School-Based Case Management

Oftentimes potential dropouts can be intervened only by offering them a combination of multiple services, which is not available from any single agency. Health, education and social services may all be necessary for intervention. Case Management approach is a strategy that has emerged from schools’ concern for “children who are failing in school due to a variety of interacting school, home, and community influences” (Smith, 1). It mainly involves identifying clients, assessing their situation and developing a “coordinated service plan” (Smith, 2), implementing and monitoring service delivery, and evaluating the effectiveness of the strategy by considering the outcomes.

Center for the Study and Teaching of At-Risk Students (C-STARS) has been developing a school-based case management model for over seven years. In the C-STARS model, there are three structural and seven functional components. The structural components are:

1. Case Manager – holds the position of overall coordinator; responsibilities include identifying at-risk students and referring them to the interprofessional case management team, facilitating meetings and mentoring and advocating.
2. Interprofessional Case Management Team – includes at least the case manager, a social worker and a health service professional. The team executes the seven functional components of this model.
3. Comprehensive Service Network – includes a range of local services that agree to work with the case manager and case management team to deliver specific services as needed by students.

The functional components that guide the case management team are:

1. Assessment – identify the causes of targeted student’s difficulties.
2. Development of Service Plan – determines a coordinated service plan involving coordinated short-term and long-range services delivered in and out of school.
3. Brokering – establish connections between students and those services that cannot be offered through the school.
4. Service Implementation and Coordination – firstly, deliver services to students; secondly, ensure that services are actually working together for the student’s benefit.
5. Advocacy – help students and/or family negotiate bureaucracies and facilitate communication between students and service providers.
6. Monitoring and Evaluation – track services delivered to students, and monitor emerging needs in order to make swift adjustments as they become necessary.
7. Mentoring – one member of the case management team becomes the “primary professional” who follows through with the student on a one-on-one basis, regardless of the number of specialists involved in the services.

School-based case management model was implemented in different school districts in Washington. While there were site-specific variations in the implementation plans, most examples fell within two basic types. Some schools chose to redefine job descriptions to designate existing school personnel as case managers, while other schools chose to redefine school procedures and to hire non-school personnel as case managers. There were many other variations where different professional and paraprofessional personnel from the community successfully executed the role of case manager.

Evaluation is a key component of this model, and elaborate and systematic evaluative methods are recommended by C-STARS. Using such methods, it was found that school attendance, performance, and behavior of students all improved in the period during which the model was implemented.

From the results of implementing the School-based Case Management model, it is clear that there is greater need to expand and promote this model throughout school districts where there are at-risk students.