Introduction: School Social Work in the 21st Century—Making Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) Work in School Social Work Practice

Abstract

School social work is one of social work’s oldest subspecialties and has just entered its 2nd century. In the United States, school social work has grown from a few “visiting teachers” in 1906 working in community schools in Boston, New York, Hartford, and Chicago to a profession that now numbers over 20,000, having a national and over thirty state associations. Internationally, recent estimates place school social work in over forty countries, with over 50,000 practitioners. School social work is alive and doing (relatively) well, and in some areas, like the state of Illinois, appears to be growing. But the question to ask is what’s behind these numbers of school social workers? What are school social workers actually doing? And in the spirit of this volume, what kinds of interventions are they using, and what does the best available evidence tell us about what school social workers might do to make their practices even more effective?