Many health experts are cautious about laying blame when tragedies occur. Seth Kleinman, a school social worker in Danvers, Mass., and an adjunct professor at Simmons University, says he doesn’t have enough information to know if the social worker did anything wrong by not contacting the family. He said she should have done an assessment to determine if Jacob was in danger.
“It’s really easy in retrospect, after something terrible like this happens, to assess that she did not perform her duties effectively,” he said.
But most health specialists agree that school personnel, in contact with students for a large part of the day, can be a key resource in providing help.
