School social work intervention with students at socio-educational risk: practices to promote equity in times of COVID 19

Abstract

The Covid 19 pandemic, by electing distance learning, intensified the risks of dropout and failure of students with a more fragile relationship with the school, accentuating social inequalities and other inequalities and not allowing the multiplicity of their needs to be satisfied, in the sense of its integral development. The Portuguese government wanted to respond to the problems of absenteeism and school dropout, child poverty, intra-family violence, and mental illness, which were aggravated by the pandemic, giving guidance to managers, teachers, and technicians to reinvent the role of the school in times of physical distance, quarantine, and isolation. In this reinvention, the intervention strategies of the social workers were highlighted in the identification, and monitoring of risk/danger situations to which children and young people were subject and, in the articulation with the competent authorities and the community institutions, in promoting the right to education and social protection. Focusing on a qualitative approach, through interviews with social workers who are part of multidisciplinary teams in school clusters, in the metropolitan area of Porto in northern Portugal, we sought to know how they perceive their functions and professional practices, and their potential in making the right to education effective for combating inequalities.