I was a school phobic and missed 6 months of school 1969/70. Coming from a loving family with University parents no one could find out why I was scared of school. It was a time that I can remember like yesterday. I became a qualified community and youth worker and social worker in 1982 and straight away would have liked to have worked in a school but it took me 25 years to get there. There just weren't the jobs and I didn't have the confidence to speak out.

I have been at Wolgarston High School in Penkridge, Staffordshire for two years and work with a fantastic Head Teacher who really believes in Every Child mattering and is willing to try out new ideas and methods thus the development of AERO [ watch this space for training which will take place at Wolgarston]

The reason why I work in school is because it is where children spend a large amount of their time. I can walk anywhere in the school and talk to any child who feels that they need some space to query things in their lives whether they are distress, anger or confusion. But most importantly I can work at their pace. There are no targets, no deadlines although, my headteacher has said that exclusions over the last 18 months have dropped dramatically to now only a handful.

In the Autumn we will hopefully also have our first social work student and maybe students of other disciplines too as the school health advisor and connexions workers are just there to chat to rather than at the end of a phone.

Working in school is natural and bringing social work to school brings new dimensions. I can look at school records and speculate with children, parents and teachers why they are still opting out of  classes in year 9 when they were in year 5 and together we can consider reasons and work towards solutions.

I'm there with them and I love it.

Come visit and see for yourself

rachelbramble@yahoo.co.uk

I agree, having school-based social workers is a fantastic idea, given the whole range of problems school children go through, although it is not the only model of on-site support. For example the Welsh Assembly recently pledged £6.5m to schools to ensure specialised counselling services are available for all pupils. Both roles seem to have some overlap in fulfilling very important functions. For example, children experiencing problems such as bullying or depression would surely benefit from having an independent person on-site to turn to, and counsellors would no doubt be trained to make necessary referrals when they see fit.

Can you think of any situations when a social worker would be more effective than a counsellor?

A social worker may have a broad look at the needs of a child and can liaise with everyone involved in the child's life working at the child's pace.

I'm not sure that a counsellor would wait 6 months until the child is ready to talk more. Maybe they would but certainly organisations like CAMHS seem to expect children to come to them on their terms not the child's. As a social worker in a school the child can contact you when they are ready and you can respond either immediately or within a few days.

Likewise parents/ grandparents can do the same.

I did my PLO1 at a school and will remain convinced of the benefit of social workers in schools. It is not until you spend such a large amount of time each day with a child who is experiencing problems that you begin to realise the impact it has on them every day.

When I qualify I will remember where a huge amount of knowledge about a child is to be found.

Yes i agree. I did my placement in an education establishment and as this is a place where most children and young people spend a huge amount of time and for some it is the safest place they have therefore i think it is an ideal place for social workers. I recently completed an assignment concerning current issues in childrens social care since The Laming Enquiry and considered extended schools as part of it. Here is a paragraph re social workers in schools.

There is research that having social workers in schools is beneficial with the main benefits being an earlier identification of needs and quicker access to services, a more holistic and coherent package of support for children, young people and their families and a better understanding of roles and responsibilities between social care and education workers.  It was found that the extended school was an ideal place to strengthen multi-agency working.

Wilkin, A. Murfield, J., Lamont, E., Kinder, K. And Dyson, P. 2008 The Value of Social Care Professionals Working in Extended Schools  Slough National Foundation for Educational Research Available from http://www.nfer.org.uk/publications/pdfs/downloadable/SCX.pdf [Last accessed 30 May 2008]

Interesting research if you are interested. 

 It seems to make a lot of sense - I wonder why there aren't more social workers based in schools?

Simeon

This has made sense to me for 25 years. Why don't you, as a Journalist go and ask the powers that be why they don't place most children's social workers in school?

Come and visit me at Wolgarston High School in Staffordshire contact me at home as the school phone is always very busy 01785 822340 and if you come on 3 Sept you could also meet David Kidney MP covering the school and Professor Mark Doel who has written a foreword for the Guide I have written [ AERO] which contains practical tasks that I have used in school.

Better still come to ' Believe in me' on 25 Sept at the Stafford Gatehouse Theatre where you will not only meet Mark and David and learn more about AERO but also find out why Professors Michael Preston Shoot, Peter Beresford, Keith Popple and Sue White amongst another crowd of people including John Hemming MP are working for better understanding in and positive social work. Tickets will be available very soon and its free

Rachel Bramble/ Mulcahy

Hi Rachel

Unfortunately, I'm pretty much stuck in the office in my new job but I'll pass the information on to my colleagues and hopefully one of them will be able to attend.

I worked for two years as a school social worker in rural Australia and agree completely that social workers can play a very important role in schools which cannot easily be filled by other professionals. There was some interesting debate last year about school support after the Howard government offered schools grants to fund chaplains in schools in recognition of the important role of pasterol care in schools. This generated interesting debate as to what support should be offered in schools. Once upon a time, social workers in schools were not unusual across most of Australia. As time went on, social workers have been replaced by psychologist in most government schools in many states. One reason is that social workers were not able to conduct the testing schools required to justify extra funding for learning support of students. Counselling and advocacy became secondary to testing for money. The choice of funding chaplians is an interesting one. The official reason is the valuable role religion can play in moral devlopment. The reality is that a chaplian needs n formal qualifications in australia other than being an active member in their religious community and therefore costs about half as much as a social worker, with less support for them to challenge the authority. I worked "alongside" a chaplian in a high school and was horrifed when I found out several of the primary schools I was working n were going to apply for chaplains themselves. This person was exploited by the management of the school, effectively acting as a spy on problem students sent to her. She did not have the same view of confidentiality within the school community as I did and was happy to fill in the blanks where the social worker said the information was none of the school's business. This created a very difficult climate and ended with me filing formal grievences against the headmaster and eventually leaving.

In placing social workers in schools, I would add one word of caution and that is you need very good support that you can trust. School social workers need to challenge school management from time to time. If you have a management team rather partial to their own power, this can make you extremely vulnerable. If the support is there and the community is willing, then I would say that a social worker is a vital member of the student support team.

 Hi Periannath

That's a really interesting comment. It seems to me that a chaplain cannot possibly do the same job as a social worker and it assumes that every pupil wants some sort of religious support.

 It also assumed every student held the same religous views as the chaplain (only 1 chaplain/school). What if you are a Hindu or Muslim pupil and the chaplain is evangelical, charismatic Christian? I remember speaking to students who identified as agnostic or similar and found it very difficult talking to the chaplain who struggled with the idea that some people did not believe or were not sure about the existance of God. This will have interesting implications in the primary schools who see the chaplain as basically filling in the gaps where they cannot get enough parental support eg supervising on school excursions, 1:1 support for students who do not qualify for funded aid time but require additional support. 

It did prompt more debate about introducing professional registration for social workers again. Unfortunately it was a missed opportunity by the AASW to highlight exactly what social workers do and their value to the school community.

Hello, sorry for interfering (and also sorry for my english)! My name is Gina , i'm from Romania where i'm a social worker as well. I'm thinking of a prtnership project between schools from UK and schools from Romania (Vaslui) or an oportunity to see how this sistem works in UK (some sort of exchanging experience, if you know what i mean) :). Pls contact me if you are interested.

My e-mail is anigalexa@yahoo.com , thank you!