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As more Hawaii students and their families struggle financially through the recession, the number of social workers to help them is dwindling.

The United States Department of Education that school districts maintain a ratio of one social worker for every 800 students. But last year, the Department of Education laid off six of its 69 school-level social workers, bringing the ratio down to one for every 2,698 students.

The number of social workers in Hawaii schools is now less than two-thirds 10 years ago.

The immediate effect of the layoffs has been that the remaining social workers have a difficult time keeping up with their caseloads.

“We’re not sure how all the schools are reacting, because the action was recent,” said Debbie Shimizu, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers’ Hawaii chapter, at a Board of Education committee last September. “I know they’re having a really hard time following up on the students they need to follow up on. I’m not sure how they’re keeping up with trying to do all that, but I know they’re having a really hard time.”

Social workers from help families apply for federal food programs to developing and administering special education assessments.

In areas like the Leeward Coast of Oahu, social workers are as fundamental to education as teachers.

They can intervene to reverse social, behavioral and academic problems that could later require expensive additional services, said Suzanne Kashiwaeda, a school social worker. They also interface with a host of state and community agencies involved with children and can handle truancy and school-level crises.

“The services that social workers provide can vary, but their main role is to provide comprehensive student support and services to students in our public schools,” said department spokeswoman Sandy Goya.

Their job responsibilities aren’t limited to at-risk children either, Shimizu said.

“Social workers are available to the whole school, not just to special needs or at-risk kids and their families,” she said. “And when they work with students, they are looking at both the student and family life.”

Because social workers offer such a wide range of services, it is virtually impossible to quantify the loss to children in need of them. Often behavioral health specialists, counselors and teachers can step in to provide the same or equivalent support services, Goya explained.

Heavy Caseloads

Even though school employees and faculty may be able to pick up some of the responsibilities often covered by social workers, it is critical to have professionals who are used to comprehensively figuring out and fulfilling the needs of the whole child, said Sharon Otagaki, legislative chairwoman for the NASW Hawaii chapter.

“Social workers provide a great range of support to the classroom, as well as to the principals and counselors, she said. “There may be pockets of needs that other disciplines can handle, but the fact that we are so diverse as a profession is our strength. And that’s why when you go to different populations of students, you have social workers doing and providing a whole variety of different services that other professions are not able to provide.”

Whole Child

For that reason, Shimizu said, social workers are still a necessary building block in schools.

“They help with family situations and provide a foundation for education,” she said. “Unless you have a healthy family environment for these students, they’re really not going to thrive in school. One of their responsibilities is helping those kids who are at-risk. I think that’s prob the no. 1 priority: to look at them and prevent them from dropping out and not succeeding in school.”

Even though social workers deal with students and families of all kinds, the shortage is bound to be felt most acutely in high-need areas like Hilo and the Leeward Coast.

“In our community, the issues are broader — like hunger, dental and eyesight needs — and we have to take care of some of those things before we can even think about putting a child in class,” said Lisa DeLong, superintendent of the Nanakuli/Waianae complex area.

It’s not likely the number of social workers will return to its old level, as the education department expects it will continue to face significant budget shortfalls in the coming two years.