School-Linked Services

Promoting Equity for Children, Families, and Communities

Laura Bronstein, Susan Mason

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780231541770
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Children's Studies in Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The evidence-based strategies in this volume close the achievement gap among students from all sociological backgrounds. Designed according to local needs assessments, they provide the services, programs, initiatives, and relationships that are crucial for children's success in school and life.

These practices and programs include afterschool and summer sessions, early-childhood education, school-linked health and mental health services, family engagement, and youth leadership opportunities. This book addresses the policy and funding requirements that help these partnerships thrive and offers effective counterarguments against those who would question their value. The text describes strategies that work in both rural and urban contexts and includes a chapter evaluating school-community partnerships across the world. Because it involves collaborations across professions and organizations, the book's interdisciplinary approach will appeal to those in social work, education, psychology, public health, counseling, nursing, and public policy.

Making the Case for School-Linked Services

EDUCATORS INCREASINGLY LAMENT THAT THEIR ABILITY to do their job of teaching students is hampered by issues outside of their professional purview. One principal from England states, “I was finding, because of the nature of the community, when I looked at my role as a head teacher which is about leading the learning and the teaching, so much of my time was being taken up dealing with the social work issues…. I did a review over a four week period of my time and 60 percent of that time was social work related and that’s not where my strengths are. My strengths are in teaching and learning” (Cummings, Dyson, & Todd 2011:57). In response to this need, educational reform efforts, both in the United States and other parts of the world, examine ways to support teachers through community partnerships so that teachers are able to focus on what they do best—teach—while other professionals focus on supporting students overcome barriers to their ability to learn.

These partnering approaches have a number of names, including school-linked services, school-based services, full-service community schools, school-community partnerships, and extended schools, among others. They have been around for over a hundred years and are increasingly needed as social problems become more prevalent and complex. In 1998, McKenzie and Richmond argued that when schools don’t address children’s health by design, they are forced to do so by default. In 1945, Carr referred to the need to “throw bridges across the deep moat which typically separates the school from its community. Each bridge will be a two-lane highway so that the community can utilize the resources of the school and the school can use the community” (vii). Even further back, in 1910, Richman noted that “the school is the legitimate social centre of a community, and that from the school or through the school there should radiate all those influences that make at least for child betterment, if not for complete social betterment” (161). Today, in the United States, we continue to try to build these bridges for child and social betterment, and unfortunately, in most cases the structuring is the result not of systemic priorities but of individual school-by-school efforts.

This book aims to address the gross inequalities that characterize the educational system in the United States and make learning too oft en a function of socioeconomic status as opposed to one of effort and skill. In large part the country’s public schools are dependent upon the income level of their community. A solution to this inequity is needed so that all children have resources needed to succeed. That solution is to attend not just to what happens inside the classroom, but also to the critical environmental variables that impact students’ abilities to take advantage of their classroom experiences, especially those that disproportionately impact children living in poverty. Because schools focus primarily on the academic needs of children, in order to level the playing field for children of all economic backgrounds, partnerships between schools and communities are critical, and have been shown to be the most likely solution to building equal opportunities for all.

Hare defines school-linked services as an “innovative system of delivering services in which community agencies and schools collaborate to provide a variety of health and social services to children and their families at or near school sites” (1995:r34520). Alongside those advocating educational reform, many health and social service professionals see these approaches as a logical and effective means of delivering health and social services for all children and families (Dryfoos 1994). Since most children are at school most days, accessing supports outside the structure of the school requires greater means and time than accessing services connected with and at school.

In this book we advocate the idea that the school-linked services paradigm (an overarching term we use to describe all methods of student support that link and/or integrate community services and organizations with schools) should be embraced and developed by an array of professionals whose roles are to deliver services to children, families, and communities. This includes educators, social workers, nurses, public health workers, physicians, counselors, psychologists, etc. Linking services with schools has been shown to improve academic outcomes as well as access to services to which children and families are entitled. These linkages support early detection for physical and mental health issues, treatment, and oft en prevention, and therefore in addition to being effective at promoting quality of life, they are also cost-saving in that they keep problems from exacerbating. As Steen and Noguera state, “Viewing students’ academic struggles in isolation from external factors (e.g., issues occurring outside of school) has proven to be short-sighted and often unsuccessful” (2010:44). An integrated, holistic approach that adds health and social services to public schooling’s role makes sense for children in all settings: home, school, and community.

