School Social Worker Corner

Hello Lafayette Elementary community and families! I’m Ms. Jessica, the school social worker. Here you can learn about what a school social worker is and how we can work together to support our students and community. Contact information for families is below.  
 
What is School Social Work?
School social work is a specialized area of social work where the main goal is supporting students to be safe, happy, and ready to learn. We do this at Lafayette through:

• School Wide Social Emotional Learning (SEL): Working as a school community team to build social skills, emotional regulation, safe spaces for students, and more
• Crisis Management: Intervening in crisis situations, safety planning, restorative conversations, and more as needed
• Counseling: Providing brief individual & group counseling to a small amount of students
• Advocacy: Advocating for students in and out of the classroom
• Community Involvement & Collaboration: Facilitating community involvement in the school; Collaborating with school staff, families & community partners
• Wellness Center: The Wellness Center is open at certain hours throughout the day for every student to use. It’s a space for students to take 5-10 minutes to regulate through 3 calming stations (reading corner, drawing table, or calm down fort) or through checking in with Ms. Jessica.
• Coordinated Care Team (CCT): CCT is a multidisciplinary team approach for evaluating and improving school-wide SEL programming primarily at Tier 1 and Tier 2 services. The CCT takes referrals from school staff and parents and families through this referral form. The CCT meets weekly, is facilitated by the school social worker and includes school administrators, support staff, and more as needed. Coordinating care is a strategy to reduce students and families falling through the cracks, gets students and families what they need, and pushes back on white supremacy culture.
  • Tier 1: Universal programming and supports (serves 80% of population and includes high quality instruction, improving sense of belonging, SEL, etc.)
  • Tier 2: Targeted evidence-based interventions and/or Coordination of Care for a group of students (serves 10 - 20% of population)
  • Tier 3: Intense individualized support and intervention (serves 2 - 5% of population, may include students in crisis, or students with an IEP or 504)
• If you’d like to submit a referral to the CCT for social emotional needs for your student, please use this form (linked).

Contact: For more information, questions, or feedback for me, please reach out to Ms. Jessica at silvasj@sfusd.edu 

I so appreciate your time, care, and community!