School social work

[BlackSkirtTetra]

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Is anybody here a school social worker, or familiar with what they do? My university has an MSW specialization that is School Social Work and I emailed the director two months ago and the associated director about three weeks ago but have gotten no response.

I know one student who's in it, and she said that there are only 2 professors (you guessed it, they're the director and associate director) so this program is tiny at my school but I'm curious about it in general--what makes School Social Work different from a regular, generalist MSW degree, and what do School Social Workers do that's different from a School Counselor or a Guidance Counselor? It would seem to me (with my present limited knowledge) that there would be large areas of overlap...none of the schools I ever went to had a School Social Worker...

 

[thirddegree]

I can't really comment on the program, but I can tell you what SWs do in my kids' schools. They do not do school guidance. That is what guidance counselors do. They run groups: social skills groups, support groups for kids whose parents are divorcing/divorce, bullying programs, etc. In our school district, it is at the elementary, middle school and high school levels. Seems like a great job that I'd love to have. But I am chosing to do MHC instead of SW. I'm hoping at some point in the future, my state will start placing MHCs in schools too.