91 social workers serving 297
secondary schools (Hong Kong Government, 1982, as cited in Chiu &
Wong, 2002, p. 144).
Despite the acute need for school social work services, the government
subvention was rather minimal as reflected in the high school social worker-
student ratio. In this respect, the commitment of the Government to develop a
comprehensive school social service was questioned by the Hong Kong
Council of Social Service (1977). The Hong Kong Council of Social Service
and various stakeholders, including school principals, teachers and social
workers, demanded more resources be put in place to reduce the school social
worker-student ratio as well as to meet the needs of the growing child and
youth population in the 1970s and 1980s.
Changes were always patchy and slow and it was not until 1995 that one
school social worker was provided for every 2,000 students (in approximately
two schools) (Hong Kong Government, 1991; Working Group on Review of
School Social Work Service, 1999). Between 1997 and 1999, the number of
school social workers continued to grow because of the Government’s
decision to improve the social worker-student ratio from 1:2,000 to 1:1,000
amongst those secondary schools that were classified as academically-low-
achiever (ALA) schools. Chiu and Wong (2002) reported that “in the 1997-
1998 school year, there were 282 school social workers serving a total of 435
secondary schools” (p. 145) and 154 of these schools were ALA schools
(Working Group on Review of School Social Work Serveice, 1999). In
September 2000, the implementation of the ‘one social worker one secondary
school’ policy was finally approved, and that the school social worker to
student ratio has been 1:1,000 since then. However, no additional resources or
subvention was provided by the Government to non-governmental
organizations to improve the ratio in the year 2000 and each non-governmental
organization had to look for funding to implement this policy. According to
the official data, 34 non-governmental organizations operate stationing school
social work services for 484 secondary day schools in Hong Kong as of 1
October 2010 (Social Welfare Department, 2010).
OBJECTIVES AND PURPOSES OF SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK

Generally speaking, the objective of the school social work service is to
help students, parents and the school personnel to work with each other in
ways that would best assist the student’s learning and personal development
(Allen-Meares, 1977; Freeman, Franklin, Fong, Shaffer & Timberlake, 1998).
In Hong Kong, the overall objectives of the school social work service are to
identify and help students with academic, social or emotional problems, and to
maximize their educational opportunities, develop their potentials and prepare
them for responsible adulthood (Social Welfare Department, 2010). The
specific purposes of school social work set out in the Report on Review of
School Social Work Service are: to help students develop their potentials to the
fullest, achieve healthy personal growth, attain adequate and proper school
education, establish harmonious human relationship and elicit their concern for
community; to help students with their personal, family and interpersonal
relationship or schooling problems; and to strengthen the linkage among
students, families, the school and the community (Working Group on Review
of School Social Work Service, 1999, p. Annex xii). In other words, this
service has remedial, developmental and prevention functions to enhance the
well-being and social functioning of young people at secondary schools.
It is generally believed that the success of education or schooling is the
key to equipping young people with necessary skills, values and knowledge in
order to face life challenges and grow positively. To achieve these purposes,
four major types of social work intervention are used: casework service;
groups and programs; consultative service; and co-ordination and mobilisation
on non-school based community resources.
While acknowledging the fact that the users or consumers of the school
social work service are primarily students, families and school personnel can
use the service if required. For instance, parent education and family life
education programs can be organized to promote family values and
harmonious parent-child relationships. It is also recommended that school
social workers provide teachers with professional training in order to help
them understand the developmental needs of young people and to learn how to
respond to those needs.
PROFESSIONAL ROLES OF SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS

According to the Guideline on School Social Work Service, eight core
roles of school social workers can be identified, including enablers,
counselors, social educators, consultants, mobilizers of resources, researchers,
advocates and mediators (Central Guiding Committee on School Social Work,
1984). Table 3.1 gives a brief definition of each of these roles.
Table 3.1 Eight School Social Worker Roles
Role Description
Enabler To help and encourage students to devise proper means in meeting
their needs and to work out solutions to their own problems related
to their developmental process and adjustment to school life and to
use more effectively the resources available to them
Counsellor To help students better understand themselves, their feelings and to
resolve behavior/emotional problems in connection with their
developmental process and adjustment to school life
Social educator To help students and their families to develop positive social values,
attitudes and behavior, promote harmonious human relationship and
a sense of responsibility to society
Consultant To provide consultation services to school personnel and related
professionals on the handling of students’ problems and approaches
to subjects such as social studies, moral education and student
activities
Mobilizer of To locate and mobilize community resources such as skills, facilities,
resources manpower and services for the benefit of the students, their families
and the school
Researcher To review the service with school personnel regularly and collect
data related to their work for the development and improvement of
the service
Advocate To familiarize with the general education system and be ready to
make recommendations for improvements to the education service
and to advocate for supplements of inadequate/unavailable resources
Mediator To strengthen the linkage between the students, their families, the
school and the community for the promotion of better under-tanding
and harmonious relationships amongst them and mediate between
the parties when misunderstanding or conflict arise
Source: Adapted from Working Group on Review of School Social Work Service
(1999, p. Annex VI).
As shown in Table 3.1, the role of the school social worker is multi-
faceted. However, some school social workers were uncertain whether these
roles were attainable given the relatively high social worker-student ratio in
the 1980s and early 1990s. After conducting a series of discussions with
school social workers and various stakeholders, such as school management

personnel, the Working Group on Review of School Social Work Service
(1999) redefined and refocused school social workers into four roles, namely:
counselors, consultants, co-ordinators, and community and social educators.
The major reason for re-defining the roles was to reflect the professional
functions of the school social work service. The role as a counsellor intends to
provide guidance and counseling services to students and their families when
needs arise from family and social issues, and to run supportive groups and
programs in order to equip students in meeting their life challenges. A
consultant provides consultation services to school personnel, parents and
students on ways to address the needs of students. A co-ordinator mobilizes
community resources for the benefit of students, families and schools and to
strengthen the linkage among social services to support the schools. The role
of a community and social educator is to enable students and their families to
develop positive social values and attitudes in facing their life situations, to
promote harmonious family relationship through students and parents’ groups
and providing support to the student groups and Parent-Teacher Association
(Working Group on Review of School Social Work Service, 1999, pp. 25-26;
Social Welfare Department, 2000, p. 3).
The four roles specified above also determine how the performance of
each school social worker is measured. Table 3.2 summarizes the four major
performance indicators of the service. These indicators and standards have
been adopted by the school social work service in the territory since 2000.
Table 3.2. Performance Indicators of the School Social Work Service
Target to
Indicator
be Met
Total number of cases handled per worker within a year 70
Total number of cases closed having achieved the agreed goal 23

per worker within a year
Total number of group and program sessions conducted per 40
worker within a year (excluding orientation program)
Total number of consultations per worker within a year 380
Source: Adapted from Working Group on Review of School Social Work Service
(1999) and Social Welfare Department (2000) p.42.
Table 3.3. Basic Information of the Research Participant
Case Number Gender Number of years working as a school social worker

1 Female 6
2 Male 10
3 Female 5
4 Female 13
5 Female 7
6 Male 4
7 Male 5
8 Female 16
9 Female 4
10 Female 8
METHOD OF THE STUDY

At the outset this was a preliminary study to examine how front-line
school social workers perceive their roles in achieving the ultimate goals of the
school social work service in Hong Kong. It is important to note that
subsequent to the work conducted by the Working Group on Review of School
Social Work Service (1999) no studies that the authors are aware of have been
commissioned to examine the roles and functions of the school social work
service. It is hoped that the preliminary finding will inform the direction of
future large-scale study in this area.
This study is a qualitative analysis of ten practicing school social workers’
experiences in working with young people in schools; their narratives provide
readers with first-hand information of their social work interventions and their
perceived effectiveness of these interventions. The background information of
each participant is presented in Table 3.3.
Purposeful and snowball sampling was used to select cases to participate
in this study. As shown in Table 3.3, seven females and three males were
recruited from five different non-governmental organizations, and their length
of work experience as a school social worker ranged between four and sixteen
years. All of them are university graduates with a bachelor or master’s degree
in social work from local institutions in Hong Kong.
Individual interviews were conducted during the period of November
2008 to January 2009 and these took place in the office of each school social
worker. Upon request the interview schedule was sent to the research
participants one week before the interview was conducted. Examples of the
questions in the interview schedule are: What are the major roles of the school
social worker in Hong Kong? How would you define ‘effectiveness’ in
relation to your work? How would you measure the effectiveness of your
work? In what ways can your organization help improve the effectiveness of
your work? These questions were used as prompts to elicit their personal
views on their direct work experience and perceptions of effective school
social work.
PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS WITH

PRACTISING SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS IN HONG KONG
Perceived Roles of the School Social Worker
All research participants believed that their two primary roles were
counsellor and consultant. They all opined that the ultimate goal of the school
social work service was to help young people help themselves through
casework, counseling and other forms of social work intervention such as
therapeutic group programs and working with families in need. One
participant commented that they had direct contact with students with
emotional and/or behavioral problems:
Even though the school social worker to student ratio has been
reduced from 1:2,000 to 1:1,000, I don’t think a school social worker is
almighty … Given a number of hats I am wearing within a school setting
I just have to be selective to work on students who have problems and are
vulnerable. The school I am stationing is classified as the ‘Band 1’
secondary school but its students are not immune from having emotional
problems. Given my workload, I can just respond or react to the students’
expressed problems or needs, and that has already kept me very busy.
(Case 3)
One further said that:
The school social work service has a primarily remedial function,

and it’s developmental and prevention functions are essentially secondary
to the remedial one. My priority is to deal with at-risk students given time
and resource constraints. (Case 1)
In addition to individual counseling with young people, other school

social work tasks included offering consultation to students who drop into his
or her office, organizing and delivering talks to teachers, attending school staff
meetings, and organizing group activities and programs.
When asked how they ranked the relative importance of the school social
worker roles, all workers agreed that it is exclusively driven by the
performance indicators of the service. More specifically, they were concerned
with the number of cases handled per year and the total number of
consultations per worker within a year. In this respect, Chiu and Wong (2002)
commented:
The worry is that to satisfy the required quantitative output school

social workers may be largely bound to be more oriented toward
casework and less towards school-based work. There is little room for
innovative service and community-based projects, and even less so for
services to be critical or advocacy-oriented (p. 151).
One participant who worked as a school social worker for 16 years

reflected that she had become more task-oriented since the use of performance
indicators was adopted:
There have been more constraints on how much we can work with
individuals and groups. These constraints are imposed by the funder, the
school administrator, and the agency. The changing organizational
context places great emphasis on outputs as well as documentation, and
puts a lot of pressure on us to produce numbers or figures that would
satisfy all parties concerned. Instead of talking about counseling process,
my boss kept asking me whether I will be able to achieve the caseload
required and how many cases I will close by the end of the financial year.
(Case 8)
Defining Effective School Social Work Practice
When the research participants were asked about how they defined
‘effective school social work’, one participant mentioned about the ability to
meet the performance indicators and the service quality standards prescribed
by the Social Welfare Department. She elaborated:
All I can do is to meet the quality standards, and no one would

complain about my work performance. I just go along with the rules of
the game, and there is not much room for us to negotiate. (Case 4)
While acknowledging the importance of accountability, the remaining

nine research participants harshly criticized the performance indicators
currently used to measure their effectiveness. One commented:
The indicators are proxy to measure my intervention, and these

indicators are not difficult to achieve. To be frank, how easy would it be
for me to put a tick to claim that the cases closed have achieved the
agreed goal! How would other people know the progress that the case has
demonstrated? (Case 8)
The following is the list of indicators proposed by the research

participants to be considered when defining effective school social work
services. Firstly, it is the subjective well-being of the students. Secondly, it is
about the mental health status of the student community. Thirdly, research
participants believed that the level of satisfaction about school life amongst
students is important. Then, it is essential to have social workers’ professional
reflection on the quality of the intervention in order to have improvement and
advancement continuously. Finally, they think it is more accurate and
meaningful to receive consumer feedback from parents and school personnel.
Instead of simply relying on the quantitative or caseload measurements, the
considerations amongst the ten social work practitioners to propose other
outcome indicators of their performance are relevant and essential. Adopting
evidence based practice with multi-dimensional indicators is important for
continuous school social work development (Kelly, 2008).
Qualities/Essential Skills of Effective School Social Workers
The research participants identified a wide range of qualities and essential

skills for an effective school social worker. Firstly, the ability to work with
young people and their families is of vital importance. One participant said:
A school social worker needs to communicate with young people and

their families in day-to-today practice. If one is not able to speak young
people’s language and understand their subculture, I am afraid he/she is
doomed to failure in terms of relating with the young people. Young

people nowadays need to love and be loved. Most importantly they need
to be respected too. However, some of my students I’ve worked with are
still very young, let’s say 11 years old … they are in need of the parental
guidance. In this respect, I find some knowledge relating to working with
families relevant to my work. In the past few years, in addition to the
individual casework, I’ve used family intervention a lot whenever parents
are willing to work together with the aim of improving the well-being of
their children. (Case 10)
In many respects, family is an important unit which can promote support

and guidance, thereby promoting the young person’s capacity to cope with the
fast-changing and complicated challenges in modern society (Freeman,
Franklin, Fong, Shaffer & Timberlake, 1998). The effective models (such as
family preservation services, multisystemic therapy and structural family
therapy) on helping students with their problems including drug abuse, mental
illness and criminal behaviors are largely focused on engaging the family in
the treatment process (National Institutes of Health, 2005). For instance, one
participant said:
Helping parents or guardians manage and nurture their children and

young people’s behavior is found to be effective in promoting pro-social
values and behaviors amongst the at risk adolescents (Case 4).
Another essential quality that several participants believed school social

workers should demonstrate is the ability to understand school dynamics and
structure. They mentioned that school social workers need to work with
different school personnel when dealing with the matters relating to problem
students, and they ought to seek appropriate views, approval or support from
the school personnel concerned before making a decision. For instance, the
school social worker should consult relevant teaching staff members and the
principal before recommending a student to be transferred to another school. A
number of participants recognized that winning the confidence and support
from the school personnel is absolutely essential to effective social work
practice including advocating for the student. They also reckoned that building
a trusting working relationship with key school personnel including the
principals, counseling teachers and disciplinary masters is conducive to
effective school social work services.
When they were asked about the skills that school social workers should
be equipped with, all of them answered “generic social work skills”. In order
to meet the performance indicators, school social workers should be competent
enough to demonstrate the application of a wide range of social work skills in
working with individuals, groups and the community. Amongst the list of
skills, the two most important ones were relationship skills and negotiation or
mediation skills.
Firstly, relationship skills or interpersonal skills are important to deal with
different parties or stakeholders within the school systems. Maintaining a
collegial and good relationship with parents, school children and teachers is
the cornerstone for effecting changes within the school system. It is noticeable
that school personnel were more likely to share more “inside stories” or
information with the person they trusted. One research participant elaborated
that “whilst maintaining good relationships, we have to learn to be assertive in
order to work with people who may not necessarily always be supportive to
our decision. At times we need to advocate on behalf of the student” (Case 4).
She further said, “One should use his or her people’s skills to put all interested
parties together in order to look for the best solution to the student. However,
it is not an easy task!”
Secondly, negotiation or mediation skills are also important in the eyes of
the research participants. They reported that they always dealt with the
interpersonal and group conflicts among different parties such as the family,
students or school personnel in the school setting. Workers with adequate
negotiation or mediation skills can help them resolve the conflicts and restore
harmonious relationships. The importance of acquiring skills of conflict
resolution including mediation and negotiation is heavily emphasized in the
contemporary school social work service. For instance, peer mediation
programs have been launched in Hong Kong and elsewhere to tackle school
bullying and interpersonal conflicts between students (Constable, Massat,
McDonald & Flynn, 2006, pp. 670-671; Wong, Lok, Lo & Ma, 2008).
IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY

Based upon the findings generated from interviews, this study indicates
the importance of using multiple indicators to measure the effectiveness of the
school social work service. There is always tension between quantitative
outcomes and qualitative measurements of the effectiveness of the school
social work intervention. However, learning from the research participants, the
current measurement is primarily the quantitative one and may not accurately
assess the usefulness of the school social work service on various service
users. Some of the research participants suggested that in addition to counting
the number of cases handled and completed on an annual basis, other outcome
indicators should be adopted. For instance, life satisfaction, happiness, mental
health status amongst students should be measured at the beginning and end of
the academic year. By doing so, school social workers and school personnel
will be able to assess whether their efforts to improve the well-being of
students are effective in that specific academic year, and then lessons can be
learnt from analysing the pre-and-post comparison of various outcomes.
On another note, a considerable number of the participants in this study
mentioned the impact of the changing organizational context on their day-to-
day practice, examples are: the increasing influence of managerialism and
accountability on social welfare services; the implementation of the lump-sum
grant that affects how the organization determines staffing standards and
payment structure; and the requirement to complying with the Service Quality
Standards (Social Welfare Department, 2010). All of the measures that aim to
improve the cost-effectiveness of the school social work service bring about
tremendous job stress and confusion of the school social worker role. One
participant expressed frustration about working in a school social work service
which is primarily about “doing more with less” and “quantity rather than
quality” (Case 2).
A small-scale cross-sectional study conducted by Tam and Mong (2005)
showed that the impact of these measures on the level of job stress and burnout
was minimal among 154 school social workers who completed the
questionnaire. Their finding is different from the narratives of the school social
workers in this study and further investigation into the impact of continued
changing organizational context is thus needed. Two major concerns were
given by the research participants. Firstly, they reported that there were
inadequate supervision sessions for them. Regular supervision with systematic
reviews of cases and other services are much needed to help social workers
reflect on what they did well or vice versa. Secondly, several mentioned that
the expected workload of a school social worker was too rigid, and it did not
take into an account the specific conditions and needs of the students in each
school. One participant explained, “the size of the student population in each
school varies, and the number of students who need support and help from the
school social worker is also different according to each school. So how can we
adopt a standardized and rigid caseload measurement? Such a one size fits for
all models does not work” (Case 8).
In order to improve the delivery of school social work service in Hong

Kong, recommendations were given by the research participants. Firstly, they
rightly pointed to the importance of working with allied professionals such as
clinical psychologists, educational psychologists, registered nurses and
program workers to address to the needs and complex problems of young
people and their families. With the support from these human services
professionals, school social workers will be able to devote more time to the
developmental and preventive work with young people. In the current form of
the delivery of school social work service, the social workers considered
themselves a so-called “one man band” to deal with the problematic young
people and young people in crisis, and that consumed all of their energies and
time whilst stationed in the school. Secondly, the on-the-job training should be
provided at the beginning and also for experienced school social workers.
While they are all registered social workers who are graduates from formal
social work training, continuous and systematic training for school social
workers should be organized with the support of organizations and training
institutions (Allen-Meares, 1977; Kelly, 2008). One possible topic for further
training is to facilitate school social workers to explore how they can play the
“professional leadership role” as opposed to “supplementary role” in helping
students to adjust to school conditions (Allen-Meares, 1977). Another possible
specified training area is to increase cultural competence and sensitivity
amongst school social workers (Teasley, 2005). There is evidence that the
number of new arrivals from Mainland China, and ethnic minorities (such as
Pakistani and Nepalese) in both primary and secondary schools is growing
(Hong Kong Council of Social Service, 2002 and 2008). Therefore, it is
essential to equip school social workers with several updated skills and
knowledge in terms of working with people from different cultural and ethnic
backgrounds. Although there are no compulsory continuous professional
development schemes to compel social workers to undertake training courses
in Hong Kong, the research participants believed that it is the right direction to
promote the voluntary continuous professional development, and also it is
beneficial for sustainable development of the school social work services.
In summary, this study provided a selected group of school social workers
with a venue to share their views on the school social work service in Hong
Kong. In many respects, their voices shed important insights into how to
develop and support the sustainable development of the service. Admittedly,
the delivery of school social work service in Hong Kong has not changed
drastically since its reception. The roles of school social workers have not
been re-defined or revisited since 1999 (see Table 1). It is indeed timely to
conduct an audit or a review of the effectiveness of the school social work

service, and then ways of modernising the service can be subsequently
identified.
REFERENCES
Allen-Meares, P. (1977). ‘Analysis of tasks in school social work’, Social
Work, 22 (3), 196-201.
Central Guiding Committee on School Social Work. (1984). Guideline on
school social work service. Hong Kong: Social Welfare Department.
Chiu, S. & Wong, V. (2002). School social work in Hong Kong: Constraints
and challenges for the Special Administrative Region. In M. Huxtable &
E. Blyth (Eds.), School social work worldwide (135-155). Washington,
DC: National Association of Social Workers Press.
Constable, R., Massat, C. R., McDonald, S. & Flynn J. P. (2006). School
social work: Practice, policy and research (6th ed.). Chicago, IL: Lyceum
Books.
Freeman, E. M., Franklin, C. G., Fong, R., Shaffer, G. L. & Timberlake, E. M.
(1998). Multisystem skills and interventions in school social work
practice. Washington, DC: National Assocation of Social Workers.
Hong Kong Council of Social Service. (1977). An exploratory study on the
existing school social work programme in Hong Kong. Hong Kong:
Author.
Hong Kong Council of Social Service. (2002). Opinions paper: Future
services development for new arrivals. Hong Kong: Author.
Hong Kong Council of Social Service. (2008). Network on ethnic minorities
services: Comment on the Consultation Paper on Developing
a“Supplementary Guide to the Chinese Language Curriculum for Non-
Chinese Speaking Students”. Hong Kong: Author.
Hong Kong Government. (1977). Development of personal social work among
young people in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Government Printer.
Hong Kong Government. (1979). Social welfare into the 1980s. Hong Kong:
Government Printer.
Hong Kong Government. (1991). Social welfare into the 1990s and beyond.
Hong Kong: Government Printer.
Kelly, M. S. (2008). The domains and demands of school social work practice:
A guide to working effectively with students, familes, and schools. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Ko, G. P. C. & Wong, P. Y. (1990). Secondary school students in Hong Kong:

Expectations and perceptions of school social work and guidance teacher
services. Hong Kong: Department of Applied Social Studies, City
Polytechnic of Hong Kong.
National Insitutes of Health. (2005). Preventing violence and related health-
risking social beavhiors in adolescents. Washington, D.C.: Author.
[Available http://consensus.nih.gov/2004/2004YouthViolence Prevention
OS023html.htm]
Social Welfare Department. (2000). A guide on multi-disciplinary
collaboration in school social work service. Hong Kong: Author.
[Available http://www.swd.gov.hk/doc/yc/SSW%20guideline% 202000
(chi).pdf]
Social Welfare Department. (2010). School social work service. Hong Kong:
Author. Available at: [http://www.swd.gov.hk/en/index/site_pubsvc/page_
young/sub_schoolsoci/]
Tam, S. K. T. & Mong, L. P. K. (2005). ‘Job stress, perceived inequity and
burnout among school social workers in Hong Kong’, International Social
Work, 48 (4), 467-483.
Teasley, M. L. (2005). ‘Perceived levels of cultural competence through social
work education and professional development for urban school social
workers’, Journal of Social Work Education, 41 (1), 85-98.
Wong, D. S. W., Lok, D. R. P., Lo, T. W. & Ma, K. (2008). ‘School bullying
among Hong Kong Chinese primary school children’, Youth & Society, 40
(1), 35-54.
Working Group on Review of School Social Work Service. (1999). Report on
review of school social work service. Hong Kong: Social Welfare
Department.
Relevant Websites
School Social Work Service, http://www.swd.gov.hk/en/index/site

Social Welfare Department _pubsvc/page_young/sub_schoolsoci/
Profile of Youth Services, Hong http://www.hkcss.org.hk/cy/er/index
Kong Council of Social Services _ e.htm
Education Bureau, Hong Kong http://www.edb.gov.hk
Special Administrative Region
Peer Mediation Project http://hkpeermediation.net/intro.html
(In Chinese)
Chapter 3
SCHOOL DROPOUTS AND THE ROLE

OF SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK IN TAIWAN
Chu-li Julie Liu

Department of Social Work,
Tunghai University, Taiwan
INTRODUCTION
Compulsory education is offered in Taiwan. Taiwan’s Constitution
requires young people who are under the age of sixteen to receive compulsory
school education. However, not every student adapts to compulsory school
education positively. There are many reasons why students do not adapt
successfully. For example, a lack of interest in school work may result in
unsuccessful school experiences and lead to non-attendance. School teachers
in Taiwan seldom adopt diverse criteria to assess students’ performance and so
as a consequence, students who fail to meet the prevailing rigid criteria may
experience frustration and difficulty adjusting at school (Chang, 2002). In
response to this, school teachers and other professionals such as school
counselors, school psychologists, and school social workers become involved
in helping students adapt to their school experience. School social work was
formally introduced to Taiwan in 1976, using predominantly western and more
specifically, North American practice models. The particular models adopted
for use in Taiwanese schools were based on Alderson’s clinical school social
work, school change, and school-community-pupil model (Chinese Fund for
40 Chu-li Julie Liu
Children and Families, 1998). The major goal of school social work practice in
Taiwan therefore, is to assist students experiencing learning difficulties
(Chinese Fund for Children and Families, 1998).
In this chapter, the development of school social work in Taiwan and its
current practice model will be briefly reviewed. Given that issues of high
school dropouts are the main focus of school social work practice in Taiwan,
policies relevant to this issue will be examined. An empirical study on
Taiwanese female high school dropouts will be presented. Based on the
research findings, the importance of creating legitimate positions for school
social workers and guidelines for the current model in Taiwan will be
highlighted.
BRIEF REVIEW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL

SOCIAL WORK IN TAIWAN
Hiring Policy of School Teachers and School Counselors
in Taiwan
In Taiwan, all levels of educational institutions are supervised under

