Knowledge and Perception of School Social Work Services Among Parents Teachers Association (PTA) and its Implication to Community and Sustainable Development in South-east Nigeria

Social work service in the school setting is one of the facilitating factors to improved educational system especially as obtainable in the developed nations. However, in the developing nations such as Nigeria and Southeast Nigeria in particular, social work services appear to be unrecognised or rather at developing stage especially in the public institutions, where the services of the social workers are unfamiliar to the socio-cultural outward appearance of the population. As such, the present study focused on the knowledge and perception of school social work services among the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) of some selected primary and secondary schools in Nsukka/Enugu areas. The study was guided by Diffusion Innovation theory, while the study applied survey design involving 240 members of PTA from 24 schools; the data collection instrument for the study was questionnaire designed in nominal and ordinal scales. The collected data were analysed using descriptive statistics, t-test and linear model. According to the findings there is no significant difference in the perception of school social work services among the teachers (M = 3.1818, SD =.57715) and the parents (M = 3.1111, SD =.31573); [t(209) = 1.204, p =.23]; there is no significant difference in the knowledge of school social work services among the teachers (M = 2.4545, SD =.89412) and the parents (M = 2.3333, SD =.82030); [t(238) = 1.08, p =.28] while, perception of school social work services can be predicted by socio-demographic variables and knowledge about social work services.