Counseling & Social Work Services

Skilled Professional Counselors

Our Counseling and Social Work Services Team consists of highly trained, skilled professional counselors and social workers who bring a wealth of knowledge around child development, relationships, and mental wellness to ensure our schools are built for all students we serve.

Social Workers and Counselors are adept at meeting a variety of needs of students and families. We know this year, the needs for emotional support and concrete needs will be different from prior years. Our department will continue to assess and respond to these needs, designing our interventions accordingly.

Guiding Principles

1. Trauma-Informed
2. Focused on Relationships
3. Relationships with Community Resources
4. Responsive to Families
5. Safety: Physical and Emotional
6. Emotional Intelligence/SEL
7. Everyone Has a Voice
8. Growth and Change: we heal and grow from adverse experiences

Priorities for the Year

Trauma-informed Care: Counselors and social workers in addition to selected school leadership lead school PDs regarding the impact of trauma on scholar development and collaborate at their schools to teach the skills to all school staff to support all students.

Staff Wellness: Counselors/SW will consult and provide wellness resources to staff members

Student Services

How do we help students?

Individual Counseling

  • School counselors and social workers respond to staff referrals and support individual students around discipline, attendance, social/emotional, and academic concerns.
  • School counselors identify issues that affect a student’s performance in school and work with students to develop skills such as organization, time management, and study habits.

Groups

  • School counselors and social workers facilitate group counseling sessions and/or partner with community organizations who facilitate group sessions on topics including but not limited to, social skills, grief and loss of support, single-gender support, etc.

Classrooms Lessons

  • School counselors support students as needed in the classroom setting with personal/social-emotional needs, academic success, and career development.

Conflict Resolution

  • School counselors help mediate conflict between students and support them in developing skills to effectively communicate across lines of difference in order to repair harm.

Crisis Management

  • School social workers respond to and manage student crises, contacting various agencies (e.g. Mobile Crisis) if required, report possible cases of neglect and abuse (DFCS), and refer families to outside resources when needed (e.g., counseling, wraparound services).
  • Counseling and Social Work will respond to computer-generated alerts through Securly Software to ensure students are safe and connected to the necessary resources. Outreach is done directly to students and families when alerts arise.

Family Services

How do we help families?

  • Outreach to families to assess problems affecting their student’s educational adjustment
  • Partnering with families to understand their student’s developmental and educational needs (e.g. special education services)
  • Assisting parents to access school and community resources
  • Financial hardship support (uniforms, food, housing assistance, etc.)
  • Strengthen parenting skills
  • Attendance/Truancy

Staff Services

How do we help staff?

  • Providing staff with essential information to better understand factors that may impact student learning (e.g. cultural, societal, economic, health, and child development)
  • Providing direct support to staff
  • Assisting with behavior management

Confidentiality & Privacy

A counselor/social worker-scholar relationship must be built on trust and confidentiality. This means that School Counselors are bound by ethical codes of the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) to keep conversations between counselors and students private. School Social Workers are similarly bound by the ethical codes of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). School Counselors and Social Workers maintain the confidentiality of their students and their families at all times and will only break confidentiality if given specific permission or if the student may be susceptible to or there is suspicion of:

  • Harming themselves.
  • Harm to others.
  • Abuse and/or Neglect.

School Counselors and Social Workers, like all KIPP Metro Atlanta Schools employees, are mandated reporters.

How to reach us?

Referrals can be made via the published referral form at each school, a regional referral form, or by directly contacting the social worker or counselor for your school via phone or email.

Duties and responsibilities

Some responsibilities unique to School Counselors are:

  • Academic Development
  • Career Development
  • Social-Emotional Learning and Development
  • School-Wide Programming

Some responsibilities unique to School Social Workers are:

  • Dropout Prevention
  • Home Visits
  • Parent Support Groups
  • DFCS/Juvenile Court Liaisons
  • Referrals to community resources
  • Homeless Education Support

Contact Information for School-based Counselors and Social Workers: