District and Rowan University Enter Social Emotional Learning Tele-Counseling Clinic Partnership
The Washington Township Public Schools will be the first area school district to receive counseling services through a new partnership with the Rowan University Social Emotional Learning Tele-Counseling Clinic (RUSEL-TC). The Clinic is designed to offer no/low cost individual and group psychoeducation, counseling and consultation services to promote social-emotional competencies for students, teachers and parents from an antiracist lens via an online tele-conferencing platform.
One of several school counseling initiatives between Rowan and WTPS - led by Dr. Kara Ieva, College of Education associate professor in Rowan’s Counseling in Educational Settings, and WTPS Director of District School Counseling Jennifer Grimaldi - RUSEL-TV will launch February 1, 2021. The program will give District students and parents access to Social Emotional Learning (SEL) sessions with Master’s-level college students. These sessions will provide a preventative and proactive approach to mental health concerns beyond the scheduled school day. The program also will give District teachers consultative access to the graduate students to assist with the implementation of SEL as part of their teaching methods. Dr. Ieva will provide live clinical supervision, as will Rowan program faculty who are certified school counselors and/or licensed professional counselors in New Jersey.
“We are pleased to partner with Rowan University for the benefit of our school community,” Grimaldi said. “The challenges that teachers, students and families have encountered throughout this ongoing pandemic bring further focus on the need for the importance of social emotional learning. The launch of this clinic will help us in support of our goal of building better people who develop healthy identities, manage emotions, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and achieve personal and collective goals.”
The process is organized to work in the following capacity:
- Referrals - WTPS school counselors may use the Rowan parent informed consent form or parents may use the Rowan link to self-refer. Parents, or participating adult parties, will give their consent, which allows Rowan to provide initial intake interviews with all stakeholders from both the school and community.
- Scheduled Sessions –Rowan University’s Counseling in Educational Settings graduate students will conduct individual and group sessions during convenient evening hours to address student and/or parent needs with oversight from clinic faculty. Additionally, teachers can request private SEL classroom consultation.
- Session Follow-Up- With the parent informed consent form, the clinic is allowed to follow up with TPS stakeholders to review progress periodically. WTPS will have articulation about progress information and can specifically offer school counselors coaching to utilize information for further programming according to Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports (MTSS).
- Session Evaluations– The clinic faculty, in conjunction with WTPS school counselors, will conduct semester evaluations on PK-12 student progress, school counselor progress and overall clinic functioning. The clinic also will enhance the professional school counselor’s role with MTSS by using student/parent data.