Educational Affairs, Taiwan. Before 1994, only graduates from the National
Normal University or Normal Teachers’ Colleges were considered as qualified
primary and secondary school teachers (Shu, 2006). Due to this hiring policy,
only graduates from the Department of Educational Counseling, National
Normal University were considered as qualified school counselors in primary
and secondary schools. However, these school counselors were also
responsible for teaching courses such as Civic Education. Consequently,
school counselors were not able to focus on providing counseling services to
students. In addition, graduates from the Department of Educational
Counseling were few in number, and so other school teachers who were not
student counselors by training were also assigned to assist students in
counseling work. As a result, students in need often did not receive effective
and proper counseling. Given that the only way to work in educational
institutions was through obtaining degrees from the National Normal
University, this hiring policy excluded otherwise qualified social workers from
working in any educational institutions in Taiwan for decades.
Although this hiring policy was discontinued in 1994, graduates of the
National Normal University and Normal Teachers’ Colleges still constitute a
School Dropouts and the Role of School Social Work in Taiwan 41
large proportion of primary and secondary school teachers. Helping students is

still considered as the work of school teachers and school counselors given this
long-term hiring policy and its ideology of education in Taiwan. In many
respects, school social workers’ access to primary and secondary educational
institutions still is constrained because of this long-term hiring policy in
Taiwan.
The Development of School Social Work in Taiwan
Social work was introduced to Taiwan more than forty years ago.
Taiwanese pioneers of social work worked hard to practice social work in
different areas, including school social work practice. Based on the review of
Social Work Section (1998), Wang and Lin (2004a) and Lin (2003)1, all
concluded that the development of school social work in Taiwan could be
traced back to the 1960s. The Act for Special Needs Students (the Act) that was
implemented in 1964 had mandated that social workers could be hired by
educational institutes/programs for students with special needs in order to
assist those students. This hiring policy however was contradictory to the
hiring policy of primary and secondary school teachers. Therefore, the
enforcement of the Act failed to successfully open the path for social workers
to enter the educational institutions of Taiwan. Social workers still remained
excluded from educational institutes in Taiwan. This Act therefore, only
became a symbolic milestone of the development of school social work in
Taiwan as it recognized the role of social workers in the area of students with
special needs (Wang & Lin, 2004a).
In addition to the Act, the Chinese Fund for Children and Families made a
major contribution to the development of school social work in Taiwan. In the
period of 1978 to 1983, the Chinese Fund for Children and Families had aimed
to launch school social work projects in Taiwan. Given that school social work
in Hong Kong was already well-developed at the time, several senior workers
at the Chinese Fund for Children and Families were sent to Hong Kong to
receive relevant training in order to develop school social work in Taiwan.
Based on the Hong Kong school social work model, those social workers
developed school social work with an emphasis on high school dropouts and
1
There are only a few documentations recording the history of school social work in Taiwan (see
the Chinese Fund for Children and Families, Professor Lin, Wen-Yi and Professor Lin,
Sheng-Yi). Therefore, in this chapter, the development of school social work in Taiwan was
reviewed based on their work.
42 Chu-li Julie Liu
students with learning difficulties. This project, which was financially

sponsored by Educational Affairs, Taiwan, became a major enterprise that was
introduced in several big cities in Taiwan, for example, Taipei, Taichung,
Tainan, and Kaohsiung (Chinese Fund for Children and Families, 1998).
However, school principals and teachers often carried the notion that they
were responsible for disciplining students in an authoritative way. Their goal
was to turn students into submissive persons according to Chinese traditions
(Liu & Mishna, 2009). In contrast, social workers aim to enter into the school
context and help students in empathic and person-centered manners. This
caused many value conflicts between the school principals and the social
workers. This school social work project had turned out to be unsuccessful due
to repetitive conflicts caused by contradictory positions/values between school
principals and social workers. Therefore, the project was terminated (Social
Work Section, 1998).
In 1980, several Taiwanese major business enterprises and Educational
Affairs, Taiwan again provided the Chinese Fund for Children and Families
with financial support and thus the school social work project was re-launched.
Based on previous experience, the goal of this school social work project was
to help high school dropouts with an emphasis on collaboration between social
workers and local communities. This project was relatively successful in
helping high school dropouts and at-risk students solve learning and life issues
and as a result, gained support and recognition from local communities (Social
Work Section, 1998). It did not, however, last long again due to financial
cutbacks. Although it was ceased again, this project made several contri-
butions to social work practice in Taiwan. The project goal, helping high
school dropouts, became the major goal of school social work practice in
Taiwan. In addition, due to successful collaborations with local communities
and other helping-related professions that was established by social workers in
this project, the important role of social workers was recognized and
subsequently included in several regulations related to adolescents that were
later introduced in Taiwan (Wang & Lin, 2004a).
In 1999, a well-known social work professor, Dr. Wen-Yi Lin, became
Vice Mayor of Taipei County which has the largest population in Taiwan. Due
to the profound increase of juvenile delinquency in Taipei County, Dr. Lin
worked with a team of social workers to launch a school social work project
which was implemented in Taipei County only. This school social work
project was financially supported by the Taipei County Government. In this
era (1998 to 2001), the Taichung County Government, Hsin Chu Government
and Taipei City Government also funded and launched school social work
projects (Li, 2003; Wang & Lin, 2004a). The Taichung County Government
collaborated with The Humanist Education Foundation and launched a school
social work project named “supporting campus” to help students in Taichung
County to deal with their various developmental issues (Wang & Lin, 2004a).
The Education Affairs of both Hsin Chu Government and Taipei City
Government also started to employ social workers to work with primary and
secondary school teachers to help students with various difficulties during this
period of time (Lin, 2003). Compared to the previous era, school social work
flourished in Taiwan in this era (late 1990 to early 2000), because it was
officially and financially supported by several city governments in Taiwan
(Wang & Lin, 2004a). However, due to political struggles between two
political parties (Kowmingtan and Democratic Progressive Party), which
resulted in budget cutbacks, school social work project came to an end again.
Currently, the decision of whether school social work practice will be
implemented or not is left to Educational Departments of local governments
across Taiwan (Wang & Lin, 2004a).
In sum, given the hiring policy of high school teachers and school
counselors, school social workers are not viewed as legitimate positions in
high schools. In addition, school social work practice was introduced and
offered by several social services agencies which are not included in
educational systems in Taiwan. Therefore, school social worker remains as a
“contract-out” position in Taiwan. Even now, school social work practice still
remains an “optional position” rather than an “official position” in these
educational institutes. By reviewing the brief history of school social work
practice in Taiwan, it is obvious that, without a solid legislative support,
school social work will only be considered as an “add-on” to educational
institutes. Therefore, continuing efforts to make a solid legislation enactment
for school social work is essential in Taiwan.
Contemporary School Social Work Practice in Taiwan
Currently, implementation of school social work is decided by the

Educational Departments of local governments across Taiwan; specifically, it
is a decision based on the finances of individual local governments (Wang &
Lin, 2004a). Therefore, only a few cities in Taiwan implement school social
work practices; for example, Taipei, Taichung, I-Lang, and Kaohsuing. Based
on the relationship between school social workers and the school
administration bodies, three major patterns of school social work are adopted
44 Chu-li Julie Liu
by local Educational Departments that implement school social work practice

in Taiwan (Wang & Lin, 2004b.). The following categories are based on the
classifications by Wang and Lin (2004b.) as well as Lin (20032).
The first pattern is that social workers are hired by individual schools and
they work as a school staff. The second pattern is that social workers are hired
by local governments and serve several schools in the same geographic
community at a given time. In the first pattern, the major job description of
school social workers is to work with students who have learning difficulties,
difficulties adapting to the school’s learning environment or students with
mental health issues and in crisis (Lin, 2003; Wang & Lin, 2004b.). In order to
help students in an eco-system perspective, school social workers in this
pattern also provide school teachers, parents, and school administrative
personnel with consultation related to students’ difficulties, and are also
involved in school decision-making processes. In addition, school social
workers also help schools to allocate relevant social provisions and play a
leading role in the school’s counseling service (Wang & Lin, 2004b).
The second pattern is that local government contracts with non-
governmental social service agencies to deliver the school social work service
in the selected communities (Lin, 2003; Wang & Lin, 2004b). The main goal
of this pattern is to help at-risk students, school dropouts and delinquent
students (Lin, 2003; Wang & Lin, 2004b.). However, the second pattern takes
new form due to governmental budget cutbacks in 2002 (Wang & Lin, 2004b).
The second pattern currently takes the form that teachers refer in-need students
to those “contract out” social service agencies for further services. In this
pattern, social workers only deal with problems such as child abuse, poverty or
various counseling needs. Social workers therefore, are only able to provide
services to an individual student, or intervene in his or her family (Wang &
Lin, 2004b). Without being able to intervene in the school system, this pattern
is limited. This approach however, is more acceptable from the perspective of
school administrators and school teachers.
The third pattern is that social workers work in alternative schools.
Alternative schools are a project financially supported by local governments
and implemented by local private social service agencies (Wang & Lin,
2004b). Alternative school programs are available for students who are not
2
There are only a few documentations recording the patterns of school social work in Taiwan.
The most complete patterns of school of social work in Taiwan were documented by
Professor Lin, Wen-Yi and Professor Lin, Sheng-Yi. Therefore, in this chapter, the patterns
of school social work in Taiwan was reviewed based on their work.
interested in or have difficulties in finishing the regular high school

curriculum. A social worker assesses students who drop out of school first.
Then the social worker consults with other school personnel to see whether or
not a youth that has dropped out would have significant difficulties in
completing regular high school. If the social worker and other school
personnel determine that this student is likely to experience difficulties in
completing regular high school, then the student will be placed in an
alternative school with parents’ consent (Lin, 2003; Wang & Lin, 2004b.).
Currently, students who have become involved in the sex industry, high school
dropouts and students who had involved in criminal offenses are likely to be
placed in alternative schools. (Wang & Lin, 2004b). Curricula provided at
alternative schools are vocational-oriented with social workers and teachers
working collaboratively. Completion of the alternative school curriculum is
considered equivalent to regular high school. Personnel in alternative schools
include full time social workers and part time teachers (Liu & Mishna, 2009).
Social workers in alternative schools play a leading role in organizing
curricula and helping students (Liu & Mishna, 2009). Due to primary and
junior high school education being compulsory in Taiwan, a major
characteristic of this pattern is to move students with learning difficulties out
of the regular high school system and place them at alternative schools, in
order to help them obtain a high school diploma (Wang & Lin, 2004b.). Social
workers are able to work with at-risk adolescents intensively and holistically
in this pattern.
Given these three patterns of school social work practice in Taiwan,
several challenges have emerged. The first and perhaps most obvious is that
school social work project often are ceased due to budget cutbacks and values
conflicts between school personnel and school social workers (Kao & Huang,
1998). The most challenging issue however, is the ambiguous positioning of
school social workers in educational institutes (Sheng, 2004). The author
argues that the ambiguous positioning of school social workers in educational
institutes contributes to the constant budget cutbacks and collaborative issues.
The long history of only assigning Educational Counselling graduates from the
National Normal University as school counsellors as well as the overlapping
job descriptions of school counsellors and school social workers both result in
the ambiguous positioning of school social workers in Taiwan. In addition, the
term “school social work” is not regarded as an official position, thus the
splitting roles of school teachers and those of school counsellors as well as
school social workers are a difficult concept for the Taiwanese people. These
factors combined contribute to the ambiguity of school social work in Taiwan.
46 Chu-li Julie Liu
Due to this ambiguity, school social work still remains as an “optional project”
provided by local governments; an attitude which often results in budget
cutbacks and other issues.
Compared to other areas in Asia, such as Hong Kong and Korea, school
social work in Taiwan is not well-developed. If school social work is to be
implemented in Taiwan, the establishment of a legitimate position of social
workers in educational institutes must be the first priority (Sheng, 2004).
Moreover, further studies need to be done to investigate which pattern is
effective or acceptable in Taiwan’s educational institutes.
HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS IN TAIWAN

Approximately 929,125 students enrol in high school in Taiwan yearly
with students who drop out of school comprising 0.5%-0.8% of all high school
students in Taiwan in a given school year. Of the students who drop out, 54%
are male and 46% are female (Education Situation 2006-2007 reported by
National Statistics, R.O.C., 2008). Individual, family, school, and peer factors
are commonly reported by both genders as reasons for leaving school
prematurely. Among these four factors, individual aspects, such as lack of
interest in schoolwork, are the most commonly reported reasons, while family
factors including such issues as family poverty or parents’ inability or
unwillingness to participate in their children’s education are the second
commonly reported reasons (Department of Statistics, Ministry of Education,
Taiwan, 2009). In response to the high percentage of students who drop out of
high school, The High School Dropouts Prevention Act was developed with
the goal of helping students younger than 16 years of age to complete high
school. The High School Dropouts Prevention Act mandates that high school
dropouts should be reported and visited by social workers, and that social
workers are responsible for making assessments and intervention plans for
these dropouts. Due to the enforcement of The High School Dropouts
Prevention Act, social workers are provided with opportunities to work in or
with educational institutes. As such, working with school dropouts becomes a
major focus of school social work in Taiwan. Although this act allows social
workers to work with educational institutes, it still does not open the paths and
create legitimate positions for school social workers in Taiwan.
Dropping out of school is a complicated issue and contributing factors
vary. Since dropping out of school is a major focus of school social work
practice in Taiwan, the author argues that high school dropouts will not benefit
from school social work practice if school social workers do not have
legitimate positions in the education institutes or only work part-time at
schools. The following qualitative research will illustrate the struggles that
Taiwanese female high school dropouts who attended alternative schools
experienced. By illustrating their struggles, the author aims to demonstrate that
dropping out of school is an issue related to many levels of students’
surroundings and argues that a holistic approach of school social work practice
is required. Thus, a legitimate and full-time position for social workers in
education institutes is essential.
AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL

DROPOUTS IN TAIWAN
In this section, a qualitative study regarding Taiwanese female high school
dropouts will be presented. This study was done by the author (Liu, Chu-Li)
and her colleague (Mishna, Faye). Given the exploratory nature of the research
questions of this study, a qualitative research methodology was adopted.
Purposive sampling was employed to select participants. Selection criteria
included females, who have dropped out of schools, and who are under 18
years of age. Twenty female high school dropouts who were students at
alternative schools while this study was conducted voluntarily participated. In-
depth interviews were adopted to collect data. Each participant was
interviewed once and each interview lasted about 1.5 hours. Peer debriefing
and comparing research results to literatures served the purpose of research
validation. Two main themes emerged from the interviews. One theme is that
participants in this study had often struggled between “good girls’ norms” and
“bad girls’ norms.” The other theme is that participants in this study often
struggled connecting with people.
Struggling in between Good Girls’ Norms vs. Bad Girls’ Norms
Participants in this study reported that they often struggled between “good
girls’ norms” and “bad girls’ norms.” Most participants in this study came
from single-parent families, had parents who were incarcerated due to the drug
trade, or parents who had divorced and re-married. Due to these familial
contexts, most participants in this study never learned the so called “good
48 Chu-li Julie Liu
girls’ behaviors.” So when they were asked to described their school

experiences. Themes of conflicts between these two contexts emerged in their
interviews.
In Taiwan, “middle class norms” are conveyed at high schools. For
example, students are supposed to do well at schools, to finish and submit
homework on time, and to follow dress codes required by high schools. In
addition, being submissive, caring, polite, and tender are especially important
norms for females. Students who violated these norms would be investigated
by the student disciplinary staff and asked to change their behaviors (Liu,
2006). These norms were labeled as “good girls’ norms” by participants in this
study.
Participants in this study all came from so-called “broken” or “disad-
vantaged” familial backgrounds. They adopted coping strategies that are
different from the “good girls’ norms” in order to survive in their immediate
surroundings. For example, they often experienced abuse or violence in their
immediate surroundings; therefore they coped with these experiences by using
violent behaviors and thus protecting themselves from further harms. They
also coped with these experiences by running away from home or frequenting
cyber cafés at night when they were supposed to be at home. Participants in
this study labeled these behaviors and coping strategies as following “bad
girls’ norms.” They were those students who did not follow norms that are
conveyed as acceptable in high schools. In contrast, they often committed acts
that violated school regulations and as a result they often experienced conflicts
with high school teachers or student disciplinary staff. They usually adopted
strategies that helped them cope with conflicts in their surroundings and with
teachers; however, these strategies often followed the “bad girls’ norms” and
were not acceptable at schools.
After experiencing more conflicts with teachers and disciplinary staff,
they often missed classes to avoid further problems. According to The High
School Dropouts Prevention Act in Taiwan, students who do not go to schools
for three days without providing acceptable reasons to the school will be
reported to the Educational Affairs of the local governments as high school
dropouts. Therefore, participants in this study reported that they have been
reported as high school dropouts a couple of times before. One participant
whose father was severely sick had to work to support herself when she was
just a high school student. She described herself as a hard-working and
considerate person. She said that she worked in a Japanese restaurant where
her boss and customers liked her very much. Her life experiences made her
different from her high school classmates; in particular, she was more mature
than her classmates in terms of her ways of communicating with other people.
However, her life experiences made it difficult to talk to or hang around with
her classmates. The less she talked to or hung around with them, the fewer
friends she made at school, and as a result, she became increasingly isolated.
Even though she only worked as a waitress at a restaurant, she was labeled by
her classmates as a “hostess.” She reported that she was struggling in between
two sets of standards, she was a “nice girl” at her work place; in contrast, she
was a “bad girl” at school. She had to work to support herself and could not
only be a high school student.
Another participant had suffered from domestic violence when she was a
little girl. She had been placed in an institute providing foster care after severe
domestic violence. She reported that in that institute, she had to pretend she
was tough in order not to be bullied by other kids. Growing up in such a
context, ultimately led to a struggle between two sets of girls’ norms; while
she had to be tough in order to survive in the institute, her survival strategies
seemed to violate those norms that were acceptable at high schools.
Most participants reported similar stories to these two participants.
Unfortunately, it seemed that none of their teachers recognized their struggles
and had not helped them to resolve their underlying issues. In contrast, their
teachers punished them for their disobedient behaviors or for their misconduct.
Their struggling between the two sets of norms has caused more severe
conflicts with teachers. Eventually the punishment resulted in more and more
misconduct by these female students. At last, these female students identified
more with the “bad girls’ norms” due to labeling. By developing more insights
and thoughts regarding female norms, these participants might be able to adopt
more adaptive behaviors. This finding also points to a need to work with
school teachers as well as disciplinary staff to understand the struggles
students face between two set of norms, and to develop better ways to deal
with their misconduct.
Struggling with Interpersonal Relationships
Participants in this study who had dropped out of school experienced

certain relational patterns which seemed to contribute to their leaving school
prematurely. Participants described growing up in families that they
experienced as rejecting and problematic. Participants were faced with a
relational paradox whereby their caregivers are cold to them, however, they
had no choices but to stay in the relationship. Eventually, they employed
50 Chu-li Julie Liu
coping methods in which they implemented strategies of disconnection while

remaining in the relationship. Those strategies of disconnection included
running away from home for a few days, self-cutting, and emotional
disconnection. One participant reported that her parents had divorced and
subsequently married new partners, so she was left to her grandmother’s care.
She expected to live with one of her parents; however, her expectations never
came true. In addition, her grandmother showed little empathy towards her.
This participant reported that she had disengaged her emotions since she was
grade three. She also adopted running away from home every time she had
conflicts with her grandmother. She never learned to solve conflicts in a
positive way. This participant also did not develop manners that were
acceptable to school teachers. For example, she often did not submit
homework in a timely fashion, or was late for school. She, therefore, had
conflicts with school teachers and student disciplinary staff. Given that she had
never learned to solve conflicts in a positive way, these conflicts at schools
worsened her difficulties and heightened her risk of leaving school
prematurely. Also, other participants reported similar stories. They had all
suffered from relational conflicts at home, their response to which were
negative coping strategies, which in turn, led them to other conflicts with
teachers, and thus eventually resulted in them dropping out of school or
getting involved in even worse situations. .
The relational issues of these participants can be helpful in understanding
and working with female students who are at-risk for serious problems
including leaving school prematurely. They adopted coping strategies learned
through poor familial context to solve conflicts with people, including school
teachers and disciplinary staff. However, these coping strategies did not help
them solve conflicts but instead, resulted in more conflicts. The more conflicts
they experienced at schools, the less they were willing to go to school.
Eventually they ended up leaving schools prematurely. The finding indicated
that their relational struggling first related to familial contexts and secondly to
school contexts. Therefore, this finding points to a need for intervening in
individual student and her family.
IMPLICATIONS FOR SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK

PRACTICE IN TAIWAN
This empirical study suggests that the factors contributing to Taiwanese
females’ dropping out of school are complicated. Factors contributing to the
dropping out of school could be traced back to these female students’ familial
context and familial relationships. Therefore, providing these students with
interventions focusing on learning difficulties only are not enough. A holistic
intervention is needed. Therefore, school social work with an emphasis on
ecological perspective is needed in Taiwan.
Moreover, based on the qualitative research findings of female high
school dropouts’ struggles, the following practice principles that are based on
an ecological perspective are suggested to incorporate into Taiwan’s school
social work practice:
 Identify norm conflicts that female students experience. Discuss with

female students regarding these conflicts and help them understand its
origins. By helping female students understand different norms
required in different contexts, it is anticipated to minimize the
conflicts.
 Provide an empathic therapeutic context for female students at risk,
within which they can explore their relational difficulties and longings
as well as develop positive coping strategies.
 At a school or broader level, practitioners can provide information
that fosters understanding and empathy for at-risk students.
In addition, this study provides evidence which suggests that school social
work that provides services to, and intervenes in, individual students and their
families will be more helpful due to the reasons that high school students’
struggles often primarily related to their familial contexts and subsequently to
school contexts. In order to help students with intensive and holistic social
work services, the pattern that school social workers serve several schools in
the same geographical community on a scheduled basis will not achieve this
goal. Only the pattern that school social workers work full-time at schools will
be appropriate to this task. Therefore, the establishment of legitimate
positioning for social workers at educational institutes is strongly suggested.
CONCLUSION
School social work in Taiwan still remains underdeveloped compared to
other parts of Asia such as Hong Kong and Korea. This is due to the
myth/ideology of education that all primary and secondary school teachers are
52 Chu-li Julie Liu
qualified and should be responsible for student counseling work. Although

several efforts have been made, the system of school social work is still not
officially established. Currently, school social work still remains an optional
project funded by city governments across Taiwan. An empirical study
regarding female high school dropouts done by the author and her colleague;
however, indicated that factors contributing to the dropping out of school
could be traced back to familial context and relationships. Therefore,
providing those students with interventions focused on learning difficulties
only are not enough. A holistic intervention is needed. The findings of the
study pointed to a need for school social workers working full-time at schools
in Taiwan. Several works need to be done in order to establish school social
work system in Taiwan. The establishment of legitimate positions of social
workers in educational institutes should be the first priority.
REFERENCES
Chang, R. (2002). ‘An exploratory study on social workers’ perception of
reasonscontributing to drop out of high school and its prevention
strategies: The case of school social workers in Taipei city’, The NCCU
Journal of Sociology, 33, 57-90. (in Chinese).
Chinese Fund for Children and Families (1998). School social work: Theory
and applications.Taiwan: Chinese Fund for Children and Families. (In
Chinese).
Kao, Y. T. & Huang, F. L. (1998). Case study of school social work. In
Chinese Fund for Children and Families (Ed.),School social work theories
and practice (117-132). Taiwan: Chinese Fund for Children and Families.
(In Chinese).
Lin, S. -Y. (2003). School social work. Taipei: PE Publishing Co. (In Chinese)
Liu, C. -L. (2006). Female gender role and social work. The case of
Taiwanese young women.Taipei: Yeh-Yeh Book Gallery. (In Chinese).
Liu, C.-L.& Regehr, C. (2006). ‘Cross cultural application of self-in-relation
theory – The case of Taiwanese young women’, International Social
Work, 49(4), 459-470.
Liu, C. -L.&Mishna, F. (2009). High school dropouts in Taiwan: A qualitative
study. Paper presented at the Fourth International School Social Work
Conference. April 14-17, 2009. Auckland, New Zealand.
National Statistics, R.O.C. (2008). Educational situation (2006-2007).

[Available at: http://eng.stat.gov.tw/1p.asp?ctNode= 2215&CtUnit=1053
&BaseDSD=35].
Sheng, C. -Y. (2004). ‘An exploration of the effectiveness of the school social
work program in the Taipei county’, Journal of School and Family Social
Work, 1, 67-107. (In Chinese)
Shu, H. -W. (2006). ‘The study of school teacher recruitment in Taiwan’,
Journal of National Pingtung University of Education, 25, 1-38. (In
Chinese)
Social Work Section (1998).The development of school social work in
Taiwan. In Chinese Fund for Children and Families (Ed.), School social
work theories and practice (101-109), Taiwan: Chinese Fund for Children
and Families. (In Chinese).
Wang, C. H. & Lin, W. -Y. (2004a.). Social work enters to schools. In W. Y.
Lin, & Y.R.Huang (Eds.), Team work of school counseling (pp.71-100).
Taipei: Wu-Nan Publishing. (In Chinese).
Wang, C. H. & Lin, W. -Y. (2004b.). School social work theories and practice
models.In W. Y. Lin,& Y. R. Huang (Eds.), Team work of school
counseling(103-136). Taipei: Wu-Nan Publishing. (In Chinese).
Chapter 4
VIOLENCE PREVENTION IN VICTORIAN

GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS: THE
COMPLEMENTARY ROLE OF SCHOOL
SOCIAL WORK IN AUSTRALIA
Linda Johannsen
Grampians Region Student Services, Department of Education and Early
Childhood Development, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
INTRODUCTION
Working for an organization where education and teaching are the main
functions can be professionally challenging and isolating for a school social
worker, particularly for sole workers. It can also be an opportunity, within
strategic and collaborative relationships, to introduce the social work
profession’s complementary approaches and practices, underpinned by values
of social justice and individual fulfilment, to assist with student learning. The
ecological systems view of the child and young person in relation to their
environment offers a different and broader perspective of the issues which
avoids over-individualizing the problem and draws out more solutions
(Brofenbrenner, 1979). These differences are among the unique and valuable
contributions that social work brings to education.
56 Linda Johannsen
Having this perspective and a deep understanding of the interrelationship

between home, school and community, experienced school social work
practitioners, working “from the ground up”, are well able to bring complex
social theories into teacher-friendly and practical realities for school staff.
This chapter gives insight into the challenges and successes of school
social work in the government education system within the State of Victoria,
Australia. It consists of two themes. Firstly, the historical development of the
profession will focus on its tenuous inclusion within education to the more
promising contemporary scene, including the recent policy context. The
second theme focuses on violence prevention in schools and, in particular,
gender based violence prevention. Despite the challenging organizational,
resource and attitudinal barriers to advancing efforts in this regard, school
social workers can improve the service by developing key connections and
influencing local systems to create safer outcomes for children and young
people. Real life examples are given from areas such as networking, campaign
involvement and professional development for teachers. A case study will
illustrate a typical service request from a school and how the issues related to a
complex needs family direct the school social worker to adopt a range of
professional roles and tasks. One of these roles is to assist teachers to be
effective in providing a systems response to meet the student’s needs.
This chapter aims to bring attention to how school social work can
directly, and indirectly via school capacity building, improve learning and
wellbeing for socially disadvantaged children and young people. It reflects an
ecological understanding, recognizing that childhood is affected by the
contexts in which children live and grow, by their families and communities,
by the availability of services and supports and by their school experiences.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT1
School social work in Victoria celebrated its 60 years anniversary in 2008
in Melbourne. A celebratory function was attended by approximately 40 past
and present school social workers including the writer. Victoria was the first
state to employ social workers within the education system. The celebration
was organized by the Victorian branch of Australian Association of Social
Workers (AASW) School Social Workers Special Interest Group (to be called
1
As there is limited research about Australian school social work available, information from
1960s-80s is not included.
Violence Prevention in Victorian Government Schools 57
the “Interest Group”). Amongst those who attended were several original
school social workers from the early days. They related stories from the 1950s;
of riding on Melbourne trams to work and having to wear gloves, as dictated
by the fashion code of the day. They visited schools and children’s homes to
assist and support impoverished families. Despite their social work tertiary
qualifications, the Education Gazette and Teachers’ Aid (Oct 1947), originally
advertised their positions as “Assistants (Female) to Departmental
Psychologists”. Although this professionally devaluing title has long gone, it
is only recently that the profession’s unique role is being broadly
acknowledged within the education system.2
Over the years, the long-standing tenuousness of social work in education
may be attributed to several factors. Most school social workers have operated,
and many still do, as sole workers within multi-disciplinary teams known as
Student Support Services (SSS) (later described) or started as new graduates in
large secondary colleges.3 Until recently, it was common for them to be
managed by school principals who had limited or no knowledge of the breadth
of the professional role, yet conducted performance management reviews,
made SSS workforce decisions and delegated casework responsibility. The
direction was often reactive and resulted in heavy casework loads with
behaviorally challenged students. There had been a common misunderstanding
that social workers could “fix” complex student and family issues without
school leaders acknowledging the necessary changes required at the school or
community level. To a lesser extent, these beliefs are still evident. The Interest
Group’s feedback to the SSS review discussion paper (Department of
Education and Early Childhood development, 2008a) included “Schools view
casework as getting the most value for money and a way of showing a
response to need, often without thought to the bigger picture which would
enhance sustainable change” (p. 5).
The emergence of the Interest Group in 1995, as an endeavour to provide
a collective and supportive voice for the profession, initially faced many
challenges, particularly during the 1990s, as witnessed by the writer, having
begun the profession in 1994. These were times of economic rationalist
policies and cutbacks in government spending. This direction had a devaluing
2
Chris Barrett (personal communication November 2009), as part of a yet to be completed PhD
thesis on the history of School Social Work in Victoria, has researched that school social
workers were viewed as highly valued professionals at that time, providing a
complementary role within the psychology branch and school system.
3
Information has been collected from the writer’s regular attendance at the Interest Group
meetings since its inception in 1995 to date. Representatives attend all regions across the
state and these meetings have been minuted.
58 Linda Johannsen
and demoralizing effect on all SSS team members but particularly vulnerable
were social workers on short term employment contracts. Also, psychometric
testing which attracted vital internal disability funding for schools was outside
the social work professional role. This exclusion further devalued their work
by separating it from the core learning function of education. Although some
individual school social workers on contracts had principals advocate for their
continuing employment, it did not extend to the profession as a whole.
Mahony (1995) states:
In this climate (of curtailed spending) psychological and health

services to students may seem to be increasingly regarded as an
unnecessary and unaffordable luxury (p. 4) (and)…There is a real risk
that school principals…are even more likely to give priority for scarce
funding to more immediate demands and even more to undervalue the
potential contribution of social work services (p. 5).
Even within SSS, social workers were not generally considered core
members until recently. Link (as cited by Mahony, 1995) attributed this to
school social workers having a “guest status” within the government education
system and therefore always influenced by the host organization. Professional
survival, under these conditions, was difficult enough let alone advocating for
social work values which may be misunderstood or even personalized.
Ironically, it was at this low point for the profession that a well-researched
policy document entitled Framework for Student Support Services in Victorian
Government Schools 1998 (to be called the “Framework”) was released by the
education department. The policy was in response to a tragically high number
of youth suicides and it, indirectly, validated social work methods and
practices as new and innovative to education. It highlighted the important need
for a systems response; for prevention and early intervention practices, for
strong community connections, continuity of care and it challenged the past
casework emphasis. Although heartened by the direction, having the
profession unacknowledged was not surprising to school social workers.
Mahony (1995) had also found that “the activities of school social work are
generally carried out inconspicuously … within a much larger host setting, the
State education system” (p. 4) and urged the profession to be proactive.
Although the policy direction behind the Framework remained longer than the
contracted youth workers appointed with it,4 it had little influence by the time
a new policy resurrected it a decade later.
The Interest Group has remained a dynamic network with links to AASW
(professional association) and key education personnel. The Interest Group’s
core team developed Standards for School Social Workers (2008), a
comprehensive document ratified by AASW at a state and national level. The
promotion of this document to education managers has provided an
opportunity to articulate their role, values and function, complement
management policy as well as assist with the practice and accountability of
new and existing school social workers. The Interest Group has also supported
school social workers to gain greater pay parity with educational psychologists
and provided input into new policy directions. The group provides
professional networking, peer support, collective responses to address
common issues and guest speakers. A wikispace has been set up to allow
information sharing and be more inclusive of those who are unable to attend.
Future plans are to host a School Social Work Study Tour from the United
States for mutual professional learning, promoting social work amongst
education colleagues and managers and creating greater international
connections.
From the tenuous inclusion of the past, a more promising scenario for
school social workers is emerging.
CONTEMPORARY SCENE
Australian school social work is a relatively uncommon profession,
largely due to the historic factors discussed. State Education Departments’
correspondence (2009) reveals that school social work services only exist in 6
of the 8 states and territories of Australia. School social worker numbers are as
follows: Victoria (85), Tasmania (75), South Australia (11), Western Australia
(11), Australian Capital Territory (4) and Queensland (3).5
4
In response to an alarming number of youth suicides the Suicide Prevention Victorian Task
Force Report (1997) recommended, and were provided, additional youth workers to
strengthen SSS. The Taskforce revealed that, as suicide indicators had not been apparent in
many who had died, an emphasis on building resilience in all students be adopted.
5
Independent and Catholic schools employ very few social workers, the exact number is difficult
to determine as they may be employed directly by schools and using different titles
(Catholic Education Office 2009). This may also be applicable to state education
departments including Victoria.
60 Linda Johannsen
The Victorian government Department of Education and Early Childhood

