Emerging Trends in School Social Work Practice

With the complexity of change that PreK-12 schools are facing, frameworks are needed to understand what the 2020s and beyond will require of the school community. While some educational stakeholders are calling for a return to the "three R's" (reading, writing, arithmetic) most educational scholars and futurists envision public schools expanding comprehensive service delivery systems that meet multiple educational, behavioral, and social needs of students and their families. This vision of expanded service delivery includes community partnerships that address students' resource and mental health needs, educational collaborations that bring learning from the community into the classroom, and wellness initiatives that emphasize health and wellbeing for all stakeholders.

Concurrently, social work as a profession is adapting to the increase in online mental health services, re-examining its history, practices, identity, and complicity in oppression, and revisiting its roots of community-based practice and activism. The profession has increased its footprint in policy advocacy and support for segments of the population targeted by certain policymakers such as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) populations and the Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) populations. The profession is still tentatively advancing toward full technology adoption, including utilization of technology-supported social work interventions.

With this background of change facing society, Emerging Trends in School Social Work Practice focuses on the challenges and opportunities to further develop the professional specialty of school social work. The book examines 13 different emerging trends through the lenses of school social work practitioners and academic scholars working in partnership for each chapter. The book's editors, former school social workers and current social work scholars, worked with a national team of authors to write the chapters on the new landscape for this micro-mezzo-macro career. The information in this text will help school social workers prepare, plan, and develop their existing knowledge into accelerated skills needed to meet these demands. The book concludes with a chapter written by school social work leaders examining their burgeoning role in the PreK-12 educational landscape and leaving breadcrumbs for others to follow their path to greater influence.