The School Social Work Association of America is asking you to call or email your U.S. senators and representatives and urge them to co-sponsor proposed legislation, “Increasing Access to Mental Health in School Act.” Senate and House bills were introduced in May.
According to SSWAA, “The legislation is focused on increasing the number of school mental health professionals – school social workers, school psychologists, and school counselors – in urban and rural low-income school districts. Competitive grants would be available to higher education institutions that partner with these districts to place their graduate students in schools as interns, hire them after graduation, and provide loan forgiveness, as well as a number of other uses of funds such as recruiting, hiring, and retaining culturally or linguistically underrepresented individuals and hiring faculty to increase capacity in training programs.”
SSWAA has provided detailed instructions and a sample script to make it easier to call or email. Download the document (PDF).
For those in Hattiesburg area, here is contact information for our two senators and representative:
If you’re unsure of your representative, use this site to look up by zip code.
The Southern Miss School of Social Work 