• Who we are:

    School Social Workers are advocates who help students achieve academic success by linking the home, school, and community. In order to reach this goal, School Social Workers provide support services to remove barriers to student success. These support services include intervention, crisis support and mental health counseling, addressing issues of non-attendance and truancy, completing behavioral assessments and psychosocial evaluations.

    Additionally, School Social Work Services manages several district–wide specialty programs that directly impact and support the academic achievement and eventual high school graduation of the students of Hillsdale County. These programs are legislatively mandated and/or supported by School Board policies.

    What we do:

    We act as Liaisons:
    • Communicating with school staff
    • Communicating with parents
    • Communicating with community agencies
    • Linking parents, staff and students to mental health, medical, and social service; including food, clothing, and shoes
    • Providing follow-up case management with teachers, and parents.
    • Promoting parent –school collaboration

    How we do it:

    We provide Intervention/Counseling by:
    • Facilitating Groups related to: divorce, social skills, conflict management/truancy prevention, parenting, and family adjustment.
    • Counseling individuals for the short –term
    • Supporting educational concerns
    • Addressing family issues
    • Helping to ease emotional and social concerns

    We help with Non-Attendance Issues, providing truancy interventions through:
    • Student assessment
    • Referrals to community agencies
    • Referrals to Children in Need of Services/Families in Need of Services
    • Consultations with appropriateness of student placement, curriculum and program
    • Referral to Department of Children and Families

    We help to mitigate crisis through our Crisis Intervention Services:
    • Serving on crisis support teams
    • Managing crisis intervention response at school sites

    We help support schools, students and families through Consultation by:
    • Reviewing student records
    • Observing students
    • Consulting with individual or groups of teachers
    • Participating on district committees
    • Consulting with professionals in the community
    • Participating on Collaborative Problem Solving Teams
    • Participating on Staffing Committee
    • Conducting parent conferences
    • Participating on School Improvement Teams
    • Consulting with parents
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