Many human services organizations focus on serving children and families. Whether it’s addressing issues of stable housing, food insecurity, medical needs, child care, or mental health, to name a few, human services as a field is deeply engaged in the work of strengthening children and families. There is a natural alignment between the work of human services with children and families and that of the K–12 education system.

This does not mean that these systems work without any flaws or that we don’t need to consider our own experience with our own families and schooling. As a human services provider, these environments are also filled with bureaucracy that is difficult to navigate. We must support both navigating these systems as a provider and helping clients do so. Consider, for example, how challenging the navigation of the education system in this country is when your first language is not English. It makes it nearly impossible to feel like the system was built to include you.

Human Services and Schools

Many of the issues that human services organizations address affect school-aged children. Increasingly, there has been an effort to bring human services to the schools in the hopes of improving the outreach and the effectiveness of services available to support our most vulnerable children and families. This effort has been particularly notable in the public education system. The growing partnership between human services organizations and public schools has resulted in expanded resources for children and families ranging from on-site medical and dental clinics for low-income families to laundry and shower services. In this section we will explore some of the most common issues faced by school-aged children and their families through the lens of school-based human services partnerships.

Schools try to provide reliable access to children and families, and the districts increasingly recognize the value of co-locating human services programs within school buildings. Schools may invite community partners in to offer services such as food banks, community health clinics, and vision and dental screenings for children. It is clear that students are better learners when their basic needs are met. Schools have a mission to provide education and academic foundations, and the work to ensure the security of basic needs may be seen as an investment in student learning.

School districts provide dedicated services through efforts such as Title I grants from the federal government to reach students navigating poverty. These services include targeted outreach to housing-vulnerable students, weekend food backpack projects to improve student and family nutrition, and offering locations for community health clinics to provide free and low-cost medical care, including child immunization, well child physicals, and in some cases immediate care services for uninsured community members. Special education services may partner with occupational therapy programs to improve learning outcomes, another example of human services partnerships with public schools. Investments in student mental health may include collaboration with community mental health services.

Case Study: Creative Solutions

The human services profession values multidisciplinary knowledge and collaboration. As an example of leveraging multiple disciplines and funding streams, the school district in Corvallis, Oregon, funded its own mental health initiative. It brought certified mental health practitioners into each school and allowed family members of school district students to access these services alongside their school-age children (Mahoney, 2019). The program has become self-sustaining through obtaining status as a Medicaid insurance provider. This means the school district can bill Medicaid directly for the mental health services it provides to low-income students and their family members.

The integration of human services into the school district has reduced the wait time for students seeking services and drastically increased the amount of available youth-oriented mental health support. When schools invest in partnerships with human services, student learning outcomes improve. In this way, human services programs can help schools be more successful in their mission to launch today’s youth into becoming tomorrow’s leaders.

Licenses and Attributions

Open Content, Shared Previously

“Serving Children and Families” is adapted from “Children and Schools” by Terese Jones, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Revised by Martha Ochoa-Leyva.