Bridging the Cultural Divide: The role of the home-school support worker

Abstract

A three-year Home Office funded project placed social work trained home-school support workers on the staff of secondary schools with the aim of reducing school exclusions. Data from the project evaluation enabled an analysis of the possibilities and limitations of social work in school settings. A qualitative evaluation methodology was adopted with extended periods of fieldwork in the seven project schools and the use of a variety of qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques. It is argued that, if schools are to be successful sites for social work, the tensions arising from the different cultures of teachers and social workers must be recognised and addressed. A number of factors were found to be crucial for assisting social work trained support workers to become accepted in schools. The support worker role resulted in a variety of benefits for teachers, thus enabling the project to act as a bridge between social work and educational cultures.