While many in both the education and the health and social service realms regard the need for school-community partnerships as vital, there is currently no federal initiative in the United States “to reduce educationally relevant health disparities as part of a national strategy to close the achievement gap” (Basch 2010:5). There are however, individuals and organizations that argue for linkage on the national level. In 1994, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) joined together to declare the need for partnership and integration across the health and education sectors (Ferro 1998). One of the eight DOE goals for 2000 included the proposition that “every school will promote partnerships that will increase parental involvement and participation in promoting the social, emotional, and academic growth of children” (McKenzie & Richmond 1998:7). In 2013, the Equity and Excellence Commission chartered by Congress to advise the secretary of the DOE stated, “Communities, tribes, states and the federal government working together must create a policy infrastructure for providing services to underserved children by crafting standards to support at-risk children, encourage family engagement, and provide health care and health education and expanded learning time” (U.S. Department of Education 2013:30). While government rhetoric and recommendations have supported a partnership approach to education, and while there are several exemplary programs, there still exists no systematic way to ensure that school-community partnerships benefit all children regardless of the socioeconomic characteristics of their neighborhoods.

So it seems that despite the fact that partnerships are espoused, and despite the availability of a number of model school-linked service and community school exemplars in the United States and abroad, the school-community partnership movement needs a great deal more advocates, including both researchers to increase, shore up, and consolidate evidence and policymakers to provide funding. The advocacy, research, policies, and funding need to come from all sectors: those currently associated with schools, those that provide community services, local businesses that employ community residents, and area colleges and universities. In other words, what is needed are integrated community initiatives with support at the national and state level, and, because of the varying needs of different communities, design input at the local level.

While these partnerships have the potential to support all students, the greatest need is in communities with the most vulnerable children. Longitudinal studies have shown the link between academic achievement and communities’ levels of crime and child abuse and neglect (Bryk et al. 2010). A critical barrier to academic achievement is income. Almost a quarter of the children in the United States now live below the poverty line, and researchers have found a direct correlation between that circumstance and the academic achievement of these children as compared with more affluent children (Fuhrman et al. 2011). While it is true that distracted, hungry, worried, and ill children have a more difficult time focusing in the classroom, the impact of poverty stretches beyond the classroom itself. Steen and Noguera make the case that “poor and minority students acquire knowledge in school just like more advantaged students; however, their lack of participation in learning activities before and after school as well as during summer breaks limits their carryover and sustainability of this information” (2010:48). In addition, school readiness is a critical factor impacted by income, which can also be accelerated by high quality early childhood programs.

MAXIMIZING SCHOOLS’ POTENTIAL: INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL REFORM

In 1997, the World Health Organization stated, “Schools could do more than any other single institution to improve the well-being and competence of children and youth” (1). Clearly educators are not solely responsible for children’s well-being, and providing supports that extend beyond academic guidance and assistance in the classroom is not something that educators can do on their own. Epstein states that without partnerships, educators segment students into the school child and the home child, ignoring the whole child. This parceling “reduces or eliminates guidance, support, and encouragement for children’s learning from parents, relatives, neighbors, peers, business partners, religious leaders, and other adults in the community” (2011:5). All community partners need to come together to address unmet needs of children and families, and the school is the perfect place for this assembly to occur.

The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) continues to be a leader in the community schools effort in the United States (see details of the CAS, chapter 3). Regarding the current challenges facing educators in their efforts to serve students, the CAS observes: “While strengthening instruction, aligning assessments and improving teacher effectiveness are all critical elements of school reform, these approaches fall into the ‘necessary but not sufficient’ category” (2011:vii). Communities in Schools (CIS), another leading organization linking schools and communities, serves over one million children throughout the United States. The CIS model positions site coordinators inside schools to assess students’ needs and provide resources to help them succeed in the classroom and in life. These coordinators help schools partner with local businesses, social service agencies, health care providers, and volunteers to provide resources including food, school supplies, health care, counseling, academic assistance and positive role models—whatever is needed to help children succeed in school (http://www.communitiesinschools.org/about/our-story/) (see chapter 3 for more on CIS).

