The Social Work and K-12 Schools Casebook

This volume offers a collection of nine case studies from clinical social workers in K-12 schools, each from a phenomenological perspective, with the objective of educating Master of Social Work students and early career social work clinicians. Each chapter is framed with pre-reading prompts, reading comprehension questions, and writing assignments. This casebook provides a resource for understanding the range of practice in school social work as well as some of the challenges that school social workers face in today’s complex world. Using a phenomenological perspective the contributors stay close to the lived experience of students, teachers, parents, and social workers, revealing a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the genesis and treatment of students’ problems in school.

Miriam Jaffe, PhD, is the director of writing program at the Rutgers University Doctorate in Social Work Program. She specializes in issues of autobiography, life-writing, and the case study method.

Jerry Floersch, LCSW, PhD, is an associate professor at the Rutgers University School of Social Work and the author of Meds, Money, and Manners: The Case Management of Severe Mental Illness and co-author of Qualitative Methods for Practice Research. His clinical practice focuses upon adolescents and adults.

Jeffrey Longhofer, LCSW, PhD, is an associate professor of social work at Rutgers University and the author of A-Z of Psychodynamic Practice and co-author of On Being and Having a Case Manager. His clinical practice focuses on children, adolescents, and adults.

Wendy Winograd, LCSW, BCD-P, DSW, works in a school and maintains a private practice in Chatham, NJ where she sees adolescents, adults, and couples and provides individual and group supervision. She has published on female development, work with transgender adolescents, school-based psychotherapy with young children, and mother/daughter relationships.