School Social Worker

School Social Worker

The School Social Worker promotes and enhances the overall academic mission by providing services that strengthen home, school, and community partnerships and address barriers to learning and achievement. Key responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Counseling individual students and student groups, regarding issues including mental health, poverty, substance abuse, physical abuse, rehabilitation, social adjustment, or child care.
• Interviewing students individually or in families, assessing their situations, capabilities, and problems, to determine what services are required to meet their needs.
• Serving as a liaison between school and students, homes, family services, child guidance clinics, courts, protective services, doctors, and other contacts, to help children who face problems such as disabilities, abuse, or poverty.
• Consulting with parents, teachers, and other school personnel to determine causes of problems such as truancy and misbehavior, and to implement solutions.
• Participating as members of the IEP, IAT, and other school-based teams to develop interventions for promoting students' academic success.
• Counseling students whose behavior, school progress, or mental or physical impairment indicate a need for assistance, diagnosing students' problems and arranging for needed services.
• Addressing legal issues, such as child abuse and discipline.
• Demonstrating a relentless drive to improve the minds and lives of students in and out of school.
• Providing consistent rewards and/or consequences for student behavior to ensure that students observe the school's core values, high expectations, and code of conduct.
• Implementing activities to help students meet academic and social expectations.
• Providing appropriate supervision of students during class, breaks, meals, and transitions to maintain an optimal work environment and to ensure students' safety and well-being.
• Providing crisis intervention/behavior management to build students' ability to meet the school expectations.
• Other duties as assigned.

Qualifications:

• Master's degree in School Social Work LMSW + Experience as a School Social Worker, preferred.
• Possess or be eligible to possess a valid State of Michigan Certification as a School Social Worker.
• Knowledge of principles, methods, and procedures for diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of physical and mental issues.
• Understanding of group behavior and dynamics, societal trends and influences, ethnicity and cultures.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills; strong organizational skills.
• Ability to serve as a liaison between school, parents, students, and outside resources.
• Familiar with the basic concepts of positive youth development.
• Experience with working in diverse low-income communities, and sensitivity to and awareness of the needs of culturally diverse urban adolescents and families.
• Ability to work effectively as a member of a multidisciplinary team; excellent interpersonal skills.
• Will successfully pass a criminal background check & drug screen.