Well-respected educators, including those at some of the United States’ most prestigious universities, argue that in order for schools to educate all students according to democratic ideals of equity, the public education system requires both internal and external reform. Rothstein, for example, delineates three tracks that need to be simultaneously and “vigorously” pursued in order to make significant progress in narrowing the achievement gap. The first involves “school improvement efforts that raise the quality of instruction in elementary and secondary schools. Second is expanding the definition of schooling to include crucial out-of-school hours in which families and communities now are the sole influences. This means implementing comprehensive early childhood, after-school, and summer programs. And third are social and economic policies that enable children to attend school more equally ready to learn. These policies include health services for lower-class children and their families, stable housing for working families with children, and the narrowing of growing income inequalities in American society” (2004:8).

Steen and Noguera (2010) also cite evidence that focusing solely on school improvement is not enough to ensure learning outcomes, especially for poor and minority students. Adelman provides a useful model for the reform of children’s services using the school as an anchor. This model incorporates reform efforts that address school improvement and instruction, on the one hand, and variables oft en external to the school, on the other, in order to develop a “comprehensive, coordinated, and increasingly integrated set of interventions for students and their families” (1996:434). As Dryfoos observes, “The marriage between the school and ‘everything else’ is taking place. It is not a marriage of convenience; it is one of dire necessity” (1991:135).

PROGRESSIVE UNIVERSALISM

Cummings, Dyson, and Todd describe the progressive universalism model of delivering school-linked services in England. The authors cite former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who defines progressive universalism as “universal because we aim to help everyone;…and progressive because we aim to do more for those who need it most” (2011:14–15). This approach fits with the need for promoting, developing, and implementing school-linked services in the United States. It is an approach from which all communities can gain, especially those that are low-income. For example, Lawson and Alameda-Lawson’s research with low-income Latino children in Sacramento finds that unless high levels of family stress, unsafe social and physical environments, elevated likelihood of illness and school absence, residential transience, and school mobility are addressed, “low-income Latino children may be destined to fall short of their desired goals and potential” (2011:2). A longitudinal study in Chicago conducted by Bryk et al. produced similar findings, and while the authors argue that sometimes simple solutions (i.e., eyeglasses) can be the difference between academic success and failure, often there are many more complex needs requiring attention, where “one-fourth or more of the elementary-school students might be living under an extraordinary set of circumstances, such as homelessness, foster care, domestic violence, abuse, or neglect” (2010:59).

Because of the strong connections between health disparities and school performance, low-income children, who often have a more difficult time accessing services, are at greater risk for academic failure. Basch notes five areas impacted by health disparities, including sensory perception, cognition, connectedness/engagement with school, absenteeism, and dropping out (2010:4). School-linked services, and especially full-service community schools, have been shown to have a positive impact on attendance and school drop-out rates in low-income communities where summer learning loss is but one of the factors that accelerates academic challenges for these students (Steen & Noguera 2010:48).

CONTINUUM OF SCHOOL-LINKED SERVICES AND NEED FOR INTEGRATION

School-linked services look different in different schools. And they should look different depending upon the community, residents, and their needs. The development and adoption of school-linked services emerge from a wide array of variables. Dryfoos and Quinn (2005) describe the continuum of school-linked services that we see in schools:

1 one or two components, such as after-school programs or school-based clinics, offered by outside agencies but not integrated with school;

2 three or four components, such as after-school, before-school, clinic, and family resource center, not integrated with school; and

3 three or four components, such as after-school, before-school, clinic, and family resource center, integrated with one another and with the school curriculum, with a full-time coordinator from a lead agency.