Development (DEECD) is divided into 9 regions and a Melbourne head office.
Currently included in regional staff are SSS comprising social workers,
psychologists, speech pathologists and visiting teachers who are accountable
to regional management. Primary and secondary school teachers refer students
to SSS, with parent/carer consent, when learning or wellbeing needs are
identified. These needs are unable to be met through usual school based
welfare processes. The SSS team then allocates these students, aged between
5-18 years, to the most suitable and available worker. Across the state, there
are 1,587 government primary, secondary and specialist schools teaching
539,116 students. Therefore the approximate school social worker to student
ratio is 1: 7000 (DEECD, 2008b).
The title ‘social worker’ is used by DEECD although ‘school social
worker’ may be used by practitioners to highlight the specialised nature of the
field and the focus on successful educational outcomes. A Bachelor of Social
Work is a mandatory qualification to be employed and, in 2009, salaries range
from AUS$52,000–$89,000. School social workers who do not work within
SSS, may be employed directly by secondary colleges or within DEECD
regional and head offices. They may be employed under titles of youth worker,
attendance officer, project officer, student welfare co-ordinator and school
counselor. Primary schools who qualify for social disadvantage funding may
employ a social worker as their primary welfare officer. However, the writer
has observed that, as these positions are short term contracts, they are often
first to be dissolved when there are budget restraints. Unfortunately, as well,
there is an increasing trend for these positions to be assigned to teachers who
have little or no welfare training. Without a social worker who can introduce
complementary roles, such as, make home visits, perform complex
assessments and facilitate family, school or community links, successful
student wellbeing outcomes may be limited.
In Victoria, the role is predominantly casework, consultation with teachers
about student wellbeing issues and critical incidents, such as, school bus
crashes, bushfires and deaths which impact the whole school community.
Other roles may include groupwork, program development and implement-
tation, providing professional development to teachers and community
networking. In some regions, recent leadership roles (see policy context) have
enabled school social workers to give input into student wellbeing policy and
organisational development at a regional and state level.
Casework referral reasons generally include violent behaviors, bullying,

peer relationships, attendance and mental health issues which impact on
student learning and wellbeing. A psychosocial assessment, undertaken by a
school social worker, often reveals causal or contributing factors such as grief
and loss, trauma, child abuse, sexual assault, mental and physical illness,
poverty, substance abuse and family violence.
The importance of school social work was highlighted during the recent
2009 devastating Victorian bushfires aftermath. Kelley Latta, Acting Manager,
Bushfire Psycho-Social Response and Recovery, (personal communication,
August 3, 2009) reported that in the early response stage, school social
workers doing schoolyard duty and answering phones were appreciated more
than counseling to allow teachers the time to debrief together. To be effective,
it is necessary to have an understanding of the schools’ needs and in this
instance school social workers had demonstrated an ability to read and adapt
their role to where it was most needed.
POLICY CONTEXT
There are two current educational policies relevant to school social work
which support the professional role and improve the service. These policies are
part of broader government agenda to address the needs of disadvantaged
children and young people through DEECD, and are expanding SSS roles to
include systems responses to issues.
Guidelines for Student Support Services
Building on from the Framework, and to address the issue of significant

inconsistency across regions, the Strengthening Networks and School
Communities: Guidelines for Student Support Services (SNSC) (DEECD,
2009a) policy document, provides, for the first time, an overarching statewide
policy to guide consistent practices for SSS. It includes targeted service
delivery to students with the greatest need, leadership roles from within SSS,
greater support and supervision and a data system to provide an evidence base
for outcomes.
With additional funding to most regions, new career structures have
enabled the appointment of school social work team leaders who provide a
supportive, educative and leadership role to their colleagues and give input
62 Linda Johannsen
into regional planning for student engagement and wellbeing. Although

systems issues abound, having a new structure for the development of teams is
another step toward strengthening the profession.
Of particular note in this policy is the expansion of the SSS role to
“strengthen the capacity of the workforce within schools to meet the needs of
children who are disadvantaged” (p. 14). The new role includes school social
workers developing teachers’ ability to understand and deal with complex
student needs and assisting with creating a more inclusive and engaging school
environment. Therefore responsibility for these students is with the school, and
no longer should the caseworker alone be expected to “fix” student issues.
This policy may also provide additional support toward cultural changes,
promoting systems models and suggested alternative approaches are less likely
to be personalised as the individual school social worker’s view.
Student Engagement
From a social work values perspective, Effective Schools are Engaging

Schools: Student Engagement Policy Guidelines (ESES) (DEECD, 2009b),
policy document, is an important development. It acknowledges that
engagement must occur in order for student learning to be optimised and links
student wellbeing with both learning outcomes and the school environment. It
supports schools to create inclusive school cultures in which children and
young people feel their differences, ideas, needs and beliefs are valued and
respected. Reactively suspending students can no longer occur, but instead,
school leaders will be supported and assisted to think more systemically about
resolving student issues.
However, to improve the school social work service, further discussion is
needed where advocacy is warranted to resolve issues. The ESES policy states
that where an advocate accompanies a parent (family member) to a school
meeting, “the advocate attends only as an observer and should refrain from
directing the process or answering questions on behalf of the student or their
parents/carers.” (DEECD, 2009b, p. 24) Advocacy, which is an important role
of social work, is in this context, viewed in a narrow sense. When a student or
parent/carer is likely to disadvantage themselves by being over-anxious,
disempowered or aggressive, a skilled advocate can verbalise on their behalf
and air and resolve differences, providing a better outcome for all. However, if
school social workers are considering advocacy with a school, they must be
mindful of all the possible outcomes. Hepworth & Larsen (1990) recommends
careful reflection on questions such as ‘Is it really what the client wants?’ and
‘Will it bring the desired result?’ (p. 461) are crucial before advocating.
One of the challenges of school social work is to assist schools to view
advocacy in a broader context. Developing clear principles and an
understanding about the best course of action, is important to gain credibility
so that the outcome will benefit the student, the family and, as a consequence,
the school.
In summary, the profession is being strengthened by team structures,
greater cross regional consistency and the expanded role of school capacity
building. School social workers are now in a stronger position to support
broader policy directions which enable greater opportunities for socially
disadvantaged students.
GENDER BASED VIOLENCE PREVENTION AND SCHOOLS

As previously stated, school social work casework services cover a wide
range of wellbeing and learning issues which impact on students, including the
varied facets of violence. Violence management requests are common in
referrals from schools because of the safety issues and disruptive attention it
creates in a school setting. The writer has chosen this theme as a result of
identifying family violence as being a common underlying issue in referrals to
school social work where student violence is identified. According to the
Victorian Law Reform Commission (2005), 1 in 4 children have experienced
family violence and there is also evidence that many of these children have
been traumatised as a result (McIntosh, 2003). Therefore, this is a common
and universal issue and the significant academic, social, emotional and
behavioral effect on students is widely acknowledged (Common Risk
Assessment Framework, 2007; Perry, 2003).
In a school context, gender based violence refers to violence that occurs
among intimate partners, such as, young students dating and within families
where children and young people are exposed to violence. As offenders are
male in 90% of reported family violence incidents in 2008 (Victorian Police
media release), gender is a key factor.
Currently, there is a strong government commitment to address gender
based violence, both at a state and national level. Australian Prime Minister,
Kevin Rudd, in his parliamentary speech on White Ribbon Day (November
25, 2009) stated: “It is…the Australian male gender, who are responsible and
we must show leadership in stamping this (gender based violence) out in
64 Linda Johannsen
future”. Since 2005, the Victorian State Government has spent over $140
million on a whole-of-government 10 Year State Plan to prevent violence
against women (Office of Women’s Policy, 2009). In line with this, DEECD
commissioned a comprehensive report entitled Respectful Relationships
Education in Schools (RREiS) (2009c), a well-researched and evidence based
document to inform gender based policy and program development in schools.
RREiS advocated that programs should draw on feminist theories which
provide the most comprehensive and credible research about gender, power
and violence.
Despite the efforts of relevant DEECD personnel to promote and embed
RREiS, barriers to providing gender based violence prevention in schools are
challenging. As well as organisational barriers, there are ongoing debates
about what should or should not be included in core curriculum and how
scarce resources should be prioritised to meet the many and varied needs of
disadvantaged students. Apart from the mandatory reporting of child abuse,
family issues are generally considered by teachers as outside their expertise
and role as educators, with the responsibility going to community service
providers to address. There is also the attitudinal barrier of anti-feminist
thinking which was highlighted by the media, drawing attention away from the
key points, when a newspaper report on RREiS was provocatively entitled
“Boys to get gender lesson – Feminism classes aim to curb violence” (Herald
Sun November 26, 2009). Personal safety is another barrier for school staff
due to their reluctance to intervene in case violent individuals seek reprisals.
The writer observes that these barriers are increased or reduced according to
the school culture and leadership.
Even with DEECD’s commitment, the time, resources and workload
demands in developing a new template on which to build a basis for change
will need to be resolved. At the implementation stage, there needs to be an
emphasis on the links with community resources and partnerships otherwise
there may be a non-compliant response from teachers who feel targeted as
social change agents. Hence there is the continuing need for a whole of
government approach to support the direction as well as influential school
leadership.
Added to this scenario are the two other government agendas for violence
prevention in schools which are the ongoing review into bullying and alcohol
fuelled violence. Due to these demands on schools, if a decision is made to
simplify and establish one violence prevention program that encompasses all
three areas, the concern is that it would become a “one size fits all” model. As
the writer has observed that teachers share a common belief that general
relationship building programs are sufficient to address all issues of violence,

it is likely that the gender-power link with violence would be overlooked in
favor of the other two more socially acceptable gender neutral condemnations
of violence. According to RREiS, programs must address this fundamental
link otherwise gender based violence prevention attempts by DEECD will be
ineffective and, as a result, many children and young people will continue to
be exposed to it.
These issues need to be resolved initially at the state level. School social
workers can improve the service by being aware of the broader social context
and, with a commitment to social justice, contribute to support student
learning and wellbeing. This contribution includes being more visible;
developing key connections, giving input into relevant policies where possible
and seeking research grants to provide evidence. It is also important to
understand more about barriers from the teacher perspective, including access
to research, in order to assist them in building their capacity to overcome
them, when the teacher and the resource environment are ready.
At a local level, the following are real life examples of how school social
work services can be further improved to create safer outcomes for children
and young people. These involve supporting and influencing local systems
aligned with gender based violence prevention through strong collaborative
and strategic partnerships.
WHITE RIBBON DAY

One of the biggest successes in drawing attention to the issue of family
violence locally is White Ribbon Day. This international campaign is the first
male-led campaign which aims to end violence against women and girls.
Males are encouraged to take a stand and say that violence, in any form, is
never acceptable. The wearing of a white ribbon is the pledge never to
commit, excuse or remain silent about this issue.
School social workers can work with the local committee to identify and
engage school communities and facilitate activities which raise awareness
about gender based violence prevention. In the writer’s region, male students
from three secondary colleges volunteered to be selected as youth ambassadors
and take on a leadership role within their schools, participating in a range of
place based activities which promote and raise awareness of the issue. The
youth ambassadors were encouraged to think critically about the cultural
expectations of gender roles, to challenge attitudes and behaviors which
66 Linda Johannsen
support violence and adopt and promote improved ways of relating within the
school and local community.
School-based violence interventions have been identified as having

the strongest evidence of effectiveness because they can target students at
a stage of life when the risk of using or being subject to violence is high
and yet prospects for preventions are strong. (White Ribbon, 2009, p.9)
As part of the campaign, awareness raising and non-therapeutic activities

were extended into primary schools. Alongside a classroom teacher, a school
social worker co-taught upper primary students about “what makes my family
special” and the students presented their ideas in artwork on postcards. The
purpose of the discussion was to promote respectful relationships within
families within the context of White Ribbon Day. Children’s experiences were
validated and care taken to sensitively and appropriately deal with disclosures
and follow up consultation. To gain maximum effectiveness, the writer
supports evidence based practice and, wherever possible, seeks to develop
structures to consistently enable access to best evidence.
A week of activities culminated in a celebratory community event with
free entertainment and food on November 25 (White Ribbon Day). The youth
ambassadors, along with the adult ambassadors, received public recognition
for their commitment; the event received advantageous media coverage and
has successfully attracted bigger crowds each year including families. The
teachers involved have recognised the valuable message for students and the
community and now have a greater capacity and commitment to manage this
project themselves.
FAMILY VIOLENCE PREVENTION NETWORK

In light of the greater role of school social workers to build school
capacity to address barriers to student wellbeing and learning, the profession is
well placed to assist teachers to make strategic partnerships with community
service providers. Likewise, these providers who are willing and able to offer
professional resources to schools can be greatly assisted to navigate inroads
via the school social worker’s knowledge and close working relationships.
This knowledge includes DEECD’s internal networks, schools’ current crisis
needs, key personnel, schedules, timetables as well as broader educational
priorities. Direct links can be made so teachers can then assist children and
young people experiencing family violence, through collaboration with the

local specialist services. This also provides a connection to relevant
knowledge of statewide family violence reform.
Networking with a dynamic group of diverse individuals with a common
interest can be restoratively energising when complex casework issues appear
overwhelming. The writer’s local Family Violence Prevention Network
(FVPN) work together and include personnel from police, court, legal,
specialist and general welfare agencies as well as indigenous workers and
support group representatives.
FVPN’s achievements are numerous and can be directly beneficial to
school communities. When resources became available through a family
welfare agency to provide a Children’s Art Therapy group to children who had
experienced family violence and/or homelessness, the school social worker
was able to quickly link it with a spate of relevant school referrals to SSS. The
agency workers were appreciative as they did not need to advertise, could
begin the group promptly at the appointed time, and gained assistance with
transporting the children via the schools they attended. The schools involved
were grateful for the support and there are now plans to extend the program to
adolescents, if more funding becomes available.
“STUDENTS EXPERIENCING FAMILY VIOLENCE” FORUMS

School social workers can co-facilitate professional development with key
agencies, after making the initial links with internal networks. The FVPN
together with the local Teacher Education Network, who advertise and
resource events, delivered several “Students Experiencing Family Violence”
forums to teachers. The aim of the forums was to introduce resources
including the Common Risk Assessment Framework (for Mainstream
Professionals) (2007), Calmer Classrooms (2007) and Through a Child’s Eyes
(n.d.) which provided the research base for the theoretical component of the
forum. The importance of these forums is supported by Child Safety
Commissioner, Bernie Geary (2007) in Calmer Classrooms:
By understanding and building relationships with traumatised

children, teachers can make an enormous contribution to their lives.
Children who develop an attachment to their school and a love of learning
will have greater resilience in the face of adversity than those who do not.
(Forward)
68 Linda Johannsen
Most teachers who attended were currently dealing with students

experiencing family violence. They were eager to develop engagement and
management strategies, seek support and assistance from the specialist
agencies present and debrief on specific issues.
The forum consisted of theory, teacher-friendly strategies developed by
the school social worker and interactive activities. Teachers developed a flow
chart which enabled them to clearly identify, respond and make referral
pathways for these effected students and families. FVPN met teachers both
formally and informally and provided information on their service and their
role in regard to schools.
A brief outline of the agenda included: (1) introductions including roles;
(2) definitions and impact of family violence and trauma on students; (3) pre-
engagement strategies for staff such as secondary consultation with key
agencies, cultural/linguistic diversity and disability factors, the relationship
with the child, confidentiality, duty of care and school policies like critical
incidents; (4) trigger questions to engage the mother and child, having an
awareness of their behaviors and needs; (5) referral pathways or other
appropriate responses; and (6) school management strategies included safety
plans, student support and behavioral expectations, maintenance of familiar
routines, ongoing consultation with agency staff include case conferences,
resilience building, teacher debriefing and professional development needs and
resource information. The forums ended with the exchange of contact details
for follow up visits. Requests were made for similar presentations in future.
WEEK WITHOUT VIOLENCE CLOTHESLINE PROJECT

The resistance to gender based violence prevention and sensitivities about
how the broader community may perceive violence in schools, were
highlighted in the above project. FVPN had celebrated Week Without
Violence, an international violence prevention campaign, with an awareness
raising community event entitled The Clothesline. The school social worker
invited a cluster of primary schools to participate, whereby the art teachers had
children paint and write slogans on t-shirts with a violence prevention theme.
The t-shirts were then pegged onto a “clothesline” for display at a local
shopping centre. Although the event was organised by FVPN, the schools
wanted a gender neutral theme believing that addressing the issue of bullying
was more applicable for them. The children’s artwork via the specialist
agencies was not only specific to family violence but the t-shirts’ graphic
images and wording were designed to shock the audience into changing
attitudes. This was in marked contrast to how the teachers wanted the broader
community to view the issue and the schools represented. They instead
directed children to use solution focussed language such as “We can Solve
Conflicts Peacefully” and “Listen More. Fight Less”. As a principal from one
of the schools explained: “If people see those shock messages from our
students, they will think that our school has a real problem with violence and
they won’t send their kids here”. Although the principals involved highly
valued violence prevention and community connections to increase student
safety, protection of image was also an important consideration. As a result,
the displays were separated within the same shopping centre but could be
perceived as representing a balanced view, that is, experiences of pain but also
a vision of hope. The display did draw a lot of attention so achieved its
objective.
As well as supporting and influencing local systems, school social
workers directly support children who are experiencing family violence as
outlined in the following case study.
Case Study
There are some school leaders and individual teachers who demonstrate
high levels of insight into complex needs families and successfully apply
resources and approaches to engage, support and empower them. However, the
writer has observed a common belief amongst teachers that education and
behavior management techniques can resolve all student behavior issues.
Whilst this may apply to most students, when it does not occur, as in the case
of trauma or complex needs, teachers can experience frustration and a personal
sense of failure as a result. Further, when a student or family chooses not to
engage therapeutically with a practitioner, other approaches need inclusion,
particularly when there are safety issues involved.
As family violence is often hidden (Common Risk Assessment Frame-
work, 2007), generally referrals from schools focus on behavioral concerns
with requests for “counseling”, “coping skills” or “anger manage-ment”. The
writer has found that teachers easily identify individualised issues of
behaviorr, poor concentration, anger and peer relationships problems but do
not always identify the environmental context, such as, isolation, stigma and
abuse. When teachers do, they often feel powerless to intervene (unless it
relates to child abuse where processes are clear). Therefore, the challenge for
70 Linda Johannsen
school social workers is to support them to feel comfortable with identifying

and responding systemically to these issues, as well as strengthening their
capacity to engage these students and parents.
Continuing the theme of gender based violence, the following actual case
study is typical of referrals from teachers. It uses an ecological approach to
influence change, drawing from systems, such as, individual, family, school
community and the broader community and their interactions. Changes have
been made to de-identify and simplify the information and the student at the
centre will be called “Scott”.
Referral Reason and Request
A teacher referred Scott to SSS for anger management and counseling. He

was defiant toward his teachers, violent toward his peers, not completing work
tasks and disruptive in the class. The usual disciplinary measures, including
suspensions, had not improved his behavior neither had rewards for correct
behavior. The student’s mother was reported as uncooperative, particularly
when she was uncontactable when Scott needed to be withdrawn for violent,
uncontrollable behavior.
Family Background
Scott is seven years old and lives with his mother, Debbie and her partner,
Ray. Scott’s mother is white and his father, of indigenous Koori6 background,
was killed in a car accident when he was five years old. There is a history of
chronic family violence, unemployment, generational poverty, substance abuse
and Debbie suffered from clinical depression, significant physical health issues
and lives on an invalid pension. Scott had no contact with both his paternal
and maternal extended family due to distance and unresolved family conflict.
Scott had witnessed his mother being severely physically assaulted by both his
father and, more recently, by Ray. Ray was uninvolved in all school matters
and, being unemployed, did not contribute to the family financially. Although
Debbie and Scott shared a close bond, their enforced mutual protectiveness put
a strain on their relationship. Debbie felt powerless and humiliated, believing
6
Koori refers to New South Wales and Victorian people of indigenous heritage. The term
aboriginal is no longer used, in favor of “First Nations People” or the indigenous group
name.
that the school blamed her for Scott’s behavior and that she was thought of as
a “bad mother”. Defensively, she blamed the school for not managing Scott’s
behavior and blamed his peers for provoking him into justifiable retaliation.
Debbie was considering moving Scott to another school.
Case Plan
Following a thorough pyschosocial assessment, it became clear to the

school social worker that an individual approach, as requested, would not be
enough to address Scott and his family’s complex needs. The family were
initially distrustful of professional services, but as Debbie was anxious to
resolve the school issues she agreed to the intervention. Home visits suited her
best and she felt more empowered in her own home than at the school.
Scott presented as chronically traumatised by past events. He viewed his
world as a hostile place and had difficulty trusting peers and adults. He was
tense and hypervigilant with an overly heightened response to perceived attack
and always on guard, hence his violent behaviors. Scott engaged with the
school social worker in regular activity-based visits at school and home.
Rather than discussing behavior, trust developed with the new focus on his
needs which were; support to his mother, support to the mother-child
relationship and securing his unsafe environment. He identified a desire to join
Little Athletics and the children’s charity, Alannah & Madeline Foundation,
was sought to fund this. The plan with Little Athletics was to build his
resilience by developing connections with positive male role models,
developing new skills and receiving recognition for his achievements. Scott
was also eligible for a school uniform, books and other educational support
from another charity focussing on education, the Smith Family.
As Debbie is white, Scott’s indigenous heritage was unknown to the
school staff. Scott was therefore eligible for a range of additional resources
including tutoring at school and a Koori support worker. This worker received
consent to arrange for Scott to make contact with his paternal family. This led
to further visits, the building of a relationship with them and, as a
consequence, he learnt about his indigenous culture including his place
within it.
During this time, when Debbie sustained injuries resulting from a family
violence incident, Scott was empowered to contact the police. Under their new
powers (Review of Family Violence Laws Report, 2005), the police were able
to lay charges thus avoiding the victim doing so and being placed at further
72 Linda Johannsen
risk of retaliation. Ray was placed temporarily outside the family home
although Debbie defended his actions and did not want him to leave. As a
result, a condition of Ray’s Intervention Order was his attendance at a men’s
behavior change program and he was able to return to the residence. Given the
changed family circumstances including the intervention of services, a child
protection investigation for abuse was not warranted.
The school social worker focused on engaging Debbie by listening to her
immediate needs from the security of her home, where her powerbase was
equalised, and providing practical support to address them. Her immediate
concern was where Scott would stay, in Ray’s absence, during her imminent
hospitalisation for minor surgery. Local Council services were engaged to
provide alternative accommodation for Scott and the school social worker
visited Debbie in hospital as well as transporting her to a follow up medical
appointment. To reduce Debbie’s isolation and using a strengths based
approach, the school social worker provided information and support in regard
to her desire to return to study.
It was important to Scott’s stability at school for him to receive consistent
and collaborative direction from key adults so the case plan also focussed on
developing a partnership between Debbie and the school. Meetings were held
with the principal, the teacher, Debbie and the school social worker and these
meetings allowed Debbie to voice her concerns and be listened to.
Individualised learning plans for Scott were discussed, clear communication
established and trusting relationships were built.
With the family’s consent, the school social worker used the opportunity
to provide professional development to his teachers on the impact of trauma,
identifying and responding to family violence and information about
community service providers and resources. When aware of some of the
family issues being experienced by Scott, his teachers were more tolerant of
his behavior and more understanding of Debbie’s difficulties in seeking a
resolution.
With the support from the Koori support worker and Scott’s Koori
relatives, the school embraced and celebrated Scott’s indigenous culture in a
special theme day. As a result, his identity as an “angry little boy” changed to
a more interesting and respected one by his peers and teachers.
Case Outcome
Without understanding Debbie and Scott in the context of stigma, abuse

and isolation, focussing solely on deficit models of individual change were
perceived by mother and son as victim blaming and led to disconnections.
Although the teacher had suspected the family’s complex needs, he had felt
powerless to intervene without the skills and knowledge of systems
approaches. However, having Scott referred for anger management and
counseling led to an escalated situation as Scott believed he was not only held
responsible for his situation, but somehow expected to change it.
I have observed that teachers are highly skilled and effective in behavior
management techniques because they are practiced on a daily basis. In Scott’s
case, he knew exactly the boundaries and his options regarding managing his
anger. However, this knowledge had made no real sense to him because he
perceived the enemy was external and not within him. The misunderstanding
between them had been clearly mutual.
Within a trusting relationship which began developing between Scott and
the teacher as a result of the case plan, Scott felt encouraged to take personal
responsibility for his actions and his behavior improved. Applying a systems
approach and using complementary skills to behavior management practices in
the schools therefore provided an effective outcome.
As a result of the case plan, Scott’s violence and defiance became less
frequent and intense, his school experiences were more positive and his
mother no longer believed changing schools was necessary. To improve
outcomes for socially disadvantaged children, this case study outlines the vital
role of school social workers to question the over-use of deficit models and
instead complement school capacity building by introducing new skills,
knowledge and approaches.
CONCLUSION
The recent strengthening of school social work in Victorian Government
Schools has given the profession new opportunities to improve the service by
assisting schools with systemically addressing the needs of socially
disadvantaged children and young people. From the past focus on professional
survival, school social workers are now in a stronger position to proactively
respond to issues at a state, local and individual level by promoting alternative
74 Linda Johannsen
and complementary roles. Continuance of strong, strategic and collaborate

connections are important to support this momentum.
Whilst the resistance to gender based violence prevention in schools is
powerful, the issues which prevent traumatised children and young people
from flourishing in schools continue to prevail. As a consequence, there
remains a serious government commitment via a changing resource and policy
environment, to address all related issues of violence by promoting respectful
relationships. However, care must be taken not to overlook gender in favor of
a “one size fits all” model. To enable school staff to adopt the responsibilities
and roles as recommended by the RREiS report, they need stronger
community partnerships and support, including influential leadership to
overcome any attitudinal, organisational and personal barriers which may
arise. It is also important that school social workers maximise these
opportunities by being more visible and strategic in providing the
complementary, yet vital, knowledge, skills and support necessary in schools
to create safer outcomes for children and young people.
REFERENCES
Barrett, C., Downing, C., Frederick, J., Johannsen, L. & Riseley, D. (2008).
Standards for school social workers. (Based on Australian Association of
Social Workers Practice Standards for Social Workers: Achieving
Outcomes, 2003)
Brofenbrenner, V. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD)
(2008a). Strengthening student support services: A discussion paper for
consultation. Victoria: The author.
Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (2008b). Annual
report 2007-08. Victoria: The author.
Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (2009a).
Strengthening networks and school communities – Guidelines for student
support services. Victoria: The author.
Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (2009b).
Effective schools are engaging schools: Student engagement policy
guidelines. VIC: The author.
Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (2009c).

