The history of school social workers and their role in supporting students with mental health in schools

School social work is a specialized area of practice within the broad field of the social work profession. Starting from the early twentieth century, school social workers bring unique knowledge and skills to the school system and the student services team.
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The history of school social workers and their role in supporting students with mental health in schoolsJOURNAL OF SCIENCE OF HNUE DOI: 10.18173/2354-1067.2016-0118Social Sci., 2016, Vol. 61, No. 12, pp. 168-176This paper is available online at http://stdb.hnue.edu.vn THE HISTORY OF SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS AND THEIR ROLE IN SUPPORTING STUDENTS WITH MENTAL HEALTH IN SCHOOLS Nguyen Thu Ha Faculty of Social Work, Hanoi National University of Education Abstract. School social work is a specialized area of practice within the broad field of the social work profession. Starting from the early twentieth century, school social workers bring unique knowledge and skills to the school system and the student services team. School social workers are instrumental in furthering the purpose of the schools: to provide a setting for teaching, learning, and for the attainment of competence and confidence. Students’ unmet mental health needs can be a significant barrier to student academic and personal-social development and even compromise school safety. School social workers are prepared to recognize and respond to student mental health crises and needs. School social workers address these barriers to student success by offering education, prevention, and crisis intervention. Keywords: Social work, social workers, school social work, school social workers, history, mental health, schools.1. Introduction School social workers have long been concerned about children who are notable to use what education has to offer. Schools and families are environments wherechildren should develop, discover their own dignity and worth, and come to realize theirpotential. Social work has much to contribute to schools. While teachers develop thepotential of learners through transmitting knowledge, skills and values, social workerscan provide support for learners’ well-being so they are ready to learn. Social workprovides special attention to those who are marginalized by problems such as poverty,oppression or disability, mobilizing the strengths of family, school and community toovercome obstacles to educational success. Using ecological systems theory to evaluateand solve problems, social work is well suited to supporting schools by helping learnersbenefit from education.Received date: 21/5/2016, Published date:29/10/2016Contact: Nguyen Thu Ha, e-mail: thuha.sw.hnue@gmail.com168 The history of school social workers and their role in supporting students with mental health... Vietnam has changed rapidly over the past two decades; economic development andan open door policy of economic liberalization have stimulated both economic growthand social change [4]. A side effect of these changes is a transition in disease patterns.For large segments of the population, the main diseases are no longer the diseases ofpoverty, but increasingly diseases that are seen in wealthier societies [5-9]. However,the health problems related to a more prosperous lifestyle are not equally distributedacross the country; there are increasing gaps between rich and poor, and between urbanand rural areas [7,10]. There has been a rapidly growing public awareness of mentalhealth problems, such as stress, anxiety, depression and suicide among adolescents [9,10].Together with Decision No. 32/2010/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister about developmentfor social work profession, school social work has also been building. Mental health isalso a problem in school which social worker have to address. The basic questions are:Who are school social worker? What should the role of the school social worker be in aparticular school community? and What should they do to support students with mentalhealth in school? Therfore, in this study we are trying to explain the history of schoolsocial worker in the world especially the United States in which have had big steps inschool social work development and explain the role of school social worker in supportingstudents with mental health in school.2. Content2.1. Brief history of school social work School social work began from 1871 in England and then during the school year1906–1907 it simultaneously was gradually built in New York, Boston, Hartford [1] andChicago [8] in United States. These very first workers were not hired by the school systembut worked in the school under the sponsorship of other agencies and civic groups. In NewYork, it was a settlement house that sponsored the workers. Their purpose was to workin various projects between the school and communities of new immigrants, promotingunderstanding and communication [6]. In Boston, the Women’s Education Associationsponsored “visiting teachers” who would work between the home and the school. InHartford, Connecticut, a psychology clinic developed a program of visiting teachers toassist the psychologist in securing social histories of children and implementing theclinic’s treatment plans and recommendations [6]. In Chicago, Louise Montgomerydeveloped a social settlement type of program at the Hamline School that offered a widerange of services to the Stockyards District community [8]. This unheralded experimentanticipated the much later development of school-based services for the entire community.In many ways these diverse early programs contained in rough and in seminal form all theelements of later school social work practice. Then in 1913 in Rochester, New York, the Board of Education hired visitingteachers for the first time. Only three years later in 1916 at the National Conference ofCharities and Corrections, a definition of school social work emerged in the presentationof Jane Culbert. The definiti ...