Social Work in School Settings

Schools are important educational institutions which enable individuals to develop, grow and take place as qualified humanpower in society, beginning from the pre-school period and have important role during the process of socialization. From diverse life situations and different socio-economic backgrounds, students face with different kinds of problems which negatively affect their school attendance and peer relations and threaten their bio-psychosocial development. In dealing with these kinds of problems, in addition to family's and treatment institutions' responsibility, the educational institution itself has a significant role both in finding solutions, guiding and providing and protecting the wellbeing of the student. For this reason, in school settings, collaboration with families, supporting developmental areas and multidisciplinary approaches in dealing with bio-psychosocial problems are well accepted. In struggling with these problems, the discipline of social work has one of the vital roles. Social work has a wide range of practice areas including medicine, psychiatry, delinquency, disability, poverty, education, and family and child welfare. School social work is a specialty area of the practice of social work and focuses on the performance and the bio-psychosocial factors that affect students' school achievement. School social worker carries out the psychosocial services within a teamwork perspective in the educational team, in solving problems because of the developmental stages or family or life conditions; utilization of the services and thus carry on their educational activities in a successful manner. The aim of this study is to introduce the professional role and practices of social work discipline, which can contribute to the work of educational team in dealing with bio-psychosocial and economical problems of students in school settings and highlight the necessity and value of employing social workers in school settings.