Respectful relationships education in schools: Violence prevention and
respectful relationships education in Victorian secondary schools. VIC:
The author.
Department of Human Services. (2007). Common risk assessment framework:
Family violence risk assessment and risk management framework.
Victoria: The author.
Downey, L. (2007). Calmer classrooms – A guide to working with traumatised
children. Melbourne, VIC: Child Safety Commissioner.
Department of Education (1998). Framework for student support services in
Victorian government schools. VIC: The author.
Education Gazette and Teachers’ Aid (October 1947) Victoria
Hepworth, D., & Larsen, J. (1990). Direct Social Work Practice. Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth.
Law Reform Commission, Victoria (2005). Review of family violence laws
report (December 2005). [Available at: www.lawreform.vic.gov.au].
Masanauskas, J. (2009). ‘Boys to get gender lesson’, Herald Sun (November
26, 2009). [Available at: www.heraldsun.com.au]
Mahony, D. (1995). A study of school social work services in the Victorian
Directorate of School Education. VIC: LaTrobe University.
McIntosh, J. (2003). ‘Children living with domestic violence: Research
foundations for early intervention’, Journal of Family Studies, 9 (2), 187-
199.
Office of Women’s Policy (2009). Right to respect: Victoria’s 10 year state
plan to prevent violence against women 2010-2020. VIC: The author.
Perry, B. (2003). Effects of traumatic events on children. Houston, Texas: The
ChildTrauma Academy. [Available at: www.ChildTrauma.org]
Rudd, K. (2009). Prime minister of Australia, parliamentary speech
(November 25, 2009). [Available at: www.openaustralia.org/debates]
School Social Workers Special Interest Group (2008). Feedback for student
wellbeing division (DEECD) on strengthening student support services
discussion paper (Unpublished). ACT, WA, SA, Tasmania, VIC, QLD:
Various State Education Departments.
Suicide Prevention Victorian Task Force, Department of Health (1997).
Suicide prevention Victorian task force report 1997. Victoria: The author.
76 Linda Johannsen
Grampians SAAP Childrens Resource Project (n.d.). Through a child’s eyes:

Children’s experience of family violence and homelessness. Victoria: The
author.
Victoria Police (2009). Media release: Family violence powers crack down on
perpetrators. (Statistics on safety notices). [Available at: www.police]
White Ribbon (2009). White ribbon day schools kit. North Sydney: The
author. [Available at: www.whiteribbonday.org.au].
Relevant Websites
Week Without Violence www.weekwithoutviolence.org.ca

Alannah & Madeline www.amf.org.au
Foundation
Smith Family www.thesmithfamily.com.au
Mens Behavior Change www.familycare.net.au/Programs/CommunityPro
grams/MensBehaviorChange.aspx
Chapter 5
APPLIED THEATRE: APPLIED SOCIAL

WORK IN NEW ZEALAND
Peter O’Connor
School of Critical Studies in Education, Faculty of Education,
The University of Auckland, New Zealand
APPLIED THEATRE
All cultures throughout history have had forms of theatre as a central and
important construct. From the beginning of theatre in the West as a
recognizable art form and academic discipline in ancient Greece, theatre has
acted as a process for people to consider the key questions of its time. It has
provided a space for questioning, for challenging and celebrating our lives as
individuals and as communities. Aristotle saw it as a tool for maintaining state
control (as did Hitler and Mussolini) whilst others including Bertholt Brecht,
Paolo Friere and Augusto Boal have recognized its potential as a revolutionary
tool. Aware of but perhaps also confused by its potential, Plato banned it from
the republic. Much mainstream theatre operates to divert and distract people
from their everyday lives, providing a chance to escape into safer or less
troubled worlds. In the mainstream theatre, actors perform to silenced and
invisible spectators. Over the last 40 years a new form of theatre which
deliberately breaks down the space between actor and spectator by involving
78 Peter O’Connor
every body in the making of theatre has signaled a return to the theatre
creating a space for communal discussion. This new form of theatre, described
with the portmanteau term applied theatre refers to theatre not made within
traditional theatre buildings, but made in and with communities. The
boundaries between actor and spectator are deliberately blurred as theatre is
constructed to address key social issues. Applied theatre programs are
motivated not to distract audiences from the central concerns of our times.
Instead they strive to provide the potential for people to see themselves as
more than spectators of the world, and how they can become actors in the lives
they lead. Applied Theatre as a new academic discipline and theatre form has
achieved remarkable success in the forums it has created for example, around
HIV AIDs in Africa (Chinyowa 2009) sexual exploitation in SE Asia (Cahill
2009) and child abuse in New Zealand(O’Connor, 2006, 2009).
This chapter details an applied theatre program operating in New Zealand
schools since 2004 on the issues of family violence and abuse. The chapter
reveals how applied theatre can be viewed as a form of engaged social work
and also how it can work succesfully in partnership with more traditional
forms of social work practice. The chapter explores in greater detail the
implementation of the program alongside social workers in schools in
Christchurch in 2008.
SOCIAL WORKERS IN SCHOOLS

Social Workers in Schools (SWiS) in New Zealand is a nationally funded
program where social workers are placed in schools in lower socio-economic
areas and engage directly with families and children. Its primary focus is on
prevention and early intervention. The SWiS program initially operated in
primary schools but has been extended in recent years into seconday schools
as well. Although funded nationally, contracts for the service provision are
held regionally by non-government organizations. In many cases the contracts
are managed and administered by Maori tribal authorities or tribal social
service agencies. SWiS workers are funded to engage in both reactive and
preventative forms of social work, working closely within the school
community, developing networks with other agencies including social workers
with statutory responsibilities, police, and voluntary agencies. The program
Applied Theatre 79
has a limited function in providing education programs alongside teachers in

classrooms. SWiS engage in a range of issues with children and their families.
Not surprisingly they are often involved in issues of abuse, family violence
and neglect.
CHILD ABUSE IN THE NEW ZEALAND CONTEXT

Child abuse is the physical, emotional, psychological or sexual harm
caused to a child or young person. Harm includes ill-treatment, abuse, neglect
or deprivation. Physical abuse involves a deliberately inflicted injury (e.g.
bruises, cuts, fractures, burns). Emotional or psychological abuse is “… any
act or omission that results in impaired psychological, social, intellectual and /
or emotional functioning and development” (OCC/UNICEF, 2004: 20) (e.g.
rejection, isolation, deprivation of affection, criticism, threats, exposure to
family violence, corruption). Sexual abuse is the sexual exploitation of a child
e.g. voyeurism, inappropriate touching, sex, pornographic activity. (OCC/
UNICEF, 2004).
New Zealand has high statistics of child abuse and child deaths
(Williamson and Drumm, 2005), and in 2003 had one of the highest child-
death rates in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) (UNICEF, 2003). In 2000 and 2001 eighteen children were victims of
homicide. In 2003 116 were hospitalised as a result of assault (Fanslow, 2005:
15). New Zealand has 1.2 deaths per 100,000 children. The OECD median is
.6 deaths per 100,000 children (UNICEF, 2003). Risk factors for child abuse
include partner violence, adult with history of child or animal abuse, adult
child-abuse survivor, drug or alcohol abuse, mental illness, harsh attitudes to
discipline, unrealistic expectation of children, use of physical punishment,
very young parents, social isolation, mobility of residence, child disabled or
chronically ill, severe economic disadvantage (OCC / UNICEF, 2004: 23).
Children with multiple adverse experiences face the highest risk of later
adverse outcomes to their physical and social wellbeing (Fergusson and
Horwood, 2001, cited in Fanslow, 2005).
Fanslow’s research suggests that the most serious physical and sexual
violence is perpetrated by men. It also suggests that child abuse is more
prevalent in populations where poverty, low levels of education and unstable
80 Peter O’Connor
family environments exist. While it can be too easy to draw quick conclusions
about these populations, Fanslow emphasises that the conditions themselves
are not predictors of abuse (Fanslow, 2005), as child maltreatment pervades all
socio-economic groups and ethnicities.
Everyday Communities Program
In New Zealand the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services

(CYF) has statutory responsibility for the care, welfare and protection of
children and young people under the age of seventeen. It also has a statutory
obligation to provide information about the prevention of abuse and does so
largely through the provision of special events, booklets and leaflets. In recent
years other government agencies have taken responsibility for high profile
media campaigns on family violence and abuse prevention. However, the
Everyday Communities (EDC) Program which ran from 2002 until the end of
2009 was a child abuse and family violence prevention, social marketing and
community action program developed and coordinated by the Public
Education team of CYF, in partnership with local communities. The EDC
program was designed to foster community awareness and responsibility for
family violence and child abuse following the high profile murders of several
young children in 2001.
Until the end of 2009 EDC worked alongside communities on a three-year
basis. Six regions in New Zealand benefited from the initiative — Northland,
Whakatane, Wairarapa, Whanganui South Auckland and Waitakere City.
Since its inception and to varying degrees SWiS workers have been part of the
EDC program. EDC activities included creating events, radio and print media
advertising campaigns, creating resources and filling educational gaps and
networking amongst NGO and Government organizations. EDC program
operated from a different paradigm of public health education to that generally
practiced in the New Zealand context which largely functions from a deficit
model. Drawing on the theories of Kretzman and McKnight (1993) Everyday
Communities operated on the principles of the Assets Based Community
Development (ABCD) model. Significantly shifting from the predominant
deficit model, an ABCD approach sees government agencies attempt genuine
partnerships with communities, where power to resolve community issues are
shared between two equal partners. Central to the program’s philosophy is
identifying community strengths and building on them, rather than identifying
and resolving community needs. For many SWiS workers this philosophy
Applied Theatre 81
related closely to the thinking which underpinned the proactive roles they were
taking in schools around the issues.
Everyday Theatre
The 12-month pilot of EDC was completed in September 2003. The
subsequent review identified that, although the focus on adult behavior was
necessary, there also needed to be a stream of work that focused on giving a
space for young people to engage with the issues. Everyday Theatre was
developed in response to this review. It was initially conceived as a theatre in
education program that would present a play in middle schools (ages 10-13) in
the same geographic areas EDC was operating. It was to be social work in
schools to be undertaken by theatre workers.
In 2003 CYF contacted Applied Theatre Consultants Ltd (ATCo) to
develop and manage the program in schools to develop the play. The initial
contact from CYF in 2003 was similar to the kinds of contact ATCo has
received over the years from government departments. Vague and probably
well intentioned the department wanted us to ‘do something with drama and
kids, maybe a touring play about child abuse and violence could be good’. As
Sue Lytollis, the current funding manager for Everyday Theatre explains:
Government departments think drama companies in this sort of work

either engage in the Humpty Dumpty syndrome, where they grab victim’s
stories and turn it into performance by playing it back to the audience, or
else it’s some peripheral entertainment on a flat bed truck operation
(interview conducted in 2008).
Marlane Welsh Morris who established EDC in 2002 led the contract
negotiations with ATCo. She described the first meetings with ATCo “as a
serendipitous meeting of the minds, because the set of values that sits behind
[ATCo’s] work matched EDC” (interview conducted in 2008). The process of
negotiation about our ‘play’ became instead an ongoing discussion about our
values and how they might be translated into action. For nearly nine months
we negotiated a contract to translate these values into a theatre program which
satisfied both funder and applied theatre company that was neither ‘fixing
Humpty Dumpty’ nor peripheral entertainment. In an interview in late 2008
Welsh Morris listed those shared values which we made explicit in 2003 as
 working from a strengths based model rather than a deficit model,

 not interested in bringing a message to young people,
82 Peter O’Connor
 not wanting to be missionaries,

 a belief in open, transparent and equal partnerships,
 a belief in creating environments for things to happen, and
 a valuing of Maori process within tribal areas.
The final contract reflected this set of values we had made explicit through
months of negotiation. As partners we negotiated and agreed on the goals for
the program together. We created a contract that, rather than talking about
tightly prescribed outcomes and the delivery of messages through a scripted
performance, talked instead about creating spaces for dialogue, of opening up
ways in which Everyday Theatre could organically shift and change to meet
the communities it worked with. Our expertise in applied theatre meant we
shaped the aesthetics of the work alongside the department’s expertise in areas
around child abuse in an open and trusting manner.
NEGOTIATING THE OUTCOMES AND THEIR LIMITS

In the agreed contract the purpose and limitations of the program and its
underlying philosophy were clearly stated. The purpose of the theatre in
education program is not to provide or teach simple solutions to the issues but
to provide safe and structured environments for teachers and students to
discuss these issues and find the answers relevant and suitable in their own
contexts. The program will allow students to think about, reflect on and talk
about their own stories by investigating the story of someone else. This
distancing process provides the necessary protection for students to both think
and feel deeply about the issues but to do so in a protected manner.
CYF had previously identified that children and young people have little
or no opportunity to discuss or voice their opinions in regard to their
experience or perspective of abuse issues. It recognized that they often lack
opportunities to create a knowledge base around the issues or a process for
articulating their concerns. The common approach to educating children and
young people in New Zealand about abuse is to give them a safety plan or
advice about ‘keeping safe’ (Briggs, 1991). CYF recognized that this approach
fails to give context to the issues, and gives children and young people no way
of analysing and understanding their experiences. Everyday Theatre was
designed to focus on enabling children to be safely active rather than passive
towards the issues. Everyday Theatre was not interested in presenting simple
Applied Theatre 83
messages, but in taking a process that might allow for students to create their
own messages.
This early agreement between The Department and ATCo on the central
philosophical approach to be taken directed both how the program would be
run, and the basis on which it would be evaluated. It was agreed that the
theatre program’s success was not to be based on how many young people
received a predetermined message or how many disclosed instances of abuse
could be attributed to the program. Rather, it would be measured on the degree
of safety created through the theatre and how this did or did not facilitate the
development of messages amongst the children themselves. This outcome
could be qualitatively verified, as both partners saw this as the most
appropriate outcome for the work.
The agreement allowed both parties to articulate the role for the theatre
within the overall project. Recognizing that the issues are complex, Child,
Youth and Family’s approach was multi layered. Their partnerships within
Everyday Communities with local Maori tribal authorities, SWiS, city
councils, schools, and ethnic and community groups produce a range of
interventions including local television and radio programs and public
workshops. Everyday Theatre, therefore, was not expected to deliver the entire
outcomes of the program, but to provide one layer of it.
In the end our agreed settled outcome for the contract was that Everyday
Theatre would provide a forum for active and safe discussion of the issues
around child abuse. There was, as Welsh Morris described it (interview
conducted in 2008), “no grandiose charge of the light brigade, no need to
guarantee the six things about abuse that needed to be taught”. We agreed that
the role of Everyday Theatre was ‘to turn down the noise about family
violence so children can hear themselves talk.’ The simple outcome then of
our contract negotiations was that children might discover in the actual doing
of Everyday Theatre a sense of approval that it is ‘OK’ to talk about abuse
amongst themselves and with adults. If there is a message in Everyday
Theatre, it is intrinsic to the participation in the program itself.
EVERYDAY THEATRE’S ORIGINAL STRUCTURE

AND THE PLACE OF SAFETY
Particular attention was paid to developing Everyday Theatre’s

overarching structure to provide safety for all participants. This involved a
four-stage engagement with each school. First, schools had to sign a contract
84 Peter O’Connor
to join the program and agree to a range of preconditions. These included all
parents being informed of the visit, and the principal and teachers signaling
their commitment to the program by agreeing to attend a meeting prior to the
visit. The meeting was designed to ensure all teachers involved in the program
were aware and supportive of the work undertaken by the team.
This initial meeting was conducted as a cluster meeting in the region of
delivery several weeks before the tour began. Hosted by the local Child, Youth
and Family site office, teachers from each of the participating schools attended
a training session on the theatre, led by members of the Everyday Theatre team
and Child, Youth and Family’s Public Education Team. A professionally made
video provided a snapshot of the theatre piece that sits at the heart of the work.
The video also outlined the processes they and their children would work
through. Members of care and support agencies provided advice to teachers,
should the work trigger responses from students requiring professional
support. Many of these agencies later worked alongside the teacher or actors
through day-long workshops, which in turn allowed for the development of
positive links with their local schools and the students. As part of the safety
structures, teachers at the meeting were informed they must remain with their
students throughout the day. They were also encouraged to participate as fully
as possible in all the process drama activities.
Wherever possible we worked with Social Workers in Schools if they
were attached to schools we were engaged to work in. The safety provided by
this relationship and the opportunity to add value to each other’s work was
obvious from our very first interactions.
EVERYDAY THEATRE IN ACTION

Two to four classes of middle school students gather in the school hall to
view a 25-minute performance. The performance is of a video game, a virtual
reality game where the players are live before the audience. Inside the game is
a family whose various members experience different forms of abuse. A
gamesmaster (an expert in playing video games) introduces the game by
showing parts of it and describing how it works. Explaining that “this is the
hardest game of all” and that he has never won it, he invites the students to
help him get through the four levels of the game. To win the game it he
students will need to help the family and this is structured though playing a
series of games within the video game. These games are different drama
conventions presented as the various levels in the video game. These must be
Applied Theatre 85
mastered at each level in order to progress through and ultimately win. In their
mastery of the dramatic forms, the participants also resolve ways to help the
family. After the performance in the hall, the students go back to their
classrooms and each class is led through the video game by one or two of the
games-master, teacher or actors.
For example at different levels of the game, characters inside the game are
hot seated and asked questions about the family. The hot seat convention is
one used frequently within process drama and it is also a game that many
students have played on cable television games. The freeze frame conventions
that students create in one level of the game are presented as becoming expert
at using the pause button inside the video game. The thought button activates
family members thoughts and also fits into the gaming structure.
At different times, the game requires the students to consider the
perspectives of the victims and perpetrators of abuse, and of witnesses and
bystanders. This is achieved through a range of dramatic conventions carefully
stepped to reinforce understandings and to allow the participants to grow
confidence in their ability to tell and analyze the story. The performance
section of the program introduces many family problems, any of which can be
picked up for investigation by the participants. The most obvious of these
problems include the physical and emotional violence wreaked on the family.
DOUBLE FRAMING FOR SAFETY

The performance and follow up workshops used a similar structure to that
initially developed in The Lost Bag, a theatre in education program developed
to support a suicide prevention program co-ordinated by the Mental Health
Foundation of New Zealand (O’Connor, 2005). Students in both programs are
deliberately framed and distanced from the central action of the story. In both
programs students use a range of dramatic conventions to explore the issues in
the story presented to them in the morning performance. In The Lost Bag
students are enrolled as helpers making a television show about someone who
has run away and left behind a bag with clues to her disappearance. Students
become engrossed in uncovering the clues to help find Sarah, but as part of
their wider frame task of creating a television show. The distancing is first
provided by presenting an analogy of suicide in terms of choosing to run away,
and then distancing the students’ role to be people helping those whose job is
to help find the missing teenager. This can be described as a double frame to
86 Peter O’Connor
the action, where one dramatic perspective into the event has been placed
within another.
The double frame used in Everyday Theatre sees students engrossed in
completing the tasks of assisting the family but as part of a tightly run video
game. The fun and excitement of playing a ‘live’ video game provides the
distancing and protection for the students to engage with the serious and
difficult issues that sit underneath the game structure. Students become so
engrossed in making it to the end of the level to get the next words of the
password, they actively engage in challenging and difficult work inside the
game structure to help the family.
The double framing allows, as Gavin Bolton (1979) suggests, “for
students to be protected into emotion”, not from it. It provides a double
protection but, paradoxically, a double opening for young people to feel the
issues of the video game family. Students are motivated to engage with the
drama by their desire to win the game, and/ or by wanting to help the video
family.
Everyday Theatre was and remains an organic and ever-evolving program.
Since 2004 it has operated in over 600 schools, with over 50 community
groups and with around 40,000 students. It toured all of New Zealand’s youth
justice facilities and versions have been presented at conferences and
universities in Australia, Singapore and Canada. Alliances with Everyday
Theatre have been established with Social Workers in Schools, the New
Zealand Police, child advocacy groups, Maori tribal authorities and the
Children’s Commission. Independent evaluation undertaken in 2007 suggested
the program was clearly successful. The research described Everyday Theatre
as
 a unique program which has provided an outstanding model of

practice for creating a safe forum for young people to explore the
issues surrounding family violence; and
 having a positive, and sometimes profound, impact on students,
teachers and other adults who participated (Holland, 2007: 1).
A further independent study in 2009 (Holland, 2009: 3) confirmed those

findings and suggested that “students who engage in a program of this quality
have the opportunity not only to generate and apply ideas, but also to reflect
on and refine them, to make connections between what they are producing in
the classroom and what happens in their family and their community.”
Applied Theatre 87
WORKING AS AND WITH SOCIAL WORKERS IN SCHOOLS

The teacher actors who work in Everyday Theatre are not trained social
workers. They come from a range of disciplines including education, theatre,
sociology and political studies. However, they use theatre as a pedagogical
tool to provide a safe environment for young people to talk about issues of
central importance to their lives. They attempt to bridge the gap between
school and family life with a story that resonates with the lived experiences of
many of the young people the program works with. They attempt to help
young people make sense of a confused and confusing world. Rather than limit
themselves to the curriculum which increasingly focuses on functionalist
literacy and numeracy skills they widen the scope of the classroom to
acknowledge that there are other as important things to consider during the
school day. Proactive in creating forums for young people to contend with the
issues of family violence Everyday Theatre therefore takes on many of the
roles of more traditional school social workers. It has also demonstrated the
appropriateness of the theatre for social workers who might wish to use similar
processes within their own contexts.
Everyday Theatre has however been most succesful when it has worked in
conjunction with the nationally funded social worker in schools program. The
Social Workers in Schools (SWiS) program has run for a number of years and
is managed and coordinated through the same government agency that funds
Everyday Theatre. While working with children and families directly is the
most important aspect of the social workers’ work, the SWiS contract budget
provides a limited resource for the running of prevention or education
programs. Program delivery has received varying priorities, with some schools
indicating that pressure to meet the needs of individual referrals leaves little
time for the SWiS social worker to deliver group programs. Yet SWiS focus
on prevention and early intervention suggests that such programs deserve
greater attention. It is also fair to say that the skill set of many social workers
in schools does not include advanced pedagogical skills. Not trained as
teachers, running whole class programs such as Everyday Theatre might
neither be the priority nor the best use of social workers time. Instead SWiS
often shares delivery of programs with other providers from a wide range of
different agencies. The partnerships which Everyday Theatre has developed
with the SWiS program has been essentially ad hoc, except for one highly
successful partnership in Christchurch in 2008. The fact that these two highly
88 Peter O’Connor
successful programs have not worked together on a more formal funding basis
says more perhaps about the lack of government coordination around in-school
education around family violence issues than it does about the merits of either
program.
CHRISTCHURCH 2008
Following presentations of Everyday Theatre at the national SWiS
conference in 2006, numerous SWiS groups approached ATCo to work
alongside them in schools. No nationally funded monies were made available
for the partnership to develop. However, in 2008, Edwina Brookes, Manager
of the SWiS contract held in Christchurch by Glenelg Health Camp
coordinated and arranged funding for a three-week program in the schools
eight of her staff worked in. Nine hundred students aged between 10 and 13
particiapted in the program. Fully-engaged and supportive SWiS attending
each session had a significant impact on the delivery of the program. Their
role in the school, especially around family violence, was built into the
delivery of the program. Preliminary work with schools had been undertaken
by SWiS workers in advance. Schools and Everyday Theatre facilitators
appreciated knowing the wrap-around services were present and would later be
available, should the need arise. All SWiS staff also particiapted in an
Everyday Theatre session as a team a few months prior to the roll out of the
program. This meant that they could explain the program based on their own
experience to principals, teachers and parents.
EVALUATION
Teachers involved were highly supportive of the program and in written
questionnaires about the program were asked to rate the day on a Likert-scale.
Twenty-two of 26 teachers rated the day 10 out of 10 with a lowest rating of 8
by one teacher. Some of the teacher’s comments included:
It was quite possibly the most valuable learning experience we could

offer to children.
It was one of the best sessions I had ever seen.
I learnt more about my kids in 2 hours observation than I could all
year. It respected their perceptions & perspectives.
Applied Theatre 89
Fantastic program – down to earth, realistic, related to pupils’ needs

and experiences. Worked very well with this particular class. Actors
excellent – nothing fazed them.
It was interactive taking the children on a voyage. The program had
quiet thinking time, energy, co-operation, questioning, physical elements
all under a very safe, non-threatening umbrella.
The children really became involved and for a lot of them it is
relevant to their lives – either in immediate family or extended family. It’s
an area they haven’t discussed for a long time (if at all) and now when
there are problems it may help them to open up about such problems,
discuss them and ask for help.
Thank you! What a wonderful experience for our children and one I
think they will keep with them for a long time.
For the social workers involved the program also had significant
benefits. An in-house questionaire conducted by Glenelg about their
engagement in the program elicited the following comments from social
workers:
I have since met with a few of the children who played the game and
they have been open about some of the issues raised in relation to their
own situations. I don’t know if this would have been as easy to
accomplish without them taking part in the program.
It gave me an insight into some of the children I work with one on
one.
Children are now more aware of SWiS and my role.
They now feel more comfortable in approaching me.
It gave children a chance to see me in a different light. This has had
spin offs for me in the playground.
The impact is fantastic. I was amazed at how the children were fully
engaged and focused.
To engage children for this length of time was fantastic.
Children who had been deemed as difficult to engage and who rarely
contributed to class discussion were very eager to ask questions, offer
advice and to look for solutions.
Loved the program. It was able to target large groups of children
that normally would not have the opportunity to think about these issues.
Significantly the impetus that Everyday Theatre gives young people to

acknowledge the need for support provided eight young people the courage to
90 Peter O’Connor
disclose serious abuse in their homes to SWiS in the immediate weeks after
the Everyday Theatre experience.
Unfortunately, despite further presentations of Everyday Theatre at
national SWiS conferences and heightened interested from program deliverers
around the country, there remains no commitment for a nationally funded
partnership between the two programs. The potential to use applied theatre in
all its forms across the world as a form of early intervention or prevention
social work is largely untapped. The potential for social workers to be trained
in the pedagogical principles which underpin and complement the strengths-
based approaches many use has yet to be realized in social work training
programs. The challenge is for visionary funders and social workers to build
relationships with applied theatre companies and establish programs which
like Everyday Theatre make a profound impact on the lives of young people.
REFERENCES
Barrameda, T. (2000). Breaking silence: A nationwide informacne tour or the
prevention of violence against women in the family. Philippines: PETA.
Bolton, G. (1979). Towards a theory of drama in education. Harlow:
Longman.
Briggs, F. (1991). ‘Keeping ourselves safe: A personal safety curriculum
examined’, Research Information for Teachers, 2, 7.
Cahill, H. (2008). Resisting risk and rescue as the raison d’etre for arts
interventions In A. O’Brien and K. Donelan (Eds.), The arts and youth at
risk: Global and local challenges (13-31). Cambridge: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing.
Chinyowa, K. (2009). ‘Theatrical performance as technology: The case of
drama in AIDS education (Dram Aide) in South Africa’, Studies in
Theatre and Performance, 29 (1), 33-52.
Fanslow, J. (2005). Beyond zero tolerance: Key issues and future directions
for Family Violence Work in New Zealand. Wellington: The Families
Commission.
Fergusson, D. M., & Horwood, L. J. (2001). ‘The Christchurch health and
development study: Review of findings of child and adolescent mental
health’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 35 (3),
287-296.
Applied Theatre 91
Holland, C. (2007). Because you are a very important person: Evaluation

report, Everyday Theatre in Everyday Communities. Wellington: Ministry
of Social Development.
Holland, C. (2009). The Waitakere experience: An evaluation of Everyday
Theatre in West Auckland schools. Auckland: WERDS.
OCC/UNICEF (2004). Protecting children from abuse and neglect:
Information and check points for organizations working with children and
families. Wellington: OCC / UNICEF.
O’Connor, P. (2005). The lost bag: Mental health matters for years 7-8.
Auckland: Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.
O’Connor, P. (2009). ‘Unnoticed miracles’, Research in Drama Education:
The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 13 (4), 583-597.
O’Connor, P., O’Connor, B. & Welsh Morris, M. (2006). ‘Making the
everyday extraordinary: Theatre in education project to prevent child
abuse, neglect and family violence’, Research in Drama Education: The
Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 11 (2), 235-245.
Williamson, R. & Drumm, J. (2005). Stop fighting: A report into 30 families
seen by the child crisis team, Auckland: Preventing Violence in the Home.
Chapter 6
SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK IN CANADA:

