Module 4
Advocacy starts with letting your various partners know who you are and what you do, starting with your students and also the people with whom you work daily. How knowledgeable are your teachers and administrators regarding your role and function? If you do not tell them, who will?
Listed below are a variety of ways in which you can use “management tools” to advocate for your CSCP.
Sharing Program Evaluation & Accountability Results: Oregon’s Framework, p.59 - Sharing Results provides a summary of ways to communicate your program evaluation results with your school community.
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ASCA provides a template - Framework p. 87 - that can be utilized in planning for your annual management agreement meeting.
Sarah Kirk - School Counselor Specialist at the Oklahoma Department of Education - has provided this YouTube video on the Annual Administrative Conference.
We have included a video later in this module of Dr. Laura Barbour, Assistant Professor in the School Counseling Program at Lewis and Clark College. In this video, she shares information about two research studies she conducted with school counselors in Oregon in 2019, with the first study on the levels of compassion fatigue and burnout among those counselors completing the survey. Among the significant findings of this first study was that a significant contributor to compassion fatigue was that the counselor believed their principal did not understand the role and function of the counselor. School counselors need to avail themselves of every opportunity to share with their administrators more information about comprehensive school counseling programs and the role and function the counselor assumes in the CSCP. Dr. Barbour also shares from the second study, in which she identified self-compassion as a possible antidote to compassion fatigue and burnout.
Program Development Template Module 4
Summarize here the next steps the Team intends to take in utilizing Annual Management Agreement Meetings.
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(Framework, pgs. 46-47) A calendar showing your weekly and monthly schedule of activities not only helps you plan your time but also allows you to communicate to your various partners how you spend your time. A calendar is tangible evidence that you provide CSCP services to students, parents, staff, and administrators and it has been noted that calendars might even reduce the likelihood of you being assigned non-counseling duties, given you show how your time is being spent on counseling duties.
Sarah Kirk - School Counselor Specialist at the Oklahoma Department of Education - has provided this YouTube video on Using Calendars in Comprehensive School Counseling.
How To Use Google Apps to Enhance Your Counseling Program provides information on the use of Google Calendar.
Program Development Template Module 4
Summarize here the next steps the Team plans to take in utilizing CSCP calendars.
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The district counseling team also needs to discuss role and function of the school counseling team’s personnel with responsive services - Tier III interventions (Framework, p. 50).
The American School Counselor Association has recommended for some time that school counselors should make referrals for those students who need clinical and long-term counseling - Tier III interventions - and should refer more intensive counseling to clinical personnel hired, contracted or providing community/agency services, in order to free up the school counselor to better serve all students.
There are a number of circumstances to be considered with the “boots on the ground” application of this “recommended” practice:
Oregon ranks 51st of the 51 states and districts in meeting the mental health needs of our youth (Mental Health America Report, 2023). This data makes it quite clear why many schools are facing a Crisis in Disrupted Learning as declared by the Oregon Education Association and counseling team personnel often struggle to find time to do more than “put out brushfires.”
Many Oregon school counselors indicate it often takes several months for a referred student to begin the intake process for mental health treatment. These students are still in school and still need to receive the best care the school counseling personnel can provide until the student begins seeing the clinical mental health provider.
There are many areas of the state in which parents need to transport their child to the mental health center. The statistics on the percentage of referred students when parents need to provide transportation indicate only a small percentage of these students ever see a mental healthcare provider. These students still require the care provided by the school counseling personnel.
Additional guidance has been provided for districts on the Oregon Department of Education’s webpage on the roles of the school counseling program personnel based on ORS 329.603 and OAR 581-022-2060. This guidance clarifies how School Social Workers can function as leads in a CSCP and explains how schools can use a Team Approach to implement their CSCP.
Program Development Template Module 4
Planning tier III mental health services for students – Summarize here the team’s thoughts about the services the members of the counseling team will continue to provide to students who have been referred out for CMHC tier III services.
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(Framework, pgs. 36-37, p. 54, & p. 99) How do you use your time? How should you spend your time if you develop and implement a CSCP? What are ASCA's recommendations about how school counselors should spend their time at each grade level? What does SSWAA recommend for how time is spent in service delivery for school social workers?
The statement on p. 54 in the Framework summarizes ASCA’s recommendations regarding how counselors should spend their time. It recommends completing the use-of-time assessment twice a year to determine how you are spending your time (see Framework, p. 99).
The SSWAA webpage provides recommendations for how school social workers spend their time delivering services.
You can use Google Forms to track your time - Track Your Time with Google Forms: The Counselor Activity Log and also receive instructions on tracking your time in this Inspiring School Counselor YouTube video.
Microsoft Excel also provides several time trackers you can download to track your time and also do data analysis. You can Google EZAnalyze and download the Excel add-on for free and then also watch three YouTube videos on how to use EZAnalyze TimeTracker.
Program Development Template Module 4
Summarize here the next steps the Team intends to take in conducting a Time-Task Analysis.