News

BEING a TEENAGER is hard. They face pressures to fit in, do well, stay clean, and hardest of all, grow up. It's nice to have someone to talk to.

Teens in five Portland high schools now have that someone: a Portland State master's degree student in social work. "Because there are limited mental health services in our schools, the PSU students are filling a real need," says Jason Breaker with Portland Public Schools.

The students are counseling teenagers at Benson, Franklin, Lincoln, Marshall, and Meek ProTech (formerly Vocational Village) high schools. Breaker hopes to expand the program to 10 schools next year with the help of Monica Parmley MSW '04, who was recently hired to run the new program. Research shows that students who get referred to on-site counseling are far more likely to actually receive it than if they are referred out, said Breaker.

For Parmley, the Portland Public Schools position was "the job I'd been waiting for."

Many PSU students want to do school social work when they graduate, says Ellen Masterson, director of field placement for the School of Social Work. "We're expanding our curriculum so that MSWs will be able to meet licensure standards to work in schools," she says.

"I think it's a tremendous partnership," says Parmley. "My hope is that high school students whose mental health needs were going unmet will be helped because of this program."