Maltreated Children in Schools: The Interface of School Social Work and Child Welfare

Research has documented the educational difficulties that maltreated children face. No work exists, however, that examines how maltreated children are provided services by school social workers or how these services overlap and interface with services provided by child welfare. This article attempts to fill that gap by presenting data from the 2000-01 school year recorded by school social workers in two large suburban school districts. Children with maltreatment issues comprised a significant proportion of the caseload, and community agency collaboration was lowest for children with child welfare workers. Maltreated children had more referrals for academic and behavioral problems than other children on the school social work caseload. Younger children with maltreatment issues who were also involved in child welfare had lower likelihood of positive case dispositions, but this fact was offset by collaboration between the school social worker and the outside agency worker. Implications for collaboration between school social workers and child welfare social workers are discussed.