Counseling

The mission of Elite Academy's social work services is to address emotional, economic and social barriers that may interfere with a student's academic success. Through early identification, prevention and intervention services, our social worker helps equip our students with the skills needed to successfully navigate life’s endless possibilities.

Our social worker is a trained mental health professional who provides direct and indirect services to our students and their families.

Individual Counseling

Students have access to individual counseling sessions with our school social worker. These services are designed to help students develop appropriate social emotional skills, understand and accept self and others, learn conflict resolution and anger management skills, cope with stress, and address mental health or behavioral issues. To best serve our students, a variety of theoretical approaches blending Cognitive-Behavioral Theory (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), Strength-Based Approach, Motivational Interviewing, Music Therapy, Art Therapy and Trauma Informed Care. These sessions will also be used to deliver targeted and individualized academic, career, and socio-emotional supports.These sessions will also be used to deliver targeted and individualized academic, career, and socio-emotional supports.

Group Counseling

Throughout the academic year, many of our students display similar emotional needs. When relevant, our staff will collaborate to develop a targeted group counseling curriculum to deliver in a group setting. All participants are willing group members and utilize teamwork to develop the group norms. Through this collaborative delivery we aim to meet the needs of our students while minimally disrupting the educational setting.

Trauma-Informed Care

Trauma-informed care shifts the focus from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” A trauma-informed approach to care acknowledges that care teams need to have a complete picture of a student’s life situation — past and present — in order to provide effective services with a healing orientation. Adopting trauma-informed practices can potentially improve student engagement, program adherence, and outcomes.

Trauma-informed care seeks to:

Realize the widespread impact of trauma and understand paths for recovery;
Recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma in our students;
Integrate knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices; and
Actively avoid re-traumatization.

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Student, Family and Community Support

Our school social worker plays a critical role in supporting our students, their families and our community partners through the following services:

Participate in special education and 504 evaluation teams, including preparing social or developmental history for a child with a disability and delivering counseling as a related service identified in Individual Education Plans (IEPs).
Provide crisis interventions, including depression/suicide screening and interventions, abuse and neglect reporting, and alcohol and substance abuse screening and interventions.
Provide individual and group counseling to help children develop appropriate social emotional skills, understand and accept self and others, learn conflict resolution and anger management skills cope with stress, and address mental health or behavioral issues.
Collaborate with classroom teachers to provide the school counseling curriculum to our students through direct instruction, team-teaching or providing lesson plans for learning activities or units in classrooms aimed at social/emotional development.
Provide advocacy and linkage to community-based services and resources to meet basic needs, meet medical or mental health needs, or access programs for children with special needs.
Advocate for equitable student access to school and community-based services and instructions to address issues such as teen pregnancy and parenting, medical or mental health issues, chronic absenteeism, substances abuse, etc.