Health, Mental Health, and Safety in Schools

The statistics describing the health, mental health, and safety issues affecting today's youths are shocking, yet represent a minute image of the overall issues. Parents and families still maintain the primary responsibility for ensuring healthy and safe environments that are crucial to child and youth development. However, many parents and families lack adequate support systems and financial and emotional resources to carry out this task. In a rapidly changing and demanding society where children are increasingly influenced by peers, media, technology, and negative public images, it is unrealistic to expect that even the average American family is capable of creating a thriving environment without any reliance on external formal and informal support systems in place. It really does take a village to raise a child. It takes a nation committed to children, youths, and families to ensure that its villages are equipped with adequate resources. Our nation’s school systems can be such a resource.

The vast majority of children and youths between the ages of five and 19 spend a significant portion of their day away from home, in a public or private school setting. Teachers and other school personnel, including school social workers, are often the first individuals to identify poor health, and psychological and social problems affecting young people. Schools are increasingly becoming responsible for more than just "educating" children. They are assuming primary roles in health promotion, disease and injury prevention, and violence prevention. NASW maintains that schools must be responsive to the changing needs of students (and families) regardless of economic, racial, cultural, and ethnic background. It is NASW’s position on the "Education of Children and Youths,"

that the educational system has a responsibility to help all students cope effectively with their education so that they attain full vocational and career skills and concomitant behaviors conducive to success and life long learning; empathy for others; understanding and acceptance of differences in race, culture, ethnicity, and sexual orientation; understanding of the personal realities of individuals with disabilities and how to help them participate more fully in normal daily activities; and an awareness that health-compromising behaviors, particularly sexual, substance abuse, and violent behaviors, can have lifelong and life-threatening consequences. (NASW, 2000, p.92)

According to the NASW Code of Ethics, social workers seek to enhance the capacity of people, including children and youths and the individuals who care for them, to address their needs. We seek to promote the responsiveness of organizations and social institutions, such as schools, to individuals’ needs and social problems. As a profession we have a unique set of core values by which our services are defined. These values include a commitment to social justice, preserving the dignity, worth, and integrity of our clients, and respecting the significance of human relationships. Social workers have an ethical responsibility to work towards enhancing the well-being of their clients, which may often include children, youths, and families.

Social Work Response

Recent tragic events involving school violence have placed health and mental health services in schools as a priority on our national education agenda. In response, NASW has joined with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Association of Nurses in developing a national set of guidelines to encourage a unified response to health, mental health, and safety issues affecting young people. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and Maternal and Child Health Bureau fund this project. The project, known as "Health, Mental Health, and Safety in Schools," is a vehicle that will allow the educational community to support the nation’s goal of improving health and creating safe environments for children and youths. The project is a national effort and will result in the first comprehensive set of health and safety guidelines targeting students and staff enrolled and working in elementary, middle/junior, and high school educational settings. The guidelines, based on sound research and best practices, are intended to help school personnel address the health and mental health problems that can impact attendance, academic success, and student access to equalized education opportunities.