Member

- coordinate the delivery of educational and mental health services

- develop resources to adequately meet the needs of students and families.

The best state level vehicle for School Social Workers to join together on current issues that affect our profession and the children and families we serve.

Fellow School Social workers:

Before the first snow fall….I thought I better send out a fall newsletter letter. I hope everyone is off to a great start this school year. There seems to be so many different changes happening with children and families throughout Nebraska that I can not think of a time when our profession as school social workers has been more important. This will be my final year as President of SSWAN and my 20^th year as a school social worker and I learn something new every year. I can remember when I started my position I was the Home School Liaison and everyone thought I helped home schooled families. Besides this, very few people knew what a liaison was. The district then decided to call me a community counselor, and then they decided to call me home school counselor. I am happy to say our district title is School Social Worker and I am proud to hold this title. If you hold the title of School Social Worker I hope you take advantage of referring to this title as often as you can when you are in meetings and speaking with community members. The more we say School Social Worker, the more we are a part of the link that is needed in schools. We are natural piece to the puzzle with the individual student, family, and community. I recently wrote an article about School Social Workers in the Metropolitan Child Advocacy Coalition, (MCAC) newsletter.

This fall we held our second annual leadership academy. We opened the morning to the general community and then held our SSWAN leadership academy for members only. It was good as school social workers to discuss Response to Intervention, data collection, and topics in Nebraska affecting school social workers. I hope that we will always have good participation in the fall for this academy. Special thanks to the Kearney and Lexington school social workers for a great academy and special thanks to Melissa Craig for her frugal spending that helped generate approximately $800.00.

Make sure you mark your calendar for our upcoming annual conference on April1st. The conference committee has been busy and early planning sounds very exciting.  Details regarding this conference will be out very soon. Budget constraints can make it difficult to attend conferences but I think we provide an informative and very affordable conference so please be sure to encourage your colleagues to attend. Speaking of conferences, Melissa Craig and I attended the Midwest Council conference and meetings in Minneapolis.  Midwest council meets during most of the conference time and as a result we are limited on breakout sessions but Susan Suckeowski,School Social Worker of the year attend the conferences and you can see her report in the newsletter along with a picture of her award celebration. Her speech was very heart filled and she certainly represented Nebraska well. The Midwest council discussed upcoming conferences and we need to decide if SSWAN is able to collaborate with Iowa School Social workers to host the Midwest School Social Work conference in 2013. If we decide to jointly host the conference, we would need to begin planning now. We also had quite an elaborate discussion on the reporting of child abuse and the need to report and not investigate.  Some states are looking at where their accreditation comes from and the need to hire highly qualified school social workers just as the federal laws are requiring highly qualified teachers. RTI continues to be the buzz word and something that all of us should be researching and implementing in our individual practice. You do not have to wait for your district to implement a formal RTI process. Much of RTI can be incorporated into your problem solving approach. School Social Workers are naturals at problem solving and research based interventions.  Here are a few resources on RTI:   www.nasponline.org , http://www.nasponline.org/advocacyrtireferene.pdf http://www.sswaa.org/about/resolutions/RTIFinal.html , www.dpi.wi.gov .

American Council for School Social Work,  (ACSSW), www.acssw.org and School Social Work Association SSWAA http://www.sswaa.org  both reported to the Midwest Council.  I am including their websites and I would like to for you to pay particular attention to SSWA and their new liability insurance for members.

Our kick off meeting September 30^th was a success other than the technical difficulties we experienced with ESU10. Hopefully this is the one and only time that we experience this. We are currently working on connecting with the Grand Island School Social workers either through their administration office or ESU 10. Grand Island has had many school social workers for years so their experience is going to benefit us tremendously. Having increased state representation is a benefit of being part of an organization with so much collaborating and planning that we can grow as individuals as well as an organization. Our voice as school social workers can only get stronger with increased membership. I hope that the majority of you will consider being an active member of a committee. Please be sure to read the committee reports will in the newsletter.

Health and Human Services in transition of some huge changes in privatizing services to our children and families in the state of Nebraska. I believe it is very important for each and every one of us to look into the changes. SSWAN board is currently evaluating a possibility to make recommendations regarding this change. We will be disusing this as an organization at our November 11^th meeting. We hope to vote to either support the efforts to slow down the privatization or to at least have a discussion regarding this issue. Please referral the proposal at www.voicesforchildren.com/signon

I recently attended a luncheon to honor students in the school of social work at UNO who received scholarships. Our scholarship recipient is Douglas Peters who is a dual degree student in Social Work and Public Administration. He is currently completing a practicum at Omaha South High Magnet School. It truly is nice to see that our organization is able to offer $500.00 scholarship for someone who is focusing on school social work. I hope we will always be able to provide this contribution to our profession.

Times are challenging and it is easy to get bogged down on some of the negative issues that we deal with on a daily basis. I do feel however; if we can challenge ourselves to grow professionally we can stay ahead of the game. I hope that by being a part of this organization you will feel support, you will grow as a professional, and you will contribute to the bigger picture, student success. I challenge you to be an ACTIVE member of SSWAN and to be a part of the solution. Best wishes for a great school year.

 

Sincerely,

Laurie Cooley, President

School Social Work Association of Nebraska