A number of organizations/researchers give different names to this third option. The most common name is community school. Such a school implements “a strategy for organizing the resources of the community around student success” and functions as “a coherent, learner-centered institution, rather than as a regular school with add-on programs” (Children’s Aid Society 2011:1, 21).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) refer to schools with integrated means for delivering health and social services as employing a model of coordinated school health (CSH). They describe CSH as a systematic approach to improving the health and well-being of all students so they can fully participate and be successful in school. “CSH brings together school administrators, teachers, other staff, students, families, and community members to assess health needs; set priorities; and plan, implement, and evaluate school health activities. CSH integrates health promotion efforts across nine interrelated components that already exist to some extent in most schools. These components include: health education, physical education, health services, nutrition services, counseling, psychological and social services, healthy and safe school environments, staff wellness, and family and community involvement” (2010:3).

Adelman describes an approach for integrated school-linked services wherein educational supports move away from “(a) fragmented, categorical, and specialist-oriented approaches toward a comprehensive and cohesive programmatic approach, and (b) viewing activity in this arena as supplementary toward a policy that establishes the component as primary and essential” (1996:435).

While having a single community partner linked with schools has potential to provide needed assistance that can impact children’s well-being and their academic performance, it is the coordination and integration that provide the opportunity for systems change and reform in children’s services. In order to be most successful, such integration needs to occur at all levels: policy, program, and practice. In the United States, advocates of community schools see a need for a supportive national policy. However, a supportive national policy, while crucial for far-reaching change, is not sufficient. For example, in Scotland, despite an integrated national policy for children’s services, including education, “it is scarcely impacting on teachers’ practice” (Smith 2012:134). Some advocates suggest that communities develop a “children’s board” that parallels a school board to “integrate children’s services” (Marx, Wooley, & Northrop 1998:xii). In their longitudinal study of Chicago schools, Bryk et al. (2010) cite partnerships with community health, recreation, and social service agencies, as well as the police department, as being vital to ensuring students’ academic success. However, these partnerships cannot “stand alone.” As Pappano states, “It is tempting for schools to partner with whoever offers help, but schools must be somewhat picky. Partnerships need to be meaningful and fruitful, because schools cannot afford to spend so much energy and time just for the sake of having a partner” (2010:126). It seems clear that to be most effective, school-linked services need to be thoughtfully integrated into a movement that will reform services for children and youth, transforming systems and promoting success in all realms: physical and mental health, academics and communities. Government policies that support these partnerships can go far to ensure that this occurs in ways that are relevant and sustainable.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT: SERVICES FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

Since the 1800s, services for children and families have been based out of three settings critical to their lives: home, neighborhood, and school. Prior to that time, childhood was not viewed as a unique stage of development; children were instead viewed as miniature adults, and so early community programs focused on helping children confronting challenges in finding work and remaining employed. Educators and psychologists helped to alter this view, and apprenticeships and almshouses were replaced by services dedicated to nurturing children.

Home and Community-Based Services

In the 1800s, “friendly visiting” involved home visits to poor families by wealthy women who belonged to charity organization societies and who provided “a mixture of support, scrutiny, and advice” (Weiss & Halpern 1991:12). However, friendly visiting and its goal of reforming people in poverty did not lead to the moral improvement it was intended to address. Growing largely out of the Progressive Era of the early 1900s, the development and establishment of settlement houses began to replace charity organization societies’ efforts at social reform. A focus on home-based services was supplemented by community-based efforts, including settlement houses and efforts by voluntary youth-serving organizations, and reflected a belief in the importance of neighborhood-based supports (Cahill 1997). These programs did not see themselves as competing with formal institutions like schools, but rather as complementing what other formal institutions were already providing (Connell 1992). Then, in the 1920s, there was ...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Making the Case for School-Linked Services
• 2. The School
• 3. School-Linked Services Today
• 4. Working Effectively Across Systems
• 5. Settings
• 6. International Initiatives
• 7. Public Education, School-Linked Services, and Relevant Policies
• 8. Funding
• 9. Assessing Outcomes
• Epilogue: Creating a Successful School-Community Partnership for School-Linked Services
• References
• Index