Grow Your Own School Social Workers: A Policy Pilot and Innovative Model to Address Shortages in the Behavioral Health Workforce

Background and Purpose: Since COVID-19, we have seen an increasing need for learning support services for students locally and nationally. Recent reports suggest a more than 40% increase in behavioral mental health symptomology among U.S. youth over the past decades (CDC, 2022). Students are coming to school with these issues and other unmet barriers to learning (such as food insecurity and unmet trauma needs), and the capacity of schools to address these needs continues to be a challenge, especially given the increasing needs and shortages in the behavioral health workforce. A Master's in Social Work (MSW), with an emphasis on school social work practice, is an educational pathway designed to enhance graduates' skills, knowledge, and competencies to engage in advanced social work practice in schools. Thus, to address the shortage of behavioral health providers in schools, a local school district in a large, Midwestern state sought to "grow their own" school social workers and transition 25 teachers into school social work positions by fully funding their MSW degrees.

Methods: This pilot project launched as a large community-based participatory research study whereby social work researchers, MSW program staff, educators, and school district leaders worked together to design a two-year hybrid MSW pathway for 25 mid-career teachers. Recruitment for the study began when teachers officially enrolled in the MSW program. Upon competition of an initial consent form, teachers enrolled in this policy pilot and study for five years. Researchers and district leaders have worked collaboratively to study our model regarding funding pathways, systems-level changes, and coursework mapping to fund this policy pilot. In addition, mid-career teachers completed pre-program interviews and surveys describing their current knowledge, skills, competencies, and opportunities for growth in school social work.

Findings: Preliminary findings demonstrate the unique opportunities for a school district to leverage ESSER emergency relief funds to address shortages in the behavioral health workforce. Further, our study of systems-level innovations demonstrates how universities can create cohort programs with an MSW degree to allow teachers to work full-time and progress toward a graduate degree in social work. Our quantitative and qualitative data also indicate specific opportunities to strengthen teachers' knowledge, skills, and competencies to deliver mental health services in schools and to leverage their unique expertise and experience as teachers.

Conclusions and Implications: This innovative pilot program designated as "grow your own" aims to build the capacity of the district to effectively identify and refer students for mental health services and effectively leverage the school context to address the current youth mental health crisis. Our goal for this oral presentation is to share implementation inputs, outputs, and anticipated outcomes associated with the enrollment of approximately 25 qualified teachers in an MSW program to gain advanced training in clinical mental health with children and adolescents, social-emotional learning and positive youth development, school social work practice, educational equity and inclusion, children-, family- and education-related policy, interprofessional collaboration, and research and evaluation.