School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley
SOCWEL 114: Practice in Social Work, Brenda Mathias
April 2023
Nowadays, children spend a lot of time in school, making teachers, staff, and administrators partially responsible for them. As a way to connect home, school, and the community, school social workers hold the position of intermediaries to promote understanding and resolve conflicts between parties (NASW, 2019). School social workers must keep students’ best interests in mind when engaging directly with them, their families, the school administration, and folks throughout the community. School social workers deal with students’ various obstacles and must be prepared for all situations. Some approaches to helping students succeed include crisis management, mental health intervention, support services like food and housing security, guiding trainings for school personnel and families, and conducting home visits and bio-psychosocial assessments (The University of Tennessee).
How Racism and Classism Affect Access to Social Services in Schools
In 2013, there was a huge layoff in Philadelphia school personnel, especially in lower-income schools, which most often serve the city's Black students (Seider, 2013). Even though they are the most in need of personnel like social workers, lower-income POC students do not have access to social services as easily as their counterparts. Typically, these public schools have only one social worker responsible for the entire student and staff population, causing an extremely overwhelming workload and making them inaccessible to students.
Lower-income POC students throughout the United States often experience this lack of adequate aid from school social workers. But this is not because of individual social workers’ faults but rather issues of social inequity due to systemic racism and classism. Miller and Garran suggest that “educational facilities are likely to emulate the dynamics of racism [and classism] in society at large” (Miller & Garran, 2016). This is clearly visible with the reduction of educational funds that primarily impact lower-income schools serving the majority of students of color. Even though they are the most in need of personnel like social workers, lower-income POC students do not have access to them as easily as their counterparts. Suppose students can meet with a school social worker, it still proves difficult for that worker to direct them to adequate as well as inexpensive social services that are catered to students. This further perpetuates the marginalization of poor Black and Brown communities.
Arguments for Reforming School Social Work
Having easier access to social services would provide better living conditions for students enabling them to succeed in school. If students were not preoccupied with securing food and housing, had healthy relationships with their caregivers and teachers, and could access mental health resources, they would more likely be in a mindset ready to learn. This unequal access to social services is due to the aforementioned systemic racism and classism existing within society, causing detrimental, long-lasting effects for poor POC students. Beginning to resolve this issue in school social work requires radical reform at the macro level to best help students nationwide, especially those of color and lower socioeconomic status. For reform to happen, integrating anti-oppressive practice is crucial in policymaking regarding the education system and the services available to students.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Anti-Oppressive Practice
Burke describes anti-oppressive practice as the dynamic process of challenging inequalities and restructuring “complex patterns of social relations” that exist within the larger system (2002). Though there are limitations to its approach, this framework clearly has the potential to challenge and dismantle oppressive structures.
Anti-oppressive practice is sometimes accused of being a one-size-fits-all solution to oppression, making it quite inflexible in creating meaningful change that addresses the particular needs of individuals and communities (Healy, 2001). This could mean that certain policies created in response to an oppressive system may cause or perpetuate barriers for students dealing with different oppression. An example is MESA (Math, Engineering, and Science Achievement), a college preparatory program for minority students in high school that upwardly tracks low-income students of color. While this enables them to rise in social mobility, it excludes low-income, white students from obtaining akin academic potential even though they are struggling in a similar way economically (Bettie, 2014).
Anti-oppressive practice demonstrates a clear understanding of the multiplicity of oppressive systems, not just classism, that affect individuals (Sakamoto, 2005). So while it may struggle to address every intersectional need, this focus on the diversity of oppression enables social workers to analyze the structural forces persecuting marginalized groups. Workers may empower resistance to oppression in minority communities by including their views in policymaking (Burke, 2002). Social workers can give students in low-income schools a voice by inviting them to express their needs. These could range from increasing the routes of school buses to reach more students in need of transportation to demanding a higher number of POC school personnel.
Desired Future State of School Social Work
Students across the nation struggle with obstacles penalizing their academic success, yet that have nothing to do with school. These include, but are not limited to, mental health challenges and economic instability. Therefore, school social workers are integral to students’ success since they are the link between school, home, and the community. Unfortunately, due to systemic racism and classism, these students are often left to fend for themselves because of a lack of funding for school social workers and services. Because educational funding is federal and statewide, macro-level intervention is necessary through radical reform using anti-oppressive practices. However, it is important for micro-level and mezzo-level social workers to join in using anti-oppressive practices with those they are working with, as multi-level reform is crucial for change to happen and persevere.
School social workers are often seen as disposable staff members, their job overview is believed to be dividable amongst the teachers, counselors, and nurses. Because this belief threatens students’ well-being, a resolution at the macro level could be laws and regulations protecting school social workers and their job position within the school personnel. This type of policy would guarantee every school has a social worker and would ensure a specific ratio of workers to students so that there is not an overload of cases for one worker. Since policies take some time to be put in place, it could be interesting for micro-level school social workers to hire interns so that they may be completely devoted to their students without wasting time on tasks like paperwork. Having interns would avoid a rise in the budget allocated to school personnel payment while, at the same time, offering social work students opportunities for work experience and allowing school social workers to appropriately allocate their precious time to students in need.
Bibliography:
Bettie, J. (2014). Women Without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity, University of California Press.
Burke, B., & Harrison, P. (2002). Anti-oppressive practice. In Anti-Oppressive Practice (pp.
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Miller, J., & Garran, A.M. (2016). Confronting racism in agencies and organizations. In Racism
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https://www.socialworkers.org/practice/school-social-work.
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Seider, M. (2013, August 15). Philly School Crisis Meets Pushback. Class Action.
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