AN ONTARIO PERSPECTIVE OF
CURRENT THEMES AND PRACTICE
Christine Bibby
Safe Schools Team, Grand Erie District School Board, Ontario, Canada
INTRODUCTION
School social work in Ontario has a rich history of improving the lives of
children and youth through the province’s educational systems. With the
largest proportion of Canada’s population, Ontario has distinctive geographic
and demographic factors that greatly impact on models of service delivery.
While there are vast regional differences in the implementation of school
social work, there are common themes. The unique profession of school social
work continues to evolve along with social and economic change; social
workers are responding to the social issues reflected in schools while
emulating core values and ethics. Concerned about the most vulnerable
children and youth in schools, school social workers advocate for students and
help make the journey of education more accessible and successful. Based on
this writer’s experience and research which will be presented, three particular
areas of focus for school social workers in Ontario are bullying, school
violence and mental health. Current practice in Ontario reflects that school
social workers have an integral presence in schools and provide a continuum
of services to students in these three key areas. School social workers function
94 Christine Bibby
at every level of educational systems to reduce bullying in schools and

communities, through interventions such as peer mediation training,
implementing bullying prevention programs and using restorative practices
within schools. In response to the fundamental concern of safety in schools,
school social workers provide invaluable clinical expertise within education.
As an example, school social workers are providing essential feedback in the
development and implementation of protocols towards creating safer school
climates. Committed to healthy school environments, school social workers
are responding to the spectrum of mental health needs of students in Ontario.
A wide range of mental health services are being provided to students by
school social workers. These areas will further be explored in this chapter to
give the reader a broad perspective of some of the common themes in Ontario
schools, and how school social workers are responding. As will be illustrated
by some of the programs presented, evidence-based practices and innovation
are active and growing in Ontario.
A CONTEXT FOR PRACTICE

Ontario is home to over 13 million residents (Statistics Canada, November
2009). According to the Government of Ontario’s People and Culture website
(2010), one in every three Canadians lives in Ontario. There are two official
languages in Ontario, English and French. The most culturally diverse of the
Canadian provinces, Ontario has a large number of new immigrants and a
growing aboriginal community. Between 2001 and 2006, Ontario continued to
be the province of choice for more than half (52.3%) of the 1.1 million
newcomers who arrived in Canada. There were over 200 languages spoken as
mother tongues by Ontarians in 2006 (Statistics Canada, March 2005, p. 63).
In 2001, one in five Aboriginal people lived in Ontario, making it the province
with the largest population of Aboriginal people (Statistics Canada, June 2005,
p. 5). Between 2001 and 2006, Ontario’s Aboriginal population grew nearly
five times faster than the non-Aboriginal population (Statistics Canada, March
2005, p. 63).
Ontario encompasses over 1 million square kilometers and contains over
250,000 lakes, and is the second largest of Canada’s provinces (Government
of Ontario, 2010). The name Ontario is derived from an Iroquoian word
meaning “beautiful lake” or “beautiful water” (Hamilton, 1978, p. 155).
Population as described by the Ontario Government’s People and Culture
website (2010), estimates that 80 percent of Ontarians live in urban centers,
School Social Work in Canada 95
largely in cities along the shores of the 5 Great Lakes. The largest
concentration of this population is along the western end of Lake Ontario,
centered on what is known as the “Golden Horseshoe” (Government of
Ontario, 2010).
A significant percentage of Ontarians live in southwestern Ontario,
particularly in the Toronto area. The capital of Ontario, metropolitan Toronto
has a population of 5 million and the outlying communities of Toronto
comprise another 5.5 million people (Statistics Canada, November 2006).
Toronto is a center of commerce and tourism and celebrates a wide
multicultural community. Many other parts of Ontario are rural in nature.
Spread throughout regions of Ontario, there are approximately 20 Aboriginal
reserves, the largest one being Six Nations of the Grand River in southern
Ontario. A smaller percentage of Ontarians live in eastern Ontario, namely in
two large cities; Kingston, and Canada’s capital, Ottawa. Population in
Northern Ontario is spread among several towns and cities, many of which
initially emerged along the Canadian National Railway line. With the
development of highways and other transportation networks, northern Ontario
continues to grow and flourish.
As the areas of Ontario are distinct in their geography and demographics,
the school boards across this region are individual as well. Operating under the
wider umbrella of the Ontario provincial government, the Ministry of
Education (2009a) is responsible for public education in the province.
Presently in Ontario, there are 72 individually-funded school boards: 31
public, 29 Catholic, and 12 French-language boards. Citizens are free to
choose which school board they will support through their taxes and where
they will enroll their children. This does not include private schools,
educational programs within institutions (e.g. hospitals, correction facilities)
nor does it include federal schools funded through Indian Affairs. Each school
board operates with its own mission, values and structure, ultimately governed
by the Education Act and Ministry of Education policy. Funding provided to
boards and their schools is primarily based on student enrolment.
Depending on the location within the province and the student population,
school boards offer an array of different programs and supports which often
include school social workers. It is best estimated that currently there are over
400 school social workers in Ontario (Loughborough, Wilhelm, & Shira,
2000). According to the School Social Work Committee of the Ontario
Association of Social Workers (P. Codner, personal communication,
September 28, 2009), over the past two years in particular, this number has
been growing. In February 2008, amendments were made to the Education Act
96 Christine Bibby
of Ontario: through the implementation of Bill 212 (Ontario Ministry of

Education, 2008), which preceded the increase in school social work. Bill 212
brought several changes to the former Safe Schools Act (2000) including
province-wide implementation of bullying prevention and intervention
strategies, as well funding school boards to offer and implement academic and
non-academic (counseling) programming for students who were suspended (6-
20 days) or expelled from attending school. The Ministry of Education
(2009b) suggested ‘school social workers’ as a professional group who can
provide support to schools particularly in these areas. When boards were given
funding to provide education and counseling support for suspended and
expelled students, many hired school social workers for their programs.
SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS AND RANGE OF PRACTICE

The School Social Work Committee of the Ontario Association of Social
Workers surveyed school social workers in Ontario in 2004. This was the sixth
survey to be conducted by the Committee and its purpose was to capture a
“snapshot of the current ways in which social workers in school systems are
carrying out their responsibilities as well as documenting their work
conditions, administrative procedures and professional issues” (Shepherd &
Judge, 2004, p. 1).
The School Social Work survey in 2004 incorporated the responses
received from 25 boards across the province; encompassing large and small;
public and Catholic; English and French; urban and rural; eastern, western,
and northern Ontario boards. Due to the diversity of school board structures,
the delivery systems of school social work services varied considerably. For
example, the largest board had 310,000 students attending 558 schools, with a
total of 85 full time equivalent school social workers. Comparatively, there
were more than four boards with only one or two social work positions
representing boards with anywhere from 650-15,000 students (Shepherd, &
Judge, 2004, p. 2). The survey indicates the average number of schools
assigned to a full time social worker in a year was 11, ranging from 6 to 20.
This included a range between 4 to 17 elementary schools as well as 1 to 4
secondary schools per social worker. Social work roles in schools varied
depending on the number of schools assigned to each school social worker
(Shepherd, & Judge, 2004, p. 2).
In more rural boards, school social workers provide crisis intervention,

assessment, referrals and consultation as their primary service: responding to a
wider range of schools within a large geography dictates the breadth and depth
of practice. Often having to negotiate long distances between schools, school
social workers in rural areas are challenged by geography. At the other end of
the continuum, there is the demand of working in a diverse urban school
community. In one board, a school social worker is placed full time in one
secondary school within a dense and diverse urban area, and offers a complete
range of service, including; clinical consultation, assessment, counseling,
referrals, case coordination, staff training and support (for example, mental
health issues, program development and delivery), as well as community
collaboration (Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, D. Wright,
personal communication, December 9, 2009).
Factors affecting school assignments were identified in the 2004 survey
as: location of schools, student population, and needs of the school. Overall,
the average number of students per school social worker was 4,727, ranging
from 2,058 to 8,888. The researchers suggested that this range is reflective of
the areas of Ontario in which boards are located and the ability of the board to
fund social work services (Shepherd & Judge, 2004, p. 2).
School social workers provide a wide range of both direct and indirect
service, as well as advocacy at the community and provincial levels. In terms
of direct service, school social workers offer consultation, assessment, crisis
support, counseling, referral and support for individual students who
experience barriers to academic and/or social success. Understanding the
nuances of the education system, the resources in the community, as well as
individual and family dynamics, school social workers navigate within these
systems toward the ultimate goal of success for students. School social
workers collaborate with schools and families to identify both strengths and
needs of students and their environments and in concert with schools, families
and communities, develop plans to address those needs. Beyond the walls of
the school, school social workers collaborate with community partners through
consultations, referrals, case conferences and participating on community
committees.
Students are referred to school social workers for a myriad of reasons,
including but not limited to mental health concerns, for example depression,
anxiety and self-harm behavior; difficulty coping, such as with grief , change
and loss; substance misuse, such as alcohol and drugs; relationship difficulties
98 Christine Bibby
such as abuse and conflict; personal issues such as sexuality and sexual
orientation; social difficulties, including social skills deficits; behavioral
concerns, including bullying and aggression; and school absenteeism. Other
reasons for school social work involvement include family difficulties; some
examples are separation, divorce, conflict, poverty, homelessness, and
violence. School social workers help connect families to the school and to
community resources, particularly those who are new to the community or
country and families who are in need of advocacy. Because of their familiarity
with school environments, school social workers often provide transition
support for students within programs and schools. In many school boards,
social workers are part of multi-disciplinary teams, which may include
educational consultants, psychology, child and youth workers, and speech and
language pathologists. In some boards, community partners such as police
services, addictions, mental health and child welfare agencies work as part of
school teams. An example of multidisciplinary team work will be presented
under the subject of violence in schools in this chapter.
In Ontario, many school social workers also have the responsibility of
being attendance counselors. In the 2004 survey, 18 of the 25 boards that
responded indicated that the school social workers also delivered the
attendance counseling role (enforcement of mandatory school attendance) as
well as social work services (Shepard and Judge, 2004, p. 3). Increasing
student graduation rates and attendance have been a focus in Ontario schools.
Toward that end, the school leaving age has been increased to 18 years of age
instead of 16. These changes in educational policy since the 2004 survey have
had an impact on the attendance role of school social workers and their
colleagues in Ontario. As a result, many more students require the support of
the social workers to help them achieve success in school.
Additional data from the survey of 2004 indicated that classroom
interventions were offered by school social workers in 16 of the 25 responding
boards. Classroom intervention topics included: bullying, social skills, conflict
resolution, community resource awareness, behavior management and
modification, harassment, suicide prevention, child abuse and neglect and
sensitivity training (Shepherd & Judge, 2004, p. 4). School social workers
offered school-wide interventions in 16 of 25 boards. The topics included:
crisis response, bully-proofing, conflict resolution, parent education, peer
mentoring, social skills, anti-racism, sexual harassment, suicide prevention,
child abuse prevention, drug and alcohol misuse prevention, and family
violence prevention (Shepherd & Judge, p. 4). Board-wide interventions in 19
of the 25 boards indicated social work involvement. The most common board-
wide service offered by school social workers is crisis response (Shepherd &
Judge, 2004, p.5). Other programs involving school social work were
behavioral teams, alternative education, attendance, family violence
prevention, transition support and professional development planning. This
range of social work activity extends beyond the traditional casework model
and instead portrays a service that is an active partner at every level in the
educational system (Shepherd & Judge, 2004, p.7).
School social workers offer broad expertise through staff training,
participating on curriculum writing teams, reviewing and implementation of
board policies and procedures, and serving on community committees. Some
distinctive social work positions are found in Ontario school boards. For
example, in Hamilton Wentworth, in the portfolio of Violence Prevention, a
school social worker is employed full time to be responsible for board-wide
implementation and assessment of safe school policy and programs (L.
Cunningham, personal communication, December 7, 2009). In Ottawa
Carleton, a social worker functions out of the education office investigating,
reporting and responding to issues where there has been a complaint against a
staff person, or a claim of harassment within the workplace (S. Woollam,
personal communication, November 27, 2009).
At both school and board levels, school social workers are involved in
assisting the implementation of Ministry policies. One of the important
policies that recently emerged is very reflective of social work values.
Ontario’s equity and inclusive education strategy (Ministry of Education,
2009a) recognizes that our schools should be places where students not only
learn about diversity (including gender, sexual orientation, culture, ancestry,
ethnicity, race, language, socio-economic status, religion, physical and
intellectual ability), but experience it. The Ministry states: “we want all staff
and students to value diversity and to demonstrate respect for others and a
commitment to establish a just and caring society” (Ontario, Equity and
Inclusive Education Strategy, p. 10). The initiatives in equity and inclusive
education focus on establishing conditions that recognize diversity, promote
inclusive education, and support equity in our schools. In addition, these
initiatives encourage communities and schools to work together towards this
end. As an example, in eastern Ontario, the Ottawa Carleton District School
Board has formed a partnership with community agencies to establish the
Rainbow Coalition. The purpose is to provide lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-
spirited, trans-identified and straight students with a safe space to socialize,
support each other, and discuss concerns.
100 Christine Bibby
Beyond the level of the board through which they are employed, school
social workers advocate for students through their professional associations.
For example, the School Social Work Committee of the Ontario Association of
Social Workers, as well as the Ontario Association for Counseling and
Attendance Services, have influence through their relationships with the
Ministry of Education. Sharing their passion and knowledge based on their
work in schools school social workers are sought for input when policy and
programs are being reviewed and developed. As an illustration, school social
workers in Ontario were involved in consultations with the Safe Schools
Action Team; a group of recognized safety and education experts assigned to
the task of reviewing the policy of the Safe Schools Act (2000) preceding Bill
212. The paradigm shift reflected in the new policies and programs in Ontario
schools regarding bullying prevention and intervention, and responding to
students at risk of suspension and expulsion, are very much in line with the
recommendations that school social workers put forward to this team. While
the previous Act (Safe Schools, 2000) focused mainly on standardizing
discipline, the new Act highlights prevention, promoting positive behavior and
correcting of negative behavior, in addition to providing support and programs
for the students who are being disciplined (Government of Ontario, Ministry
of Education, Bill 212: The Education Amendment Act (Progressive Discipline
and School Safety, 2007).
SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS AND RESPONSE

TO CURRENT ISSUES
In Ontario, the issues of bullying, school violence, and children’s mental

health are at the forefront of our educational, medical, social and legal
systems. Provincial Ministries who offer services for children and youth have
recognized the need to collaborate beyond the level of community in order to
achieve universal success. In Ontario, no one Ministry is responsible for the
delivery of health, welfare and education services of children and youth. Three
Ministries are involved: the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of the Child
and Youth, and the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care. Each Ministry
operates separately and independently, and funds its own agencies and
programs. School social workers are well-positioned to collaborate with the
various Ministries, systems and organizations involved with students. Through
building partnerships, school social workers have been involved in exciting

projects from planning at the provincial level through to service delivery in
local schools.
SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS AND BULLYING

PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION
School social workers have long been concerned about and aware of the
impact of bullying on students, particularly those who are targets of bullying
behavior. As part of their role, school social workers have been involved in
providing a range of service in response to bullying from prevention through
to crisis response for many years. However, until recently, there was no
consistent provincial strategy to address the issue of bullying. Whether or not a
school had specific programs or policies regarding bullying prevention and
intervention was individually determined by schools and their boards. This
was frustrating for school social workers and mental health professionals, who
were spending a great deal of time responding to the impact of bullying
behavior on children and youth.
The Ministry of Education (2009c) in Ontario has prioritized addressing
bullying in schools and communities through the implementation of policy
change, reflected in both Bill 212 and the Equity and Inclusive Education
Strategy. This strategy recognizes the diversity of the student population of the
province and outlines a timeline of developing policies, practices and
partnerships that will help schools not only embrace diversity, but also reflect
it. Minister of Education Kathleen Wynne states; “embracing diversity and
moving beyond tolerance to acceptance and respect” is imperative in publicly
funded education (Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy, 2009, p. 1).
Research confirms that rejection, exclusion and estrangement are associated
with behavior problems in the classroom, lower interest in school, lower
student achievement, and higher dropout rates (Osterman, 2000, pp. 323-367).
Conversely, feeling accepted and welcomed at school is the foundation for
academic success.
Reflecting an understanding of the impact of bullying, Ontario education
policies (Ministry of Education, PPM 144, Bullying Prevention and
Intervention, 2008) consolidate much of what is known to make a difference in
reducing bullying into specific directives for school boards. Specifically, these
initiatives included responding to and preventing bullying behavior. Because
102 Christine Bibby
everyone has a responsibility to be involved in bullying prevention,

interventions that include the school, parents and community are promoted.
Schools are encouraged to build capacity within their buildings to respond
more effectively to bullying behavior, through educating and empowering staff
and students. Schools are expected to partner with agencies and parents
towards creating safer schools. This shift in educational philosophy echoes
Olweus’ work, who suggested that by creating and promoting a positive school
climate we will have the greatest impact on reducing bullying incidents
(Olweus, 1993). In addition, changes to educational policy now permit
administrators in Ontario schools to address bullying incidents that occur
outside of the walls and hours of the school. This has allowed schools to
respond more effectively to the negative impact of cyber bullying, for
example, which according to school social workers, is becoming more of an
issue in practice within a technological world.
School social workers play an active role in bullying prevention and
intervention in Ontario schools. School social workers are helping to build
capacity among adults and students in the area of bullying at all levels.
Prevention is offered by providing education to students, school staff and
parent groups on bullying dynamics. In 2004, the School Social Work survey
indicated that in 16 of 25 boards surveyed, school social workers were
conducting classroom presentations about bullying behavior and related
themes. Anti-bullying, critical incident response, social skills and anti-violence
were the most frequently offered topics. In 2004, school-wide interventions
were offered in fifteen school boards by school social workers, addressing
issues such as bullying, conflict resolution and social skills (Shepherd &
Judge, 2004).
School social workers also respond directly to the impact of bullying
through intervention, including; providing consultations, individual student
and family counseling, mediation and advocacy. Other services offered are
group counseling for students who are impacted by bullying and arranging
meetings with students, parents and community partners to develop plans to
keep students safe from bullying.
A societal shift in Ontario is increasing supports and services for those
who are victimized; there are more court programs and funds available for
victims of crime through provincial programs. A parallel process is occurring
in education with more attention focused on how schools can better support
students who are victimized. Providing assistance to students and building in
accountability within the school community is reflected in further policy
amendments to be enacted in February 2010 (Bill 157, 2009). Reporting and
recording incidents of bullying will be standardized in schools, and the

responsibility to report and respond extends to all school personnel who have
contact with students. Providing an individualized support plan to students
who are victimized; helping students and their families who are feeling
victimized to access supports within the school, board and community; and
being sensitive to how information is shared are all part of policy change.
These changes are very much aligned with school social work practice and
will promote the capacity of the school to respond to a very important social
issue in cooperation with community partners.
School social workers are interested in promoting evidence-based practice
in the area of bullying. In the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board,
located in urban southwestern Ontario, schools are using an evidence-based
approach of peer mediation to increase positive behavior in schools. A
research team including school social worker Lesley Cunningham and
McMaster Children’s Hospital examined the efficacy of student mediation on
the playground, and found it highly successful (90%) with continued positive
results a year later. Empowering students with mediation skills increases the
likelihood that conflict on the playground will be resolved; a 51-65%
reduction in aggressive behavior was noted as a result of the program
(Cunningham, Cunningham, Martorelli, Tran, Young & Zacharias, 1998, p.
659). As stated by Lesley Cunningham in an email (Dec. 12, 2009):
“the work we have done over the past fifteen or so years in training
young mediators to help keep playgrounds peaceful and safe has been
extremely rewarding. We have trained literally thousands of mediators
giving them skills for life as well as reducing conflict on playgrounds
from 50% to 65%. This work has expanded to many different countries
(Sweden, England, and Gaza) and we are extremely proud of the work
our young (grades 4-8) mediators do every day”.
Not only are Ontario school social workers involved in research, but they
are also involved in delivery of evidence-based programs. Another example is
the program called Roots of Empathy (ROE), which originated in Ontario
schools and is promoted by school social workers.
A classroom-based program, ROE’s mission is to increase the social and
emotional literacy of children and to “inspire in them a vision of citizenship
that can change the world” (Gordon, p. 6). The importance of increasing
emotional literacy is reflected in both education and psychology literature
exploring ways to foster positive behavior and promote well-being in students.
104 Christine Bibby
Evidence shows that proactive programs that teach students ways to recognize
emotions, demonstrate caring for others, and practice social skills for healthy
relationships lead to a reduction of challenging behavior and increase positive
social interaction (Payton et al, 2008).
ROE has grown significantly over the past ten years and is one of the few
programs that show consistent impact on reducing bullying and aggressive
behavior. This program began in Toronto, Ontario in 1996 through Mary
Gordon, in the Toronto District School Board, and has now spread to
worldwide use. Research has shown that ROE has shown dramatic results in
reducing levels of aggression and violence among children while raising
social/emotional competence and increasing empathy (Gordon & Green, 2008,
p. 34). The focus of the program is an infant and his/her parent, who come to
visit the classroom nine times over the course of a school year. A trained ROE
instructor coaches the students to observe the child’s development; reflect on
the emotional life of the child and the relationship between child and parent;
and make connections to their own emotions as well as those of their peers. In
what Gordon and Green describe as experiential learning, the baby is the
“teacher” and the medium through which children identify and reflect on their
own feelings and the feelings of others (2008, p. 34). Ultimately, bullying
behavior is reduced in schools when students have a better understanding of
their own as well as other’s feelings, learn to take responsibility for their
actions and develop empathy for others.
Building social and emotional competency is a theme that is echoed in
other approaches that school social workers are using in Ontario, including
restorative practice. Another evidence-based approach, restorative practice
further represents the shift in how schools are responding to students involved
in bullying and aggressive acts.
SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS AND RESTORATIVE PRACTICE

