What is Coping Skills

This chapter discusses the increase in trauma-informed schools in response to an appreciation of traumatic aftermath and its potential to create educational challenges to students and institutions. Neurological changes due to trauma, common and paradoxical behaviors displayed by students, educators feeling unprepared to provide emotional supports to students, and the benefits of a trauma-informed philosophy will be discussed. Additionally, the need for school social workers (SSW) to accomplish the goals of trauma-informed schools, the barriers to hiring and sustaining SSW at the appropriate ratio for students and school environment, and innovative recommendations to obtain SSW will be presented. SSW are in a unique position to provide individual, group, family, classroom, and community services to support the trauma-informed mission, as well as to assist with the increase in social services schools are increasingly being called upon to provide, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.