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When the Call Comes: School Social Work Beyond the School Walls
Three Clark County School Police Social Workers reflect on crisis response, collaboration, community, and what it means to bring the social work lens into unexpected spaces.
Ask a school social worker what a typical day looks like, and chances are the answer will include some version of: there really isn't one. For Tonya Jones, Lori Smith, and Celestina Darine, that unpredictability can extend far beyond the walls of a school.
As School Police Social Workers with the Clark County School District Police Department in Las Vegas, their work can take them into schools, homes, hospitals, police settings, and the broader community. On any given day, they may be supporting a student experiencing suicidal ideation, responding to a crisis, connecting with a family, collaborating with school-based colleagues and officers, or simply finding a rare stretch of time to catch up at their desks.
As one member of the team put it during a conversation with SSWAA Director of Strategic Initiatives, Emily Shayman:
“You never know what our day will lead to.”
And perhaps that is where this story begins.
A role that doesn't fit neatly into a box
The title School Police Social Worker may be unfamiliar to many —and the team knows that. When they began doing this work, there were questions and misconceptions about what social workers working within a school police department actually did. Were they functioning as police officers? Were they there to help law enforcement make arrests?
Neither description captures the role they describe in our podcast. Their work centers on skills that school social workers know well: assessing needs, responding to crises, building relationships, communicating across systems, connecting families with resources, and helping create a bridge to ongoing support.
When a crisis call comes in, the team's immediate responsibility is to help stabilize the situation. But they are also clear about what comes next. School-based social workers and other professionals already embedded within a student's school often have something the responding team does not: an established relationship with the student and family.
So collaboration matters. The School Police Social Workers may respond, assess, support, and put interventions in place—and then connect back with school-based colleagues who can continue that relationship. And when families don't respond immediately, the work doesn't necessarily end with an unanswered phone call. The team described follow-up, communication with officers and school personnel, and continued efforts to connect families with available support.
That persistence reflects something much bigger than a particular job title: support works best when systems communicate rather than operate in isolation.
When professional and personal worlds collide
The conversation takes a more reflective turn when Emily asks the group about their reaction to a conference keynote on school violence. Their answer leads somewhere unexpected: the 2023 shooting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
For members of the team, the event wasn't abstract. One had a personal connection to UNLV as an alumna.
They recalled making their way to campus amid uncertainty and chaos. There wasn't a perfectly scripted assignment waiting for them when they arrived. They knew there were people experiencing an active crisis, and they knew they needed to help. Eventually, that meant doing what social workers are trained to do: sitting with people, listening, helping them navigate what was happening, supporting reunification efforts, and connecting people with what they needed. For one team member, it also meant consciously separating two parts of herself, the person personally connected to the university and the social worker responding to people who needed support.
“That day I had to be Celestina the social worker. I couldn't be…the alumni.”
There is something deeply recognizable in that tension. School social workers routinely enter moments that are frightening, painful, complicated, or deeply personal for the people they serve. They may have their own emotional response to what is happening while simultaneously being called upon to provide steadiness for someone else.
The team doesn't describe their response as perfect. In fact, what makes this portion of the conversation so compelling is their willingness to acknowledge moments when they wondered:
What do we do now?
Then training, instinct, teamwork, and the fundamentals of social work took over.
Not because they had every answer.
Because there were people who needed support.
The questions that stay with you
Their reflection on crisis response doesn't end with what happened that day.
Instead, the conversation turns toward the questions professionals often carry afterward:
Did we do what we needed to do?
Did we miss something?
What could we do differently?
Where might there be gaps?
Those aren't comfortable questions, particularly when the stakes involve student safety, mental health, threats of violence, or potential harm to self or others. But the team doesn't speak about them from a place of certainty or self-congratulation. They talk about checking one another, reviewing their work, learning, and trying to make sure families feel supported.
That distinction matters - it mattered for this team of school police social workers, and it matters for social workers in schools all over.
The goal isn't to claim that any individual practitioner or any single system can prevent every tragedy. It is to remain attentive, collaborative, willing to learn, and committed to doing the work as responsibly as possible.
Different communities. Different approaches.
This team of school police social workers also referred to their conference presentation, in which they emphasized the concept that school social work does not look identical everywhere.
They have presented their model in different states and districts and encountered practitioners working within very different policies, staffing structures, relationships with law enforcement, and community expectations. Some districts have their own school police departments. Others operate with security personnel or entirely different structures.
Those differences can lead to difficult questions and useful conversations. Rather than suggesting that one structure should be replicated everywhere, the team sees value in practitioners understanding one another's contexts and talking openly about what is working, what is challenging, and what can be learned. For a profession operating across thousands of very different communities, that exchange matters.
“We do good work. Let's share.”
Interestingly, some of the lightest moments in the conversation come when the trio talks about presenting their work at the SSWAA conference and elsewhere. They are candid about being nervous. One describes saying yes to opportunities and then later wondering why she agreed to them. Another talks about presenting alongside colleagues with decades of experience and learning to step outside her comfort zone. There is laughter about preparation, nerves, presentation timing, and the difference between appearing calm in front of an audience and everything happening underneath the surface.
Then comes one of the simplest, and perhaps most important ideas in the entire conversation:
“We do good work. Let's share.”
For school social workers, sharing the work isn't only (or mostly!) about presenting at conferences. School social work is explaining the profession to administrators who don't fully understand it. School social work is helping colleagues see what's possible. School social work includes sharing a practice that worked, asking another district how they approach a challenge, mentoring someone newer to the field, or simply giving language to work that often happens quietly.
And sometimes, school social work is saying yes to the microphone—even while your nerves are telling you otherwise.
Beyond the walls
Tonya, Lori, and Celestina's roles as School Police Social Workers may be unfamiliar to many practitioners. The situations they encounter may also look very different from those of a school social worker based in one school building. But beneath those differences are some very familiar foundations:
Relationship. Assessment. Advocacy. Collaboration. Follow-through. Humanity.
This conversation is less a prescription for how school social work should be practiced and more an invitation to think about where the skills of school social workers can matter, and how those skills travel with practitioners into complicated spaces.
School social work happens in schools. It also happens wherever students, families, schools, and communities intersect. And sometimes, when the call comes, the most important thing a social worker brings into the room isn't a perfect roadmap… It's the ability to listen, assess what is needed, work alongside others, and help people find their next step.