With its roots in Canadian First Nations healing circles, as well as
extensive work in New Zealand, restorative practice is now growing in Ontario
schools and communities. Through a continuum of intervention, from an
informal through to a more formal approach, restorative practice empowers
those who have been harmed by giving them a voice. It is not only a process,
but a set of values (Morrison, 2007, p. 75).
At one end of the continuum, teachers and school personnel can use
restorative practice as a preventative strategy in classrooms to engage students
in affective discussion and problem-solving. Restorative practices can also be

used to resolve conflict between individual students in the form of impromptu
conferences (Costello et al., 2009, p. 21). At the other end of the continuum,
restorative justice circles offer an opportunity for bringing people together
who have been impacted by harm, including the “offender”, the “victim” and
the community. As described by Morrison (2007):
“restorative justice provides a way for school communities to be more

responsive to harmful behavior, and the subsequent impact, by
empowering the affected community to address the harm, through
resolution, restoration, and reconciliation. Through resolution, individuals
and communities take on the responsibility to address the risk of
harm….through restoration, the harm is repaired, particularly to
relationships, and through reconciliation comes emotional healing” (p.
75).
Restorative justice represents a paradigm shift in how we view acts of

harm and focuses on the people involved and rebuilding relationships, with a
balanced focus on the offender, victim and community. Aboriginal beliefs
already reflect this approach, whereby a (negative) act is seen primarily as a
“signal of disharmonies within the offender’s relational life” (Lockhart &
Zammit, 2005, p. 26). First Nations Canadian Randall Charboneau describes
this practice from his view;
“The Anishinabe (the original people) had ways of dealing with

justice within community. The circle was known to be the place of no
end. It created a space where one’s voice could be heard; here capacity,
the connection, the creativity of the community found a place of being, by
bringing people together to repair harm that had been done” (Lockhart et
al, 2006, p. 9).
In restorative justice circle meetings, primary stakeholders (students,

parents, school staff) are willingly involved in the process of discussing the
harm caused, the impact, and what is needed to put things right. Typically, the
facilitator of the circle has been trained in restorative justice and has prepared
participants prior to the meeting as to what questions will be asked and what to
expect. The conference is structured based on the restorative questions; how
did you come to be involved in this incident? What were you thinking and
feeling at the time? What have you thought about since the incident? Who do
you feel has been affected and how? After the participants have had an
106 Christine Bibby
opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings about the incident through
their answers, another key question is posed. Asking each participant “what do
you need to repair the harm?” allows for solutions to come forward based on
the needs of the people involved. Responses are discussed within the circle
and the offender offers commitment to the ideas they support to repair the
harm. The written or verbal agreement documents what the offender and
others have agreed to do in the support of healing, and this concludes the
process.
Restorative justice meets the needs of many people who have been
impacted by a negative incident in a school community: ‘offenders’ have an
opportunity to take responsibility for their behavior, ‘victims’ have a chance to
be validated; and the communities have the opportunity to have their needs
included as part of the resolution process. Staff members who participate in
restorative justice circles are more humanized in the eyes of students, and are
seen as individual people. In this sense, relationships are strengthened between
students and adults in the school community and capacity is built for
improving relationships and managing conflict. Parent involvement in circle
meetings helps students to recognize the impact of their behavior on their
families, as well as the families of the victims. Greater empathy and insight is
gained from having to face those you have harmed and take responsibility for
your actions. Some of the situations in schools for which restorative justice
circles have been used include physical assault, theft, vandalism, aggressive
acts, and various types of bullying situations, including cyberbullying.
Restorative justice circles are also used as an alternative to suspension in many
schools.
Several school boards and their school social workers have included the
continuum of restorative practices in their efforts towards creating safe and
caring learning environments and responding to harm. As recognized by Gumz
and Grant, (2009, p. 125) restorative practices have a perfect fit with school
social work practice. Social justice, empowerment of those who are
victimized, providing opportunity for healing, promoting the belief that people
have an ability to change and strengthening the community are all values in
school social work. Helping people to develop internal resources and assets,
restorative practice is a strengths-based approach which social workers are in a
unique position to offer in schools (Gumz & Grant, 2009, p. 125). Often, in
preparation for restorative meetings, school social workers collaborate with
police services, youth probation, child welfare agencies and mental health
services, involving community partners in restoring relationships.
Since 2007, schools within the Keewatin-Patricia District School Board

(KPDS) in Northern Ontario have been incorporating restorative practices into
the fabric of their school cultures in order to deal with issues of discipline and
conflict. On the board website, KPDS Board reflects the following:
Restorative practice is grounded in the premise that strong, responsive
relationships are key to building and maintaining healthy school communities.
In restorative practice based schools, the aim of repairing harm, strengthening
relationships and reintegrating students becomes the lens by which
misbehavior and incidents of wrongdoing are viewed. (Keewatin-Patricia
District School Board website, 2010) From a provincial viewpoint, restorative
practice is recognized by the Ministry of Education in Ontario as a useful tool
in a range of supports that schools can offer to students.
SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS AND SCHOOL VIOLENCE

School social workers are often involved in crisis response to situations
that involve school violence, including potential threats to the safety of
students, staff and community. In their role, social workers are asked to assist
in determining the level of risk or threat a student may pose to self or others at
any given time. School social workers collaborate with parents, school
personnel and community agencies (e.g. police, child welfare, medical staff) in
a team approach to ensuring risk factors are reduced and a plan of care is in
place. The collaboration involved in responding to at-risk students is necessary
for successful intervention. Often, school social workers are part of behavioral
assessment teams (students with serious behavior concerns) or tragic events
response teams that service schools where there has been a death or tragic
event in the school or community. As noted in the 2004 survey of the School
Social Work Committee of the Ontario Association of Social Workers, 19
boards of the 25 responded that as part of their role, school social workers
provide system wide crisis response (Shepherd & Judge, 2004, p.5).
In Ontario schools, student behavior is approached within a model of
“progressive discipline”, the most intrusive response being suspension or
expulsion. Progressive discipline is defined by the Ministry of Education as “a
whole school approach that utilizes a continuum of interventions, supports and
consequences to address inappropriate student behavior”(PPM 145,
Progressive Discipline and Promoting Positive Behavior, 2009c, p. 4) As
stated by the Ministry in this policy (2009c, p. 4) “when inappropriate
behavior occurs, disciplinary measures should be applied within a framework
108 Christine Bibby
that shifts the focus from one that is solely punitive to one that is corrective
and supportive”. School social workers are part of this continuum of
intervention of correction and supports available to students at individual,
classroom and school levels. Through developing individualized plans,
offering classroom interventions and school-wide projects, school social
workers are promoting positive behavior and social skills. More targeted
interventions, such as social skill groups, individual counseling regarding
emotional regulation, and cognitive-based therapy are strategies school social
workers use to help students gain insight into their behavior and find new
ways of responding or coping. Bringing a comprehensive understanding of
children and youths’ behavior as part of their knowledge base, school social
workers play an important part in educating schools towards a deeper
understanding of how behavior and mental health are inextricably linked.
When students are exhibiting worrisome behavior such as drawing violent
pictures or stories, school social workers are often called to consult. Higher
risk behavior such as making verbal or written threats, bringing weapons to
school, or fire setting will often lead to referrals to the school social workers
for assessment and result in disciplinary measures, which may include
exclusion from school. The area of risk and threat assessment has received
more attention in recent years, and school social workers have been involved
in various training opportunities to broaden their skill base. Concurrently,
schools have shifted in how they support students who are removed from
school due to suspension or expulsion. There is recognition that the most at-
risk youth are often those who require the most support.
Prior to the implementation of Bill 212 (2007) programs were limited for
suspended and expelled students. In an article about mental health system
challenges, agencies reflected on how the policies of the educational system
and mental health system were at odds (Reid & Brown, 2009). The Safe
Schools Act (2000) promoted a “zero tolerance” policy for aggressive
behavior, which focused on disciplining students in a systematic way. As a
result, students were being expelled from school without a plan in place to
service their mental health needs. Without school, community support or
connection with others, these students often encountered further mental health
or legal difficulties. Many never returned to school. The changes through Bill
212 (2007) provided new options for at-risk youth. Recognizing that these
students need support and programming, school boards are now providing
education and counseling to students who have been disciplined for behavior
that presents a risk to school safety. Feedback from school social workers who
work primarily in suspension and expelled programs indicates a high majority
of their students are presenting with mental health issues, data indicated that
90-100% of the students they work with have mental health concerns (Bibby,
SSWC, OASW 2009). Prior to the changes in the Education Act, these
students would not be connected with education as a result of their negative
behavior.
Not unlike bullying, addressing school violence requires a community
response. Several school boards are currently investing in developing
protocols with community agencies to better respond to serious student
behavior. As an example, in the Limestone District School Board, located in
Kingston, Ontario, a Community Threat Assessment Protocol has been
established as a collaborative response to student threat making behaviors. The
protocol includes all schools and their community partners such as Police,
Fire, Child welfare, hospitals, mental health agencies, and youth justice. The
establishment of this protocol has allowed a process of timely information
sharing and responding when there are students who are engaged in threat
making behaviors that pose a potential risk to other students, staff and
members of the community. Based on the research and training provided by
Canadian Kevin Cameron, a well recognized expert in the area of threat and
risk assessment, the protocol was preceded by building capacity within the
school board and community in helping people to recognize if a student is on
“an evolutionary pathway of violence” (Cameron et al., 2009). Through
examining contextual factors, Cameron teaches his workshop participants how
to differentiate between “worrisome behaviors” and those that would
necessitate a risk or threat assessment. Information gathering and interviewing
is done as a team, and Cameron emphasizes the importance of gathering data
from multiple sources. He notes, “the strength of this model lies in the use of a
multidisciplinary team that investigates and evaluates all the factors and
contexts of the student’s life and the specific incident of concern” (Cameron et
al., 2009, p 27). Based on the student’s level of risk, an action plan is put into
place which takes into consideration each risk factor, as well as the safety of
the student and the school community. School social workers are part of the
multidisciplinary teams who conduct threat and risk assessment in the schools.
Often, the resulting plan involves further assessment and treatment for mental
health issues, which is often facilitated through the role of the school social
worker in collaboration with community professionals.
110 Christine Bibby
SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS AND MENTAL HEALTH

Many Ontarian students struggle with not only mental health issues, but
also other risk factors including addictions. A recent policy document entitled
“Taking Mental Health to School” (Santor, Ferguson, & Short, 2009, p. 5)
stated that in Ontario, mental health and substance abuse issues are recognized
as critical for school systems. A scan of Ontario school boards indicate that
educators rank mental health problems as a key issue in the current school
environment. Of paramount concern is the recognition that mental health
disorders and difficulties are closely associated with declining academic
performance (Santor et al., 2009, p. 8). As quoted in the Taking Mental Health
to School document:
“Epidemiological studies indicate that up to one in five children and

youth suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder including substance
abuse. Many more students experience mental health difficulties that
cause significant problems. These disorders and difficulties impose
considerable barriers to the normal academic, emotional and social-
developmental tasks of childhood and adolescence. Adult mental health
disorders frequently onset in adolescence or before. Therefore, treating
and coping with these students has significant financial costs to
education, health and social service systems” (Santor et al., 2009, p. 8).
Social workers are well aware of the mental health needs of students in
Ontario schools and have been both advocates and deliverers of mental health
services for many years. Some authors suggest that 70-80% of the mental
health services received by children, who have mental health problems are
provided by schools (Hoagwood, Burns, Diser, Ringelsen, & Schoenwald,
2001).
Over the past twenty years, as the literature and field of evidence-based
practice grows, school social workers have become more adept at responding
to the mental health needs of students in schools and working collaboratively
with community agencies. A recent survey of school social workers in Ontario
schools regarding their experience with mental health in schools was
conducted to provide specific information to the Ministry of Education,
Special Education Branch (Personal communication, School Social Work
Committee of the Ontario Association of Social Workers).
Findings indicated that the most common mental health issues that school
social workers address in their work in schools are depression, anxiety,
suicidal ideation and self harm, as well as behavioral disorders, such as

attention deficit disorder and oppositional defiance disorder. Other mental
health issues that students present with are mood disorders (e.g. bipolar), post
traumatic stress disorder, addictions, concurrent disorders (such as mental
health and addictions), eating disorders, and fetal alcohol syndrome. Social
workers in schools are often called in to assist with students who have
“behavioral problems’, which in essence are often undiagnosed mental health
concerns. School social workers are often the first professional to assess the
situation and respond to potential mental health concerns through working
with the student, family and community (Personal communication, School
Social Work Committee of the Ontario Association of Social Workers,
June 2009).
Social workers provide a wide range of mental health services in the
schools they work in; through prevention, intervention and postvention social
workers respond to the needs of students, parents, and schools and
communities. The knowledge and skill base of school social workers enables
school social workers to adapt their practice to the needs of students in
changing times. School social workers are required to be up to date with the
most recent evidence-based practices to respond effectively to students with
mental health needs. Of the school social workers who responded, an average
of 30% of caseloads were students with mental health concerns (Personal
communication, School Social Work Committee of the Ontario Association of
Social Workers). If this is compared to research data, school social work
caseloads are slightly higher than the 1 in 5 estimate of young persons affected
with mental health concerns. School social workers have provided
programming at the school level for many years. As noted by Santor et al.
(2009, p.12) there is solid evidence for programs for prevention, early
intervention and treatment in the school environment. Offering programs such
as stress or anger management, reducing violence and substance abuse and
modifying the school environment to promote prosocial behavior facilitates
the development of good mental health, and prevents the development of
disorders and difficulties (Santor et al, p.12, 2009). As indicated by the school
social work surveys of 2004 and 2009, social workers are involved in
providing programs in schools that increase positive mental health (Shepherd
& Judge, 2004; Personal communication, School Social Work Committee of
the Ontario Association of Social Workers).
From the 2009 survey, school social workers indicate that they are
building capacity within schools for responding to student mental health
through providing a continuum of educational and clinical services (Shepherd
112 Christine Bibby
& Judge, 2004). School social workers provide: assessment of individual

students presenting with worrisome behaviors; consultation with school
personnel regarding mental health issues; referral to community agencies and
physicians for further assessment and treatment; education to classroom
teachers including how to support a student with mental health concerns, and
to explain how mental health issues present in a classroom; crisis intervention;
individual counseling for students, counseling for parents and families
regarding mental health issues; group work with students struggling with
mental health issues; advocacy for students within the school and community;
collaboration with community agencies, schools and families to ensure
consistency and understanding; case conferences with family, student and
other professionals; outreach services (e.g. home visits to students homes to
meet with family), and building capacity with school personnel to assist in a
broader understanding of mental health issues and how they impact on youth
and the community (Personal communication, School Social Work Committee
of the Ontario Association of Social Workers).
Recent literature has suggested that an effective model of mental health
services in schools include universal prevention, targeted prevention, as well
as treatment intervention (Santor et al., 2009). The interconnected service
model adds the roles of the parents and community to the resources that
service children and build on the strengths of putting the systems together.
School social workers are involved in all levels of program delivery in schools
and their roles in schools mirror this model of continuum of service and
community collaboration. Evidence based practices are helping guide them in
deciding where to focus their time and resources.
In “Taking Mental Health to School” the policy paper to review school-
based mental health, it was highlighted that effective strategies to address
mental health in Ontario schools must include increasing the mental health
literacy of teachers, staff and students; increased training for staff and students
regarding mental health; and increasing the system’s capacity to deal with
mental health and substance abuse problems (Santor et al, 2009, p. 10).
Schools are a natural environment in which to increase the capacity of students
and staff. This is particularly important in rural areas of Ontario, where access
to community services may be a challenge. Coupled with the fact that suicide
continues to be a second leading cause of death among Canadian youth ages
10-24 (Statistics Canada 2009), mental health concerns pose an often
unrecognized and underreported threat to student’s lives. Increasing the ability
of the school to better respond to mental health is a safeguard for students and
their families. An example of increasing the mental health literacy of staff and
students is seen within the Grand Erie District School Board.
In rural southern Ontario, the Grand Erie District School Board (GEDSB)
offers a program which increases the capacity of the schools and communities
to respond more effectively to suicide risk. School social workers, along with
community partners, train teams of students and school staff in a model of
suicide intervention entitled “Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training”
(ASIST) initially developed in Alberta, Canada in1983 by the
multidisciplinary team of Dr. Roger Tierney, Richard Ramsay, Dr. Bryan
Tanney and Dr. Bill Lang. Now incorporated as part of Living Works
Education, Inc. ASIST has grown to worldwide recognition and operates in
several countries as an evidence-based model of suicide prevention. The
model was adopted by the GEDSB as a way to increase the capacity of schools
in responding to the significant issue of suicide risk. The students who are
trained in ASIST represent a broad cross-section of the student population.
Prior to training, school social workers conduct a screening process to ensure
the readiness of individual students and parent consent is obtained. Staff and
students participate together in an intensive two-day training program in which
they are educated about how suicide risk factors present and what they can do
to intervene and provide “suicide first aid”. Through the ASIST program,
participants learn to recognize warning signs, practice interviewing skills to
learn how to assess risk factors, and also learn how to connect a person at risk
with support. These students, along with the staff trained, become part of a
Suicide Intervention Team. The team provides direct service to students who
may be at risk of suicide, the key function being to connect students at risk to
the supports available within the school and community. In some schools, the
Suicide Intervention Teams offer education about suicide to the school and
community, and engage in a variety of awareness and fund raising activities.
Each secondary school within the board is offered Applied Suicide
Intervention Training to develop their team and build capacity in their school.
In partnership with local agencies, such as public health and children’s mental
health, school social workers offer training several times a year to various
schools. Although there has been no formal research on this project to date, the
anecdotal evidence is clear that this program is reaching out and impacting
students in positive ways.
School Social Worker Janet Allemang shares the following insights
regarding the impact of ASIST in Dunnville Secondary School in rural
Dunnville, Ontario (Personal communication, January 25, 2010). Over the past
114 Christine Bibby
10 years, over 500 staff and students have been trained at Dunnville Secondary
School. As reflected by Allemang,
“the school has a vibrant Suicide Intervention Team that meets, plans,
educates ngrade 9 students and raises funds and awareness within its
walls and beyond.
ASIST raises the level of awareness in the school, it strives to
empower students and staff alike to meet the needs of students. ASIST
teaches the importance of personal communication, listening, relecting,
and builds empathy. It is both an intervention and prevention model.
While it provides meaningful information on attitudes, risk factors, safety
plans and supportive networks, the activities of the team also get people
talking about suicide and reduce stigma. At Dunnville Secondary School,
the Suicide Intervention Team has provided students with avenues for
involvement at the school, community and across the province. Under the
caring and committed direction of staff, the Suicide Intervention Team
has traveled to give presentations to many associations and groups”
(Personal communication, January 25, 2010).
Feedback from principals and vice-principals highlighted these

observations about ASIST: “it provides students with another level of support,
within the school, students are aware of who is trained and who they can talk
to if they are thinking of suicide. We know from referrals to guidance that this
program is connecting students at risk of suicide to support” (A. High,
Personal communication, January 7, 2010). Another comment with respect to
the ASIST program is that it “promotes greater awareness of mental health
issues at home and school and empowers people with knowledge and skills”
(T. North, personal communication, January 8, 2010). In addition, ASIST
changes the school environment: “it provides students with valuable leadership
opportunity and helps them help others for the rest of their lives” (A. High,
personal communication, January 7, 2010). As well, it was felt that “there is
more of an awareness of others, students are more connected to each other and
are more likely to approach a student who is sitting alone to see if they are
OK” (T. North, personal communication, January 8, 2010). Empowering
students and giving them a role in helping their peers has positive impacts on
the school, and is an approach that is growing in Ontario schools.
Another way school social workers promote student mental health is by
direct service in partnership with community agencies. In the Dufferin Peel
Catholic District School Board School Social Worker Patricia Codner
participated in collaborative project with the Credit Valley Hospital in
Mississauga, Ontario. Staff from the hospital and school board co-led a group
for adolescent girls who exhibited behavior on a spectrum of anxiousness and
depression. As part of the continuum of support offered to these students,
timely access to psychiatric assessment was provided as required (Personal
communication, Glenn Carley, Dec. 8, 2009). Partnerships between schools
and agencies allow for a much more accessible pathway for students to access
community services. In the Ottawa-Carleton Board, there is an Urgent Care
protocol between the school board and Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario
(CHEO). In the event of a student who is feeling suicidal, has a plan, but is
unable to contract for safety, there is a fast track referral for a mental health
assessment within 24 hours (Personal communication, Fern Goldman,
December 14, 2009).
Working beyond the level of individual communities, school social
workers have had opportunities to consult with the Ministry of Education and
Ministry of Health regarding the mental health of students and their families.
At the present time, an interministerial committee (including the Ministry of
health, Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of the Child and Youth) has
been established to inform a ten year strategic plan for addressing the salient
issues of mental health and addictions in Ontario. Already, school social
workers have been consulted to bring their perspectives forward from their
experiences working in schools. (Sandy Palinski, Ministry of Education,
Consultation with School Social Work Committee of the Ontario Association
of Social Workers, September 28, 2009).
At present, there are a wide range of evidence-based programs and
partnerships in schools across the province, but no one consistent strategy to
address children’s mental health (Santor et. al, 2009, p. 66). Increasing
professional development and training in the area of implementing evidence-
based practices has been identified as a goal for school boards. In addition,
promoting initiatives for researchers to collaborative with school boards and
community agencies to add to the knowledge base regarding how to
implement and sustain effective school programming was encouraged. (Santor
et al, 2009, p. 66) School social workers are encouraged by the interministerial
efforts to bring together the sectors that service our children and youth and
will have much to offer in the process of building capacity in schools to better
respond to the mental health needs of our students.
116 Christine Bibby
FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR SCHOOL SOCIAL

WORKERS IN ONTARIO
School social workers are well positioned to further their practice efficacy
for students and families, through further research of their work and
collaboration with other school social workers across the province, country
and world. Already using evidence-based practice, and engaging in
collaboration with partners at every level of the education, health and legal
system, school social workers add an integral piece to the social and emotional
well being of students in schools.
The Ontario Association of Social Workers (OASW), School Social Work
Committee is “committed to the development, promotion, and advocacy of
School Social Work for the purpose of improving the quality of education and
life for children, families and communities in Ontario” (SSWC, OASW,
2009). As part of their ongoing work, the committee is examining the viability
of completing a more comprehensive study of school social work in the
province. Recently, the committee has initiated a virtual networking group for
school social workers through the OASW website. Aside from informal
networking, an identified need of the committee is to develop a “best
practices” resource for school social work in Ontario. As school social work
expands in the province, boards are seeking professional and procedural
information from one another. Encouraging school social workers to reflect on
their practice and put their thoughts to paper is an ongoing priority that
competes with the time spent offering school social work services. The breadth
and depth of school social work practice that exists in Ontario could be better
reflected through these venues of further research and reflection.
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September 2010.
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Relevant Websites
Ontario, Government of www.ontario.ca

Ontario website (Geography of Ontario)
Ontario Association of Social www.oasw.org
Workers (The voice of social workers in Ontario)
Ontario Association for www.oacas.ca
Counseling and Attendance (Advocacy, professional development and
Services networking for school counselors)
Canadian Association of www.casswac.ca
School Social Workers and Promoting and encouraging the development
Attendance Services of quality school social work and attendance
counseling in Canada
Ministry of Education of www.edu.gov.on.ca
Ontario Government website of education in Ontario
Ontario College of Social www.ocswssw.org
Workers and Social Services A regulatory body whose primary duty is to
Workers serve and protect the public interest
Livingworks Education www.livingworks.net
Education and research in the area of suicide
prevention and intervention worldwide
Chapter 7
A GLOBAL VIEW OF SCHOOL SOCIAL

WORK IN THE UNITED STATES
James C. Raines
Department of Health, Human Services & Public Policy,
California State University Monterey Bay, US
DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK

It is impossible to understand the origin of school social work in the
United States without consideration of its historical and social milieu.
American public education has progressed through four stages over two
centuries.
Grammar Schools
The first stage was the formation of “grammar” schools. In the 17th and
th
18 centuries, the U.S. was a third world country that was valued chiefly for
its contribution of raw materials (fur, lumber, and minerals) to the British
Empire. During this time children were taught by their parents how to manage
the family farm or apprenticed to a master craftsman to learn a trade (Mulkeen,
1986; Richardson & Parker, 1993). This period is best exemplified in the 1642
124 James C. Raines
Puritan law of Massachusetts Bay Colony which appointed selectmen to make

sure parents were teaching their children to read, learn religion, and obey state
laws.
A few wealthy families could afford a tutor to teach their children Greek
and Latin in order to attend a university. As towns grew to one hundred
families or more, colonial grammar schools were organized for students who
aspired to enter a profession such as medicine or law. These schools were
founded on four assumptions: moral education, a common curriculum of
classical authors (in Greek and Latin), universally available (but voluntary)
instruction, and proper pedagogy beginning at age six (L.G. Smith, 1986). The
family, however, retained primary responsibility for the education of children.
When the U.S. Constitution was written in 1787, the founders left public
instruction entirely in the hands of the thirteen individual states in accordance
with the Tenth Amendment in the Bill of Rights.
Common Schools
The second stage was the introduction of “common” schools. In the 19th
century, the U.S. became a developing country during the Industrial
Revolution (1820–1870). People migrated out of rural areas and into the cities
to find work as well as from non-English speaking countries, such as Germany
and Ireland (Katz, 1976). Herbst (1986) decried the illiteracy of children in the
urban slum that made them unfit as employees.
In 1837, Horace Mann began to promote the concept of free public
schools. Schools were expected to meet the needs of the labor market for
industrious workers as well as equip adults to compete in the new economy
(Dorn, 1993). Schools had a social obligation to inculcate three American
values essential to good citizenship: Christian morality; a reliable work ethic,
and mastery of the English language (Herbst, 1986; Mulkeen, 1986). This
mission is best exemplified in Mann’s 1848 report on his system of free
common schools that offered universal education for all children.
Funding for free public schools initially relied on land grants by the U.S.
government which cities could sell or lease to finance education.
Unfortunately, as J. K. Smith (1986) noted, “bad investments and very low
property rentals kept the school fund much lower than it should have been” (p.
323). This meager endowment created pupil-to-teacher ratios as high as 160:1,
A Global View of School Social Work in the United States 125
meaning that the system could not even accommodate those who voluntarily
enrolled from the middle and upper classes (Johanningmeier, 1986; Reese &
Cohen, 1986). Unlike Europe, there was no difference between technical
schools and grammar schools (Richardson & Parker, 1993), so the first public
high schools divided students into three tracks: college preparatories,
vocational schools for boys, or two-year coed teacher training programs (J. K.
Smith, 1986).
Compulsory Education
The third stage was the beginning of compulsory public education.

