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Keywords

School Social Work, homeless youth, intervention research, advocate, practice informed research

Abstract

School social workers are to be leaders in interdisciplinary collaboration, developing programs and interventions that are evidence-based and data driven. The need for intervention in school settings combined with social work values, provides a prime opportunity to lead through intervention development. The intervention development process is a six-phase process including: problem analysis and project planning, information gathering and synthesis, design, early development and pilot testing, evaluation and advanced development, and dissemination. This process is used to describe the development of the Champions for Teens, a homeless student advocate program, as an encouragement for other school social workers to do design, implement, and disseminate intervention research.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Author Biography

Dr. Christina Helfrick her doctorate in social worker at Millersville University, studying intervention research with the goal of building social capital for homeless youth in school systems. She earned her master’s degree in social work from Shippensburg University and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Penn State University.

Dr. Helfrick spent nearly a decade in practice as a school social worker. Her work experience spans mental health, child welfare, and immigrant serving systems. Currently she is an assistant professor in the Master’s in Social Work Program at Lancaster Bible College. Christina also served as the president for the Pennsylvania Association of School Social workers from 2021-2023.

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