A social worker is a specialist who assists in everyday life and provides moral and legal support to vulnerable segments of the population, such as orphans. This profession primarily requires a high level of humanity, developed intuition, the ability to empathize with someone else’s grief, and the ability to understand each specific situation and, based on the circumstances, to engage in the individual provision of the necessary types of social assistance. The social service at the school is designed to organize active cooperation between the school administration, teachers, students, parents, and external social structures. It aims to provide accurate, qualified, comprehensive, and timely assistance to children and teachers to protect their rights and prevent violations.
Tachibana Vanderbilt is a social worker, and her daily task is to visit homes where there are disadvantaged children. She should also inform the parents that she does not want to take the child away from them. First of all, she seeks to become partners with the parents (UNC School of Social Work, 2:20-2:30). Before the start of the school year, she visits families with problem children to establish communication, establish friendly relations, and support all family members.
While at school and noticing any moments related to problem children, Tauchiana calls her parents and answers their questions. Sometimes she picks up the children from school and accompanies them home. If the child is at home and there is an emergency, and the parents are not around, they can call Tauchiana and tell them what happened. She begins to help solve the current issue on the spot. From her practice, I learned that every family and every child needs careful work. It is necessary to become a friend for them, someone they can trust. This can be achieved gradually, paying attention to them for a significant amount of time.
Chris Dougherty is a social worker and spends his working time being close to children. He discusses problems and questions that interest them and gives them practical and valuable advice that children appreciate (Oxford Academic, 1:52-2:01). Its main goal is to explain to teenagers that they are complete people, part of a large community. Under his leadership, a support group for young people was organized based exclusively on volunteer aspirations.
His practical situation is that he seeks to sort out every problem in his ward into small details, discussing it in a group and jointly finding a way and a solution to this problem. This approach is correct since social workers often deal with children who have these problems, and if they are not solved in time, they can turn into big problems. Thus, Chris Dougherty has children to himself and becomes for them a person who is ready to help, who will always give advice, and who will not leave any of them in trouble. In addition, he always strives for dialogue, and his primary tool is a smile, which makes children understand that next to them is not just a social worker but their reliable friend.
In conclusion, a social worker at the school can assist in conducting group counseling to develop potential aimed directly at working with students. In addition, they helped organize systematic and constructive cooperation of various institutions in the implementation of the tasks facing the school. They related not only to teaching and education issues but also to the processes of democratization, administrative and independent pedagogical work to solve emerging new school problems.
References
Oxford Academic. (2015). A day in the life: High school social work [Video]. YouTube. Web.
UNC School of Social Work. (2010). Day in the life of a school social worker. [Video]. YouTube. Web.