Compulsory universal education was a relatively new concept when social
work started in the late 1870s (Raines, 1999). Child labor laws and
compulsory education laws complemented one another (Butler, 1898;
Mulkeen, 1986). For example, Illinois passed its first child labor law in 1877
and its first compulsory education law in 1880, but it only required children to
attend school for twelve weeks a year. Chicago hired its first truant officer in
1855 and had a dozen by 1890. This development, however, had an unforeseen
effect - it brought incorrigible children into the educational system with needs
the schools were ill-equipped to handle. When attendance was voluntary,
schools could threaten students with expulsion; but when attendance was
mandatory this tactic lost its teeth (Johanningmeier, 1986). Special classes had
to be created for children who were “slow in mind and often defective in body,
poor in family background, and lazy but defiant in school” (Richardson &
Parker, 1993, p. 365).
By 1900, more than thirty states had legislated compulsory school
attendance (Mulkeen, 1986). Social work in schools began during the 1906-07
school year in four major cities across the United States: Boston, Hartford,
New York, and Chicago (Allen-Meares, 2004; McCullagh, 1993, 2000, 2002).
In the beginning, these workers were known as visiting teachers or school
visitors. The settlement houses worked closely with poor immigrant families
and they saw the public school as a “social and community center”
(McCullagh, 2000, p. 4). Schools often found immigrant families reticent to
send their children to school because it meant foregoing a child’s income for
the family. Accordingly, social workers in schools were to serve both the
school and its surrounding neighborhood (Montgomery, 1907).
126 James C. Raines
Inclusive Education
The fourth stage was the introduction of free “appropriate” public

education for all children. As early as 1898, C. Loring Brace of the New York
Children’s Aid Society had taken notice of the needs of children with physical
disabilities. Unfortunately, this early form of special education was the
exception rather than the norm for children with disabilities. The turning point
for special education was the U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954). While that case was about racial
inequality, its primary importance was that it overturned the Plessy v.
Ferguson (1898) doctrine of “separate, but equal” and insisted on integrated
schools rather than segregated ones (Raines, 1996). When the U.S. got ready
to pass the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (P.L. 42-142) in 1975,
the Midwest School Social Work Council goaded the National Association of
Social Workers into lobbying for school social work to be included as a
“related service” for students with disabilities (Raines, 2008a).
CONTEMPORARY SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK

This section will cover the current context, common problems faced, legal
authority, guest status, and certification requirements. It will conclude with the
perspective of an award-winning school social worker in the United States.
Current Context
As of 2011, there are 49.5 million students in public elementary and

secondary schools in the United States. This number is expected to grow to
53.1 million by 2021 (Aud et al., 2012). The additional six million students in
private schools account for 13% of student population. Approximately, 75% of
the private schools are faith-based institutions; the rest are secular. There are
also 1.1 million U.S. children who are home-schooled by their parents.
According to the U.S. Department of Education (2007), there are 27,200
school social workers found in 41% of public elementary schools. Only 14%
of elementary schools, however, employ a full-time social worker. Thus, the
average elementary school social worker serves two different schools with an
average of 450 students at each elementary school or 900 students to one
social worker. There are 7,200 school social workers found in 38% of public
high schools. About 20% of secondary schools employ a full-time social

worker with an average of 807 students per social worker at each high school.
Common Problems
Social workers in the U.S. are commonly confronted with several social
problems. These include poverty, racial segregation, and school violence.
First, despite the great wealth of the U.S., one in five American children grows
up in poverty (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics,
2009; Wight & Chau, 2009). Social workers are more likely to be employed in
high-poverty schools where 23% of such schools hire a full-time social worker
(U.S. Dept. of Education, 2007). High-poverty schools are operationally
defined as those where at least 75% of the students are eligible for a free or
reduced-price lunch program. Currently, 19% of U.S. public school students
attend a high-poverty public school (Aud et al., 2012). There is a great deal of
racial disparity in the U.S. education system with 33% of Black, 35% of
Hispanic, and 25% of American Indian students attending high-poverty
schools. Finally, poor families (32%) are far less likely to participate in school
activities, such as volunteering or serving on a school committee than nonpoor
families (58%). This should not be interpreted, however, as a lack of interest –
poor families are much more likely to check their children’s homework (81%)
than nonpoor families (61%).
Second, despite the fact the U.S. is one of the most demographically
diverse nations in the world (Adams & Strother-Adams, 2001), the races often
remain quite segregated. Despite efforts at racial integration in the 1960s-
1970s, racial segregation has increased over the last decade (Aud et al., 2012).
Kozol (2005) has explained that urban schools have acquiesced to the business
community to such an extent that they primarily train youth for work in local
industries even if this means sacrificing students’ dreams of a higher
education. When White middle-class families object, urban school districts
often create “magnet schools” for these families where students must apply to
gain admission for college preparatory education. This trend has been
unfortunately reinforced in a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Parents
Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (Adams, 2008;
Frey & Wilson, 2009), where the high court asserted that racial balancing was
no longer a “compelling interest” for governmental intervention in public
schools. University training programs in social work also exhibit difficulty
recruiting minority students into the social work profession. Kelly and
128 James C. Raines
colleagues (2008) found that the vast majority of school social workers were
White females.
Third, it should not come as a surprise that in a militaristic country the rate
of lethal violence in the U.S. is higher than most other developed nations
(United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime, 2008). Likewise, school violence is
a perennial issue in American schools. Between 1992 and 2001, U.S. schools
experienced 35 separate incidents of multiple-victim school shootings that left
53 people dead and 144 more wounded. The U.S. Congress authorized the
National Research Council (2003) to study school violence and report on
possible solutions. Since then, however, violent crime has remained stable in
U.S. public schools with 85% reporting at least one violent crime and 16%
reporting serious violent incidents. Moreover, 37% of public schools report
over 10 violent incidents each year with urban and high-poverty schools more
highly affected (Aud et al, 2012). Given this state of affairs, 7% of students
received out-of-school suspensions and 0.2% are permanently expelled from
school. Male students are twice as likely to be suspended as female students
and three times as likely to be expelled. Black students are also three times as
likely to be suspended as their White counterparts and five times more likely
to be expelled (Planty, 2009).
Legal Authority
In the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (P.L. 107-110), school

social workers are listed under one of three types of ‘school based mental
health services providers’ which also includes school counselors and school
psychologists (Sec. 4151(9)). Accordingly, schools can employ school social
workers under the Elementary and Secondary School Counseling Program, a
competitive grant that aims to establish or expand school-based counseling
services in underserved communities (Sec. 5421). Schools that receive the
grant are expected to “ensure a team approach to school counseling in the
schools served by the local educational agency by working toward ratios
recommended by the American School Health Association of one school
counselor to 250 students, one school social worker to 800 students, and one
school psychologist to 1,000 students” (Sec. 5421(c)(2)(K)). School social
workers employed under this grant must hold the following two qualifications:
“(a) a master’s degree in social work from a program accredited by the
Council on Social Work Education; and (b) either (i) is licensed or certified by
the State in which services are provided; or (ii) in the absence of such State
licensure or certification, possesses a national credential or certification as a

school social work specialist granted by an independent professional
organization” (Sec. 5421(e)(5)). Finally, school social workers are recognized
as “pupil services personnel” who are “involved in providing assessment,
diagnosis, counseling, educational, therapeutic, and other necessary services
(including related services as that term is defined in section 602 of the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act(IDEA) as part of a comprehensive
program to meet student needs” (Sec. 9101(36)(A)).
Related services under IDEA mean “transportation and such
developmental, corrective, and other supportive services as are required to
assist a child with a disability to benefit from special education” (p. 46760).
The federal definition of school social work services includes five broad
activities: “(i) Preparing a social or developmental history on a child with a
disability; (ii) Group and individual counseling with the child and family; (iii)
Working in partnership with parents and others on those problems in a child’s
living situation (home, school, and community) that affect the child’s
adjustment in school; (iv) Mobilizing school and community resources to
enable the child to learn as effectively as possible in his or her educational
program; and (v) Assisting in developing positive behavioral intervention
strategies” (Sec. 300.34(b)(14), p. 46761). Furthermore, in 2006, the U.S.
Department of Education clarified that “the definition of social work services
in schools includes examples of the types of social work services that may be
provided” (p. 46575). In other words, the activities are meant to be illustrative,
not exhaustive.
Guests in a Host Setting
One of the biggest differences between school social work in the U.S. and
similar services providing in accordance with the British model is that
American school social workers are primarily “school-employed.” Link (1991)
identified the pros and cons of this model as follows. The ten primary
advantages are that school-employed social workers are:
1. fully involved in the life of the school and knowledgeable about its
systems;
2. accepted by the teaching staff as a professional worthy of equal
respect;
3. available for crisis intervention on short notice;
130 James C. Raines
4. able to followup with questions or give advice directly;

5. entitled to an office, access to a secretary, and resources (computer &
phone);
6. readily available to students whether teacher- or self-referred;
7. recognized as the social services experts to external workers or
agencies;
8. available to parents coming to see the school administration;
9. part of a pupil services team that includes counselors and
psychologists; and
10. not required to travel as much as their community-based counterparts.
The eight primary disadvantages are that school-employed social workers

are:
1. available for extraneous duties and have less discretion over use of
their time;
2. at risk of being co-opted by the school administration for disciplinary
duties;
3. influenced by the pressures of the school’s quest for academic
achievement;
4. under the authority of the school principal and less independent than
outsiders;
5. identified as school employees and perceived as part of the
institutional problem;
6. more insulated from the community and more absorbed by the
school’s issues;
7. part of an organizational culture where busyness can substitute for
effectiveness; and
8. part of an institution where staff’s social or emotional needs are often
ignored.
Certification Requirements
Today, there are school social workers in all 50 states, but there are two
widespread difficulties regarding certification standards. First, there is a lack
of consistency regarding pre-service educational requirements. For example,
among the 30 states that have clear pre-service educational requirements, one-
third of these require only a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) degree and two-
thirds require a Master of Social Work (MSW) degree. Eighty percent require
some form of internship, but 20% do not. Only three states (Illinois,
Tennessee, & Washington) require candidates to pass an advanced subject-
area exam (Altshuler & Webb, 2009). Second, there are stronger and more
consistent standards for school counselors and school psychologists. For
example, school psychologists must hold a Master’s degree in 49 out of 50
states and all require an internship. For school counselors, 43 of the states
require a Master’s degree and twenty states require an advanced subject area
exam (Altshuler & Webb, 2009).
Practitioner Perspective
Dot Kontak won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Midwest
School Social Work Council in 2008. She describes how she first got involved
with school social work.
I first got involved in social work because many of my friends at

Valparaiso University [IN] were in social work but even as an
undergraduate, my attraction was to working in schools. I did my group
work field placement in an elementary school, my concentration with the
Lake County Juvenile Court and worked closely with the Gary, IN
schools. When I went to Washington University [St. Louis, MO] for my
graduate program, there were no school specialties. My papers in my
“Organizations” class were based on school systems. I did my internship
at the O’Fallon School District. I also felt it was important to know about
learning disabilities [LD] and took a class in the Education department on
LD. I just always thought that the schools were the perfect place to reach
and provide interventions to children.
She has worked in the same St. Louis school district for the past twenty
years. What kinds of problems does she see most often? She doesn’t mention
the systemic problems, she only sees the clinical consequences, “Mental health
issues — depression, bipolar disorder, suicide ideation, difficulties with peer
relations, and task completion.” As with most school social workers in the
U.S., she is employed directly by the school system itself. She sees this as
having many advantages:
132 James C. Raines
 The ability to have easy access to students both formally and

informally;
 Touching base with kids in the hallway and at lunch time;
 Trust — administrators and other staff see you as a ready resource for
crisis intervention;
 Being readily accessible and approachable to kids and to staff as
issues arise to assist with problem-solving;
 Linking to outside resources as needed;
 Providing direct interventions;
 Immediately involving others who may be of assistance;
 When there is a peer issue, ready access to students provides an
opportunity to mediate peer issues before they escalate;
 Having good collaboration with other professional staff in the
building to build a system of support in the schools;
 Bringing the ecological perspective to educational staff members who
typically are only concerned about academics so that there is a better
appreciation of what a student may be coping with besides just the
math homework;
 In a sometimes closed and guarded system, we are seen as “one of
them.” Teachers and administrators are more amenable to making
adjustments to how they work with particular students based on our
input.
FUTURE TRENDS
There are three related future trends for social work in U.S. schools. All of
these are rooted in the past, but have yet to reach their full potential. These
include (1) the emergence of evidence-based practice, (2) a focus on early
intervention as exhibited in response-to-intervention, and (3) data-based
decision making. After each topic, our practitioner shares her perspective as
well.
Evidence-Based Practice
Evidence-based practice in schools began with the reauthorization of the

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1997. For the first time,
schools were expected to write “measurable annual goals” for students with
Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Unfortunately, no one thought to
tell schools that in order to have meaningful goals, they needed to have a
measured baseline from which to start (Raines, 2002). The most logical place
to record this baseline is in the student’s Present Level of Performance
(PLOP). For example, a student who has only five friends in a class of 25
students might reasonably be expected to have ten friends by the end of one
year. This may also be stated in mathematical terms as moving from a baseline
of being friends with 20% of the class to being friends with 40% of the class.
Furthermore, IDEA 1997 required schools to state how the annual goals would
be measured and to give regular progress reports on the student’s growth.
In 2002, the U.S. extended the use of evidence-based practice when it
passed a reauthorization of the Elementary & Secondary Education Act
commonly known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB; P.L. 107-110). The
purpose of NCLB was stated as follows:
The purpose of this title is to ensure that all children have a fair,
equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and
reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic
achievement standards and state academic assessments (Sec. 1001).
One of the methods for achieving this purpose was by “promoting

schoolwide reform and ensuring the access of children to effective,
scientifically based instructional strategies and challenging academic content”
(Sec. 1001(9)). In fact, the mantra “scientifically based” appears 122 times in
the 670-page Act.
Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a process that involves the “conscious,
explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about
the care” of clients (Sackett et al., 1996, p. 71). There are five basic stages in
this process (Raines, 2008b; see Figure 1). First, practitioners create
answerable questions about a clinical issue (i.e., assessment, prevention, risk,
intervention, or description). Then they must investigate the evidence
balancing effectiveness and efficiency. Third, they must appraise the evidence
found to determine its relevance, strength, and consistency. Next they must
adapt and apply the evidence to the target population so that it fits students’
culture, developmental level, and contextual constraints. Finally, they should
evaluate the results to ensure that it is working with this population. This last
point deserves special emphasis - research can only tell us what interventions
work with most students, never what will work for all students. Accordingly,
134 James C. Raines
some students may experience harmful effects even with the best evidence
available. Thus, practice evaluation is an ethical imperative in evidence-based
practice. At its core, it assumes that social workers must engage in a habit of
lifelong learning.
Michael Kelly (2008) surveyed school social workers in Illinois about
their use of scientifically-based interventions through a series of vignettes
about decision-making in practice. He found that school social workers never
opted for research-based interventions more than 31% of time. In fact, in six
out of eight of his scenarios, school social workers opted for scientifically-
based interventions less than 20% of the time! Later, he and others (Kelly et
al., 2008) found that the same trends applied to school social workers across
the country. Moreover, they found that only a small percentage (14%) engaged
in data-based decision making. Why do U.S. school social workers seem so
slow to implement evidence-based practice despite the political mandate and
conceptual clarity offered by the U.S. Department of Education? Recently,
several authors have explored this issue in depth.
1. Create
5. Evaluate
answerable
the results
question
Lifelong
learning
process
4. Adapt and
2. Investigate
apply the
the evidence
evidence
3. Appraise
the evidence
Used by permission. Source: Raines, J. C. (2008). Evidence-based practice in school
mental health: A primer for school social workers, psychologists, and counselors.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Figure 1. Process of evidence-based practice.

Franklin and Kelly (2009) examined the barriers at different stages of the
evidence-based process. First, some practitioners have difficulty accurately
formulating an answerable question. They recommend using a collaborative
approach consisting of a school-based team and a researcher. Second,
practitioners have difficulty knowing which sources to trust. For example, a
recent review of school social work textbooks found that most chapter authors
did little to confirm the effectiveness of their recommended interventions
(Stone & Gambrill, 2007). On the other hand, national registries (see
Appendix A) often did an excellent job investigating and appraising the
evidence. Third, practitioners need help contextualizing the research to fit their
own practice settings. Franklin and Kelly admit that social workers must often
think critically about the available research and extrapolate interventions based
on what they know to formulate a workable plan (McCracken & Marsh, 2008).
Fourth, practitioners wonder how much they can adapt an empirically-
supported intervention without losing its core elements (Palinkas et al., 2009).
Researchers could help by clarifying both the essential and nonessential
elements of their programs (Waller, 2009). Finally, practitioners often want
more “user-friendly” training for the programs and may deliberately adopt less
rigorous programs that are easier to learn and use. Researchers need to think
more like entrepreneurs in creating empirically-supported interventions and
market them in ways that will garner acceptance by social work consumers
(Yunong & Fengzhi, 2009).
As one might imagine with a practitioner so intimately involved with the

daily life of a school, Dot Kontak finds evidence-based practice:
difficult to incorporate. My position is more individual crisis response

rather than system response. We now have “problem-solving coaches”
who have been looking at the larger picture. It’s hard to do the research
needed to locate evidence-based interventions while being overwhelmed
with the demands of direct practice. There’s not a lot [of research] out
there saying what we do makes a difference. Even if we had more time
and easy access to research, limited funding and staffing would prohibit
acquisition and implementation.
136 James C. Raines
Nonetheless, there has been a recent change with practitioners evaluating

the student’s response to social work interventions in some states (Conrad,
2013).
Early Intervention and Response-to-Intervention (RTI)
In 2002, a Presidential Commission (U.S. Department of Education,

2002b) released a critical report on American special education claiming that it
employed a “wait-to-fail” model of intervention. Among its top
recommendations was to embrace a model of prevention, not a model of
failure (Raines, 2006). This required school reforms to move the system
toward “early identification and swift intervention” (U.S. Dept. of Education,
2002b, p. 9). The most recent reauthorization of the IDEA recognized that the
number of students labeled with learning disabilities had mushroomed in the
first 30 years of its enactment. Accordingly, it authorized schools to do
screenings without parental consent in order to differentiate instruction within
the regular classroom and to determine if the student “responds to scientific,
research-based intervention” (Sec. 614(b)(6)). Both of these changes were
made to empower schools to be more assertive about early intervention and
reduce long-term remediation in special classes. These changes gave birth to
the Response-to-Intervention (RTI) movement in American schools. RTI has
been defined as “the practice of (1) providing high-quality instruction
/intervention matched to student needs and (2) using learning rate over time
and level of performance to (3) make important educational decisions”
(Batsche et al., 2006, p. 5). Most conceptualizations of RTI use a three-tiered
model of student support. At Tier 1, primary prevention should meet the needs
of 80% of public school students; at Tier 2, early intervention should meet the
needs of 15% of students, and at Tier 3, intensive intervention should be
reserved for 5% of students (see Figure 2).
Both EBP and RTI emphasize the use of scientifically-based interventions
as part of the process. The reason for this is plain – it is inherently unfair to
judge whether a child is meeting grade-level standards without first ensuring
that they have received appropriate instruction or intervention. In essence, the
federal guarantee of a “free appropriate public education” has become a “free
research-based public education.” Like EBP, RTI also uses a five-stage
process. First, universal screenings are designed to determine if there is a
problem. This can be accomplished two ways – either use the school-wide
information system to determine which students are a standard deviation
below the average of their peers or use a gated screening tool that primarily
depends on teacher referrals (Gerber, 2003). Second, if a problem does exist,
social workers analyze potential causes in four domains (Burns & Gibbons,
2008): instruction (e.g., teaching methods); curriculum (e.g., textbooks);
environment (e.g., classroom milieu); or learner (e.g., social-emotional
problems). Third, social workers identify interventions designed to teach or
remediate an academic or behavioral skill. Interventions may target the
students, their environment, or both. Fourth, social workers strive to ensure
that the intervention is implemented as intended. While some flexibility should
be expected, it is essential to maintain the core components of the
scientifically-based intervention (Telzrow, McNamara, & Hollinger, 2000;
Wood et al., 2007). Finally, social workers must evaluate how the students are
responding to the intervention using both their growth rate and their relative
performance to peers. Both of these measures will be discussed in more detail
below.
The response-to-intervention paradigm has only recently been imple-

mented in Dot Kontak’s school:
RTI has helped bring other educational staff persons along to do data
gathering and more meaningful intervention plans as well as follow-up.
Teachers get more help… it’s not solely on them to provide the bulk of
interventions. There was a point at our state [education] department when
we had to advocate for the need for interventions prior to referral. We’ve
come a long way, but we still have much further to go in Missouri.
Data-Based Decision Making
The core of the problem-solving process in RTI is data-based decision

making (Clark & Alvarez, 2010). This is done on a routine basis in all three
tiers, but the frequency will differ in each tier. At Tier 1, universal screenings
occur at least quarterly (every 9–10 weeks). At Tier 2, progress monitoring
occurs at least monthly. At Tier 3, progress monitoring should occur at least
weekly.
138 James C. Raines
Tier 3
5% Intensive
Intervention
15% Tier 2
Early Intervention
80% Tier 1
Primary Prevention
Figure 2. RTI Pagoda.
An initial approach to universal screening is to determine students’

relative performance compared to the grade-level peers. This can be done by
calculating the class averages and standard deviations for indicators such as
attendance (Dube & Orpinas, 2009; Kearney, 2008), grades (Schmidt, 2001),
nurse visits (Tsao & Zeltzer, 2003; Youssef et al., 2007), office disciplinary
referrals (Irvin et al., 2006), tardiness (Siskowski, 2006), and work completion
rates (Brooks et al., 2003; Smith & Sugai, 2000). (In schools with less than 30
students per grade, the median is a more accurate measure of central
tendency.) In a normal bell-shaped distribution, 68% of all students will be
within one standard deviation (SD) of the center (mean or median) and
approximately 16% of the students will be 1 SD below the average. In a
classroom of 25 students, this means that no more than five should be targeted
for early intervention at Tier 2.
Initial relative performance, however, does not always predict future
performance. There are some students, who, despite early hardships, are quick
to catch up. This is why it is also essential to calculate each student’s growth
rate and compare it to the average growth rate of the grade. For example, if the
average literacy growth rate of a student in first grade is five words per week,
then a student who is learning eight words per week may easily catch up
during the first year. They may not need Tier 2 early intervention because they
are exceptionally intelligent even though they may be economically
disadvantaged.
Malecki & Demaray (2007) use the RIOT acronym to summarize the
various ways to collect data. Each one can be useful for all of the tiers. R is for
Review records. Schools regularly collect an enormous amount of data about
students, but they seldom analyze it to monitor student progress. The reason
archival records are such an excellent source of data is that they are extremely
nonreactive - students seldom think about them and do not change their
responses based on them. I is for Interview informants. Interviewing teachers
or parents about students’ progress enables us to obtain an in-depth qualitative
perspective on the problem. O is for Observation. Most observational systems
recommend that classroom observers use an index peer to obtain normative
data (Massat & Sanders, 2009). This index peer should share the target child’s
culture, gender, and age (within three months). Volpe and colleagues (2005)
concluded that most of the observational systems were treatment sensitive and
appropriate for progress monitoring. Finally, T is for Testing. For example,
scales have been developed to evaluate the teacher’s contribution to behavioral
problems at all three tiers. At Tier One, the My Class Inventory for elementary
grades (Sink & Spencer, 2005) and the Classroom Environment Scale for
secondary grades (Fraser & Fisher, 1986) are both useful. At Tier 2, the
Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (Mellor & Moore, 2003) categorizes
teacher communications with students using two orthogonal dimensions:
Dominance-Submission and Cooperation-Opposition. At Tier Three, the
Teacher Performance Rate & Accuracy Scale (Ross, Singer-Dudek, & Greer,
2005) evaluates the teacher’s ability to correctly carry out a behavior
improvement plan. For student contributions, Corcoran and Fischer (2013)
have compiled over 60 rapid assessment instruments for children and
adolescents that enable social workers to quickly determine students’
responsiveness to intervention.
Obviously, collecting data is just the beginning of data-based decision
making. Social workers must analyze the data to compare current performance
with student baselines. Students whose latest measures place their relative
performance within a standard deviation of their peers and whose trajectory of
growth indicates that they can maintain or exceed the growth of their peers
should be served with Tier 1 interventions. Students who are significantly
behind or whose growth rate is significantly lower than their peers should be
140 James C. Raines
given Tier 2 early interventions. Finally, students who fail to respond to Tier 2
interventions for two quarters (18-20 weeks) should be given Tier 3 intensive
interventions. It is equally important to believe that students should be able to
move down the tiers as well as up. Students who respond to intensive
intervention should be given a chance to succeed with Tier 2 interventions and
students who respond to early intervention should be provided an opportunity
to receive Tier 1 interventions.
Not surprisingly, the movement toward data-based decision making has

been slow to take root. Dot Kontak describes five subjective measures she uses
to feel successful as a practitioner:
 Informal staff, parent and student feedback.

 Graduation night!
 Seeing kids re-engaging in school and in life.
 Smiles, not frowns.
 Hugs from students.
She admits that these measures are “not very scientific.” She acknow-
ledges that:
We use an Access database that basically “counts” demographics,

types of concerns, types of services, subjective case outcomes. It has
nothing to do with effectiveness. For several years we used to track
attendance at time of referral and then at the end of the year, but it was
deemed by our department that that was “too much work”. Alas… even
the number of categories we “count” has been reduced significantly.
CONCLUSION
Education in the United States has evolved considerably since its colonial
origins. Beginning as an exclusive privilege for wealthy families, it now
includes compulsory education for all students and even inclusive education
for children with disabilities. School social work has also evolved during the
last century. Initially seen as glorified truancy officers, school social workers
are increasingly perceived as advanced professionals working in the school

system. The future of school social work in the United States depends on
social workers’ abilities to engage in evidence-based practice, monitor
students’ response to intervention, and make informed data-based decisions
about student needs and progress. These changes will occur very slowly as
practitioners are already extremely busy caring for the neediest students in the
school system with little time and energy left over to think systematically
about what they do.
APPENDIX
Web-Based Resources for Empirically-Supported Interventions
American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Practice

Parameters
http://www.aacap.org/page.ww?section=Practice+Parameters&name=Prac
tice+Parameters
American Academy of Pediatrics School-Based Mental Health
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/113/6/1839
American Psychological Association’s Guide to Empirically-Supported
Interventions
http://www.apa.org/divisions/div12/rev_est/
Campbell Collaboration Library of Reviews in Education, Criminal
Justice, & Social Welfare
http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/frontend.asp#About%20C2Ripe
Center for School Mental Health (University of Maryland)
http://csmh.umaryland.edu/resources.html/Summary%20of%20Recognize
d%20Evidence%20Based%20Programs6.14.08.doc
Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine’s Toolbox
http://www.cebm.net/toolbox.asp
Cochrane Reviews of Evidence-Based Health Care
http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/
National Institute on Drug Abuse Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment
http://www.drugabuse.gov/PODAT/PODATIndex.html
National Institute of Health Consensus Statement on ADHD
http://consensus.nih.gov/1998/1998AttentionDeficitHyperactivityDisorder
110html.htm
Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention’s Model Programs
142 James C. Raines
http://www.dsgonline.com/mpg2.5/mpg_index.htm
SAMHSA’s National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs & Practices
http://www.nrepp.samhsa.gov/index.htm
School Success Online
http://www.schoolsuccessonline.com
Treatment Manual for Anger Management
http://www.schoolmentalhealth.org/Resources/Clin/Anger%20Manageme
nt%20Protocol.pdf
Treatment Manuals for Coping with Depression and Coping with Stress
(free)
http://www.kpchr.org/public/acwd/acwd.html
U.S. Dept. of Education’s Safe, Disciplined, & Drug-Free Exemplary
Programs (9 programs)
http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/exemplary01/panel_pg2.html
U.S. Dept. of Education’s Safe, Disciplined, & Drug-Free Promising
Programs (33 programs)
http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/exemplary01/panel_pg3.html
U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services Agency for Health Care Research
& Quality
http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/epcix.htm
U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services National Guideline
Clearinghouse (Mental Health)
http://www.guidelines.gov/
U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, SAMHSA – Evidence-Based
Interventions for Children
http://www.systemsofcare.samhsa.gov/headermenus/docsHM/MatrixFinal
1.pdf
What Works Clearinghouse (Character Education, Dropout Prevention,
ELLs, Math, Reading)
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/
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INDEX
aggression, 98, 104, 117
A aggressive behavior, 103, 104, 108
AIDS, 90
abuse, xi, xv, 33, 44, 48, 61, 64, 69, 70, 72,
alcohol abuse, 79
73, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 90, 91,
ambassadors, 65, 66
98, 110, 111, 112
American Psychological Association, 141
academic performance, 11, 110
anger, 69, 70, 73, 111
academic success, 101
anxiety, 97, 110, 119
access, 10, 41, 65, 66, 103, 112, 115, 130,
anxiousness, 115
132, 133, 135
Aristotle, 77
accessibility, 119
Asia, 46, 51, 78
accommodation, 72
assault, 61, 79, 106
accountability, 32, 35, 59, 102, 148
assessment, xvi, 16, 61, 71, 75, 97, 99, 107,
accreditation, 2, 20
108, 109, 112, 115, 117, 129, 133, 139,
ADHD, 141
143, 146, 148
adjustment, 27, 129
assets, 106
administrators, 23, 44, 102, 117, 132
attachment, 13, 67
adolescent development, xi, 1, 4
attitudes, 27, 28, 65, 69, 79, 114
adolescents, 1, 33, 38, 42, 45, 67, 117, 119,
audit, 37
139, 149
authorities, 78, 83, 86
adulthood, 21, 26
authority, 126, 130
adults, 13, 71, 72, 83, 86, 102, 106, 124
autism, 5
advancement, 32
awareness, ix, 10, 65, 66, 68, 80, 98, 113,
advocacy, 31, 62, 63, 86, 97, 98, 102, 112,
114
116
aesthetics, 82
Africa, 78, 90
B
age, 39, 46, 47, 80, 98, 118, 121, 124, 139,
background information, xvi, 29
149
barriers, 56, 64, 65, 66, 74, 97, 110, 135
agencies, ix, 43, 44, 67, 68, 78, 80, 84, 87,
base, xvi, 31, 61, 67, 82, 94, 103, 104, 108,
98, 99, 100, 102, 106, 107, 108, 109,
110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 118, 120,
110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 130
152 Index
126, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 141, 143, China, v, x, xiii, xiv, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10,
144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150 13, 19, 20, 21, 22, 36
behavioral assessment, 107 cities, xiv, 42, 43, 95, 124, 125
behavioral disorders, 111 citizenship, 103, 124
behavioral problems, x, 12, 30, 111, 117, clarity, 134
139 class size, 5
behaviors, 33, 47, 48, 49, 61, 65, 68, 71, classes, 5, 11, 19, 48, 64, 84, 125, 136
109, 112 classification, 17
Beijing, xiv, 4, 5, 6, 20, 21, 22 classroom, 18, 66, 86, 87, 98, 101, 102, 103,
benefits, 24, 89 104, 108, 112, 136, 137, 138, 139, 144,
bipolar disorder, 131 148, 149
Black students, 128 classroom settings, 149
blame, 14 classroom teacher, 66, 112
bullying, xvi, 34, 38, 61, 64, 68, 93, 96, 98, classroom teachers, 112
100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 109, 119 clients, 9, 11, 15, 16, 133
burnout, 11, 35, 38 climate, 58, 102, 144, 148
bus crashes, 60 climates, 94
clinical depression, 70
C coaches, 104, 135
coding, 149
cable television, 85 collaboration, ix, 5, 11, 38, 42, 67, 97, 107,
campaigns, 80 109, 112, 116, 118, 132
candidates, 131 colleges, 57, 60, 65
capacity building, xv, 7, 56, 63, 73 commerce, 95
caregivers, 49, 148 communication, 4, 14, 57, 61, 72, 95, 97,
case studies, 147 99, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115
case study, 20, 56, 69, 70, 73 Communist Party, 2
Catholic school, 59 communities, xv, 6, 42, 44, 56, 65, 67, 74,
certification, 126, 129, 130 77, 78, 80, 82, 94, 95, 97, 99, 101, 104,
challenges, xiii, 26, 28, 33, 37, 45, 56, 57, 105, 106, 107, 111, 113, 115, 116, 119,
63, 90, 108, 118 128, 144
Chicago, 37, 125, 142, 143, 146, 148 community, ix, x, xv, 5, 6, 10, 19, 21, 26,
child abuse, xi, xv, 44, 61, 64, 69, 78, 79, 27, 28, 31, 32, 34, 39, 44, 51, 56, 57, 58,
80, 81, 82, 83, 91, 98 60, 64, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72, 74, 78, 80, 83,
child labor, 125, 142 86, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103,
child maltreatment, 80 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112,
child protection, x, 72 113, 114, 115, 119, 125, 127, 129, 130
childhood, 56, 110, 117, 118 community service, 64, 66, 72, 112, 115
children, vii, xiii, xv, 5, 6, 14, 22, 24, 33, community support, 108
34, 38, 46, 56, 57, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, complement, 59, 73, 90
68, 69, 71, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, complexity, 120
84, 87, 88, 89, 91, 93, 95, 100, 101, 103, compulsory education, xiii, xvi, 125, 140,
104, 108, 110, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 142, 144, 145, 148
118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, computer, 130
127, 131, 133, 139, 140, 144, 148, 149 conference, vii, 88, 105
Index 153
confidentiality, 68 deaths, 60, 79

conflict, 27, 34, 70, 98, 102, 103, 105, 106, decision makers, 118
107, 117 decision-making process, 44
conflict resolution, 34, 98, 102, 117 deficit, 73, 80, 81, 111
consensus, 14, 38, 141 delinquency, 4, 42
Consensus, 141 Delta, 145
consent, 45, 60, 71, 72, 113, 136 demographic factors, 93
Constitution, 1, 20, 39, 124 Department of Education, x, 40, 55, 57, 60,
construction, 2 74, 75, 126, 129, 134, 136, 143, 147, 149
consumers, 26, 135 depression, 70, 97, 110, 115, 118, 120, 121,
controlled trials, 146 131
convention, 85 deprivation, 79
cooperation, 17, 103 depth, xiv, 8, 30, 47, 97, 116, 134, 139
coordination, 88, 97 developed nations, 128
coping strategies, 48, 50, 51 development policy, 3
corruption, 79 developmental process, 27
cost, 23, 35, 117 deviation, 136, 138, 139
counseling, xvi, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 25, 28, directives, 101
30, 31, 33, 40, 44, 52, 53, 61, 69, 70, 73, disability, 58, 68, 129
96, 97, 98, 102, 108, 112, 119, 121, 128, disadvantaged students, 63, 64
129 disaster, 6
covering, 149 disorder, 110, 111, 131
creativity, 105 distribution, 138
criminal behavior, 33 diversity, 68, 96, 99, 101, 120, 143
criminal justice system, 149 domestic violence, xv, 49, 75
criticism, 79 drawing, 64, 65, 70, 108
cross-sectional study, 35 drug abuse, 33
crowds, 66 drugs, ix, 97
cultivation, 3 dyslexia, 6
culture, 4, 64, 71, 72, 99, 130, 133, 139
curricula, 45 E
curriculum, 21, 45, 64, 87, 90, 99, 124, 137,
146, 147 eating disorders, 111
curriculum development, 21 ecological systems, 55
customers, 48 ecology, 74
cyberbullying, 106 economic change, 93
economic disadvantage, 79
D economic status, 99
editors, iv
data analysis, 8 education, ix, xi, xiii, xv, xvi, 1, 3, 10, 12,
data collection, 144 16, 19, 21, 22, 26, 27, 38, 39, 41, 45, 46,
data gathering, 137 47, 51, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 69, 71, 75, 79,
database, 140, 148 80, 81, 82, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 95, 96,
DEA, 129, 132 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 108, 110,
death rate, 79 112, 113, 116, 117, 119, 121, 123, 124,
154 Index
125, 126, 127, 129, 133, 136, 137, 140, exclusion, 58, 101, 108
142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149 expertise, 64, 82, 94, 99, 146
educational institutions, 40, 41 exploitation, 78, 79
educational opportunities, 26 exposure, 79, 144
educational policy, 98, 102 expulsion, 100, 107, 108, 125
educational programs, 6, 95
educational psychologists, 36, 59 F
educational settings, xv
educational system, 43, 93, 99, 108, 125 facilitators, 88
educators, 27, 28, 64, 110 faith, 126
elementary school, 96, 117, 118, 119, 126, families, x, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 32, 36,
131, 148 47, 49, 51, 56, 57, 63, 66, 68, 69, 78, 79,
emotion, 86 87, 91, 97, 98, 103, 106, 112, 113, 115,
emotional problems, 15, 17, 26, 27, 30, 137 116, 124, 125, 127, 140, 144, 145, 149
empathy, 11, 50, 51, 104, 106, 114, 117, family conflict, 70
118 family environment, 80
employees, 124, 130 family life, 26, 87
employment, 22, 58 family members, 85
empowerment, 106 family relationships, 4
energy, 89, 141 family therapy, 33
enforcement, 41, 46, 98 family violence, xi, 61, 63, 65, 67, 68, 69,
England, xiii, 103 70, 71, 72, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 83, 86, 87,
entrepreneurs, 135 88, 91, 98
environment, 14, 15, 17, 44, 55, 62, 65, 71, fears, 119
74, 87, 110, 111, 112, 114, 137, 144 Federal Register, 149
environmental factors, 14 feelings, 27, 104, 106
environmental impact, 14 fetal alcohol syndrome, 111
environments, xv, 14, 80, 82, 94, 97, 98, financial, 31, 42, 110
106, 146 financial support, 42
equity, xi, 99, 119 first aid, 113
estrangement, 101 flexibility, 137
ETA, 90 force, 75
ethics, 3, 93, 117 formation, 1, 2, 4, 123
ethnic background, 36 foundations, 75
ethnic groups, 1, 22 fractures, 79
ethnicity, 99 framing, 86
Europe, 125 funding, 7, 24, 25, 58, 60, 61, 67, 81, 88, 96,
evidence, xvi, 32, 36, 51, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 135
94, 103, 104, 110, 111, 113, 115, 116, funds, ix, 87, 100, 102, 114
132, 133, 134, 135, 141, 143, 144, 145,
146, 147, 150 G
evidence-based practices, 94, 111, 115, 145,
147 gender role, 52, 65
evidence-based program, 103, 115 general education, 27
evolution, 17 geography, 95, 97
Index 155
Germany, 124 homelessness, 67, 76, 98

government spending, 57 homes, 57, 90, 112
governments, xv, 43, 44, 46, 48, 52 homework, 48, 50, 127, 132
grades, 103, 138, 139, 148 homicide, 79, 149
graduate program, 131 Hong Kong, iv, v, vii, viii, x, xi, xiii, xiv, 1,
grants, 65, 124, 149 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 13, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24,
Greece, 77 25, 26, 29, 30, 34, 36, 37, 38, 41, 46, 51
greed, 31 host, 58, 59
group activities, 10, 31 House, 145
group work, x, 6, 16, 17, 112, 131 human, 10, 26, 27, 36, 74
growth, 2, 15, 26, 133, 137, 138, 139, 148 human development, 74
growth rate, 137, 138, 139 human right, 10
Guangzhou, x, 3, 6, 8, 19, 20, 21, 22
guidance, 24, 25, 28, 33, 38, 114 I
guidelines, 40, 74, 142
identification, 117, 120, 136
H identity, xi, 3, 10, 13, 16, 72, 148
ideology, 1, 41, 51
happiness, 35 illiteracy, 124
harassment, 98, 99, 117 image, 10, 15, 18, 69
harmful effects, 134 images, 69, 149
healing, 104, 105, 106 immigrants, 94
health, ix, xi, xvi, 3, 5, 10, 12, 21, 32, 35, improvements, 27
38, 44, 58, 61, 70, 80, 90, 91, 94, 97, 98, inauguration, 2
100, 101, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, income, 125, 149
113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, India, viii
128, 131, 134, 145, 147, 148 individual students, x, 6, 23, 51, 97, 105,
health education, 21, 80 112, 113
health problems, 110, 117 individuals, 31, 34, 64, 67, 77, 105
health promotion, 120 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,
health services, 58, 94, 106, 110, 111, 112, 129, 132
118, 119, 128 industries, 127
health status, 32, 35 industry, 45
heme, 68 inequality, 126
high school, 25, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, inequity, 38
48, 49, 51, 52, 125, 127, 148 information sharing, 59, 109
high school diploma, 45 injuries, 71
high school dropouts, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, injury, 79
48, 51, 52 institutions, 3, 29, 36, 40, 41, 95, 126
higher education, 127 integration, 127
highways, 95 integrity, 150
hiring, 40, 41, 43 intellectual disabilities, 5
history, 1, 41, 43, 45, 57, 70, 77, 79, 93, internship, 131
129, 145 interpersonal communication, 4
HIV, 78 interpersonal conflict, 34
156 Index
interpersonal conflicts, 34 learning, 3, 5, 26, 34, 40, 42, 44, 45, 51, 52,
interpersonal relations, 17, 26 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67,
interpersonal skills, 34 72, 88, 104, 106, 131, 134, 136, 139, 144
intervention, xv, xvi, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 15, 16, learning difficulties, 40, 42, 44, 45, 51, 52
17, 26, 30, 32, 33, 34, 46, 51, 52, 58, 71, learning disabilities, 131, 136, 144
72, 75, 78, 87, 90, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, learning environment, 44, 106
102, 104, 107, 108, 111, 112, 113, 114, learning outcomes, 62
119, 121, 127, 129, 132, 135, 136, 137, legislation, 43, 142
138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 146, 147, 150 lens, 107
intervention strategies, 96, 129 level of education, 94
investments, 124 life experiences, 48
Iowa, 146 life satisfaction, 35
Ireland, 124 lifelong learning, 134
isolation, 69, 72, 73, 79 lifetime, 14
issues, vii, ix, x, xi, xvi, 4, 28, 40, 42, 43, light, xv, 19, 66, 83, 89
44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, literacy, 87, 103, 112, 139
62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, lobbying, 15, 126
74, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, local community, 66
89, 90, 93, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 107, local government, xv, 4, 5, 43, 44, 46, 48
109, 110, 112, 114, 115, 130, 131, 132 love, 33, 67
Italy, 145, 146, 147, 148
M
J magnet, 127
Mainland China, 36
job training, 36 majority, 108, 128
junior high school, 45 maltreatment, 80
juvenile delinquency, 42 man, 36, 133
juvenile justice, x management, x, 6, 8, 10, 11, 17, 18, 28, 57,
K 59, 60, 63, 68, 69, 70, 73, 75, 98, 111,
143, 148
Korea, 46, 51 manpower, 27
marketing, 80
L Maryland, 141
mass, 16, 17
labeling, 12, 49 materials, 123
labor market, 124 matter, 17
lakes, 94 measurement, 35
landscape, 120 measurements, 32, 34
languages, 94 media, 1, 63, 64, 66, 80
latency, 121 median, 79, 138
laws, xiii, 75, 124, 125, 145 mediation, 34, 94, 102, 103
lead, 11, 39, 78, 104, 108, 142 medical, 72, 100, 107
leadership, 6, 20, 36, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 74, medicine, 124, 148
114 mental disorder, 110, 120
Index 157
mental health, ix, xvi, 3, 5, 12, 21, 32, 35, New South Wales, 70
44, 61, 90, 93, 97, 98, 100, 101, 106, New Zealand, v, vii, xiii, xv, 52, 77, 78, 79,
108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 80, 82, 85, 86, 90, 91, 104
117, 118, 119, 120, 128, 134, 147 NGOs, 3, 5, 7
mental health professionals, 101 No Child Left Behind, 133, 149
mental illness, 33, 79 North America, 39
mentoring, 98 nurses, 36
messages, 69, 82, 83
methodology, 24, 47 O
metropolitan areas, 120
middle class, 48 obstacles, 13, 15
middle-class families, 127 OECD, 79
Ministry of Education, 3, 10, 21, 46, 95, 96, offenders, x, 63, 106
99, 100, 101, 107, 110, 115, 117, 119, officials, 4, 5, 7
121 omission, 79
minorities, 36, 37 on-the-job training, 36
minority groups, 120 operations, 149
minority students, 127 opportunities, 26, 46, 63, 73, 82, 108, 115
mission, 95, 103, 124 organizational culture, 130
Missouri, 137 organize, 11, 17, 19
misunderstanding, 27, 57, 73 outreach, x, 112, 119
misuse, 97, 98
models, xiv, xv, 4, 9, 20, 33, 35, 39, 53, 62, P
71, 73, 93
modern society, 33 P.A.T.H.S., 3, 21
momentum, 74 pain, 69, 149, 150
mood disorder, 111 paradigm shift, 100, 105
morality, 124 parallel, 102
mother tongue, 94 parental consent, 136
MSW, 131 parenting, xi, 4, 6
parents, vii, x, 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 17, 26, 28, 32,
N 33, 34, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 62, 70, 79, 84,
88, 102, 105, 107, 111, 112, 123, 124,
narratives, 29, 35 126, 129, 130, 139
National Center for Education Statistics, parity, 59
143, 147, 149 participants, vii, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17,
National Institutes of Health, 33 18, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 47, 48,
national policy, 5 49, 50, 83, 85, 105, 109, 113
National Research Council, 128, 147 password, 86
National Strategy, 117 pathways, 68
negative coping, 50 pedagogy, 124
neglect, 12, 79, 91, 98 peer relationship, 61, 69
negotiation, 15, 34, 81, 82 peer support, 59
networking, x, 7, 56, 59, 60, 80, 116, 121 performance indicator, 28, 31, 32, 34
neutral, 65, 68 permission, 134
158 Index
permit, 102 project, viii, 3, 6, 17, 19, 20, 42, 44, 45, 52,
perpetrators, 76, 85 60, 66, 68, 83, 91, 113, 114
personal communication, 57, 61, 95, 97, 99, prosocial behavior, 111
114 protection, x, 69, 72, 80, 82, 86
personal development, 9, 13, 17, 26 psychological health, 3, 10
personal responsibility, 73 psychological problems, 10, 12
personal views, 30 psychologist, 128
Philippines, 90 psychology, 57, 98, 103, 145
physical health, 70 psychosocial development, 14
physicians, 112 PTSD, 144
Plato, 77 public education, ix, xi, xvi, 95, 123, 125,
playing, 18, 81, 84, 86 126, 136
police, 67, 71, 76, 78, 98, 106, 107 public health, xi, 80, 113, 117, 145
policy, 2, 3, 5, 10, 19, 20, 25, 37, 40, 41, 43, public interest, 121
56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 74, 95, 98, public schools, 124, 127, 128, 144
99, 100, 101, 102, 107, 108, 110, 112, punishment, 49, 79
119, 120, 146, 149
political parties, 43 Q
population, 25, 35, 42, 93, 94, 95, 97, 101,
113, 126, 133 qualifications, xiv, 57, 128
portfolio, 99 qualitative research, 47, 51
positive mental health, 111 quality standards, 31, 32
post traumatic stress disorder, 111 Queensland, 59
poverty, xvi, 44, 46, 61, 70, 79, 98, 127, 128 questioning, 77, 89
praxis, xiv, 20 questionnaire, 35
PRC, 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, 19, 20
preparation, iv, 106 R
preschool, 6, 149
preservation, 33 race, 99
President, xii racism, 98
prevention, xv, 26, 30, 52, 56, 58, 64, 65, radio, 80, 83
68, 69, 74, 75, 78, 80, 85, 87, 90, 94, 96, raw materials, 123
98, 100, 101, 102, 111, 112, 113, 114, reality, vii, 7, 8, 17, 84
116, 117, 119, 121, 133, 136 reasoning, 13
primary school, 5, 20, 24, 25, 38, 66, 68, 78 reception, 36
principles, 1, 51, 63, 80, 90 recognition, 2, 10, 16, 42, 66, 71, 108, 110,
private schools, 95, 126 113
problem solving, 9 recommendations, iv, 27, 36, 100, 136
problem-solving, 105, 132, 135, 137, 149 reconciliation, 105
professional development, 5, 36, 38, 56, 60, reconstruction, 6, 19
67, 68, 72, 99, 115, 121 recreational, 19
professionals, 3, 6, 27, 36, 39, 57, 101, 109, recruiting, 127
112, 141 reform, 67, 133
programming, 96, 108, 111, 115 Reform, 63, 75
progress reports, 133 reforms, 136
Index 159
registries, 135 school activities, 127

Registry, 142 school climate, 94, 102
regulations, 42, 48, 149 school community, 60, 70, 78, 97, 102, 106,
rejection, 79, 101 109, 119
relatives, 72 school culture, xi, 4, 62, 64, 107
relevance, 133 school performance, 148
reliability, 8 school psychology, 145
religion, 99, 124 school work, 39
remediation, 136 schooling, vii, 26, 145
repair, 105, 106 science, 146
requirements, xvi, 126, 130 scope, 87
researchers, vii, xiii, 8, 14, 19, 27, 97, 115 secondary education, 41
reserves, 95 secondary schools, 21, 24, 25, 26, 36, 40,
resilience, 20, 59, 67, 68, 71, 117 75, 96, 126, 143
resistance, 68, 74 security, 72
resolution, 34, 72, 98, 102, 105, 106, 117 segregation, xvi, 127
resources, 5, 7, 19, 25, 26, 27, 28, 64, 66, semi-structured interviews, 24
67, 69, 71, 72, 80, 97, 98, 106, 112, 129, sensitivity, 36, 98
130, 132, 141 service provider, 64, 66, 72
response, xv, 39, 46, 50, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, service quality, 31
64, 71, 81, 94, 98, 101, 102, 107, 109, sex, 45, 79
121, 132, 135, 136, 137, 141, 143, 146 sexual harassment, 98
responsiveness, 139 sexual orientation, 98, 99
restoration, 105, 145 sexual violence, xv, 79
retaliation, 71, 72 sexuality, 98
rewards, 70 shame, 145
rights, iv, xiii, 10 shock, 69
risk, ix, xv, 30, 33, 42, 44, 45, 50, 51, 58, shores, 95
66, 72, 75, 79, 90, 100, 105, 107, 108, showing, 18, 57, 84
109, 110, 113, 117, 118, 120, 130, 133 signs, 113
risk assessment, 75, 109, 117 Singapore, 86
risk factors, 107, 110, 113, 114 social change, 64
risk management, 75 social context, 65
root, 140 social justice, 10, 55, 65
roots, 104, 146, 148 social problems, xvi, 127
routines, 68 social services, xv, 3, 28, 43, 130
rules, 32 social skills, 98, 102, 104, 108
rural areas, 25, 97, 112, 124 social support, 148
social welfare, 35
S social work interventions, 29, 136
social work practitioners, xiii, 2, 9, 19, 20,
safety, ix, 63, 64, 68, 69, 76, 82, 83, 84, 90, 32, 56
94, 100, 107, 108, 109, 114, 115, 142 society, 2, 27, 33, 99, 118
SAMHSA, 142 sociology, 2, 87
scarce resources, 64 solution, 34, 69
160 Index
South Africa, 90 target, 66, 89, 133, 137, 139

special education, 126, 129, 136, 148, 149 target population, 133
speech, x, 21, 60, 63, 75, 98 Task Force, 59, 75
spending, 57, 58, 101 teacher training, 125
spin, 89 teachers, vii, x, xiv, xvi, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11,
SSS, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 67, 70 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 31,
stability, 72 33, 34, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49,
staff members, 5, 33, 132 50, 51, 56, 60, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69,
staffing, 35, 135 70, 72, 73, 79, 82, 84, 86, 87, 88, 104,
stakeholders, 4, 8, 17, 25, 28, 34, 105 112, 117, 118, 125, 139, 145, 146, 147
standard deviation, 136, 138, 139 team members, 58
state, xiii, 1, 2, 20, 56, 57, 59, 60, 63, 65, teams, 57, 62, 98, 99, 107, 109, 113
73, 75, 77, 124, 128, 133, 137 techniques, 17, 69, 73
state control, 77 technology, 90
state laws, 124 teeth, 125
states, xvi, 58, 59, 62, 99, 101, 124, 125, tension, 34
130, 136, 143, 149 territory, 28
statistics, 79 testing, 58
stigma, 11, 69, 73, 114 textbooks, 135, 137, 149
stress, 35, 38, 111, 148 theatre, xi, xv, 77, 78, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 90
structure, xiv, xv, 33, 35, 62, 83, 85, 86, 95 theft, 106
student achievement, 101 theoretical assumptions, 13
student development, 6 therapist, 149
subjective well-being, 32 therapy, 33, 108, 120, 144
substance abuse, 61, 70, 110, 111, 112 think critically, 65, 135
suicidal ideation, 111 thoughts, 49, 85, 106, 116
suicide, ix, 59, 85, 98, 112, 113, 114, 116, threat assessment, 108, 109
118, 120, 121, 131 threats, 79, 107, 108
suicide attempts, 120 tourism, 95
Sun, x, 3, 6, 7, 8, 64, 75 tracks, 125
supervision, x, 4, 5, 20, 35, 61 trade, 47, 123
supervisors, 5 traditions, 42
support services, 74, 75 training, vii, xvi, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 17, 20,
Supreme Court, 126, 127 26, 36, 40, 41, 60, 84, 90, 94, 97, 98, 99,
survival, 49, 58, 73 103, 108, 109, 112, 113, 115, 117, 125,
suspensions, 70, 128 127, 135
sustainable development, 36 training programs, 2, 90, 125, 127
Sweden, 103 trajectory, 139
symptoms, 118, 149 transcription, 9
syndrome, 81, 111 transcripts, 8
transference, 9
T transportation, 95, 129
trauma, 61, 68, 69, 72, 116
Taiwan, v, xi, xiii, xv, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, traumatic events, 75
45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53 treatment, 33, 79, 109, 111, 139, 149, 150
Index 161
trial, 19
tutoring, 71
W
Wales, 70
U Washington, xiii, xvi, 37, 38, 116, 118, 131,
143, 144, 147, 149
uniform, 71
water, 94
United, vi, xii, xiii, xvi, 59, 123, 125, 126,
wealth, 127
128, 140, 144, 145, 147, 149
weapons, 108
United Nations, 128, 149
wear, 18, 57
United States, vi, xii, xiii, xvi, 59, 123, 125,
welfare, x, 35, 37, 60, 67, 80, 98, 100, 106,
126, 140, 144, 145, 147
107, 109
universities, 2, 86
well-being, 26, 32, 33, 35, 103, 144
urban, 25, 38, 94, 96, 97, 103, 120, 124,
wellness, ix
127, 128
Western Australia, 59
urban areas, 25, 120
White Paper, 24
urban schools, 127
witnesses, 85
work activity, 99
V work ethic, 124
work roles, 96
validation, 47
workforce, 57, 62
vandalism, 106
workload, 30, 35, 64
venue, 36
workplace, 99
victims, 6, 79, 85, 102, 106
worldwide, xvi, 37, 104, 113, 121
video games, 84
worry, 31
violence, xi, xv, xvi, 12, 38, 48, 49, 56, 61,
wrongdoing, 107, 121
63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73,
74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 85, 86, 87,
88, 90, 91, 93, 98, 99, 100, 102, 104,
Y
107, 109, 111, 127, 128, 147
young people, vii, x, xiii, xiv, xv, 24, 26, 29,
violent behavior, 48, 61, 71, 117
30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 39, 56, 61, 62, 63,
violent crime, 128
65, 67, 73, 74, 80, 81, 82, 86, 87, 89, 90
vision, 13, 69, 103, 147
young women, ix, 52

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CHILDREN'S ISSUES, LAWS AND PROGRAMS

SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK

Additional e-books in this series can be found on Nova’s website

Additional e-books in this series can be found on Nova’s website

SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK

WING HONG CHUI, Ph.D.

NOTICE TO THE READER

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York

Preface and Acknowledgments vii

Chapter 6 School Social Work in Canada: An Ontario

My interest in school social work is closely related to my previous social

important contribution to an emerging literature on school social work, and

Wing Hong Chui

Wing Hong Chui

juvenile justice and probation studies. He is currently undertaking empirical

Charles Tong-lit Leung

Henry Wai-hang Ling

Chu-li Julie Liu

AIMS OF THE BOOK

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

A wide range of school social work practices, including crisis intervention,

THE TIME BEFORE DAWN –

Charles Tong-lit Leung

beginning of the 20th century. The contemporary development of school

highlight some of the significant developments of school social work services in

This section discusses school social work development in four regions in

Shenzhen is another city where school social work is flourishing. Since

dyslexia), and the worker-student ratio there is 1:350. It is a common practice

After the earthquake of Sichuan in 2008, a number of school social work

networking, enhance student participation in school and community life, build

On the basis of the review of various situations of school social work

PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL WORK PRACTITIONERS

Table 2.1. Questions Asked in the Focus Group Discussion

1. What were you expected to do at the beginning as a social worker at

When we come into SSW, we are more likely to posit ourselves as

Although some of the participants experienced the practice of school

I had an opportunity to do my practicum at a NGO in Hong Kong

Labeling school social workers as counselors presents a dilemma. As the

solve all students’ behavioral and related problems. Technically speaking,

Of course, we [social workers] showed our empathy to the teachers

It is evident from the aforementioned quotation that even though the

From the perspective of the teacher, they’d like someone to support

The implication of this quotation is that some participants really

Mediator is another role also identified in the study.3 Being a mediator, a

There are some students whose needs can’t be met in the

School social workers should consider the different environmental impacts

My first impression of school social work is that it is about solving

There are various reasons why the participants tend to be problem-

… I think I was…, well, a bit utilitarian in my first practicum. I was

When I contacted the school management and teachers, they asked

In conclusion, no matter what intervention approach school social workers

I remembered what we thought about most at that time (we were

… for one thing, promotion, we did it through different means. At the

…if you present yourself as a professional, showing a professional image

According to the above quotations, school social workers must promote

Further promotion is then possible, which thus enhances the likelihood of