Evaluation of the perceived social support of secondary school students in solving their social problems from the perspective of school social service: The case of Adıyaman province

Schools are very important educational institutions in the sense that they are able to take place in the society as qualified human power in all aspects of development, training of individuals from early periods and they play an important role in the process of their socialization. In different life situations, students from different socioeconomic backgrounds may encounter various problems that adversely affect school achievement, school attendance, and friendship. In addressing these issues, as well as the responsibilities of family and treatment institutions, educational institutions also have important roles in finding and providing guidance, as well as in ensuring and maintaining the well-being of the student. For this reason, school social service plays an important role in the problem solving and problem solving and collective welfare by supporting the development areas by cooperating with the parents' families in the school settings. In order to obtain fruitful results from the practices, the roles of the school social worker, their duties and what the school social service is must be defined correctly. In light of this information, the aim of this study is to determine what problems school social service will solve by establishing the school social service that can contribute to the educational problems faced by the students in the school settings and to solve the problems and prevent them from contributing to the education team and to identify the necessities of school social service. In order to maintain their academic success, children may sometimes face many difficulties such as bullying, poverty, neglect, anxiety about the future, economic problems, abuse and substance abuse. When children encounter these social problems that they have difficulty in solving and cannot find the necessary support or someone who can provide a solution, they may experience academic failure due to the consequences of these problems, may distance themselves from their social environment, become introverted, experience emotional disconnection and sometimes these problems may even lead to expulsion from school. Students who have problems at school first try to get support from their close circle, friends or families in solving these problems. In cases where these are not sufficient, they can get help from school counselors or psychologists. The focus of our study is the necessity and importance of school social services for students who encounter social problems when all these family, friend or counseling services are not sufficient. In this study, the social problems of middle school students studying in Adıyaman province, which was selected as the study area, were determined, the support units they applied to solve their problems and the necessity and importance of school social services in solving the problems were discussed. In this context, three surveys were conducted with 935 middle school students studying in various state and private schools in Adıyaman province, one of which was demographic and the other two were social problem solving inventory and perceived social support surveys. In our study, data were collected using the survey method and analyzed with the SPSS 23.0 program in order to find the social problem solving skills and social support perceptions of middle school students and the factors affecting them and to determine the degree and direction of the relationship between them and socio-demographic variables. When our results were evaluated in terms of gender, it was concluded that both male and female students were not sufficient in solving their social problems or had moderate social problem solving skills. In addition, it was observed that males first sought social support in their friends and other people when faced with social problems, while female students sought family support. When the results were examined according to age, class and school type, it was seen that younger or lower-class students had better results in coping with social problems, while students had difficulty in coping with social problems due to the diversification of their problems as they got older. Similar results were observed in both public and private schools. The variable that created a difference was observed in our study in the status of parent education. It was observed that students with higher levels of education had better results than students with lower levels of parent education in both solving social problems and receiving support in the face of problems. As a result of the analyses, significant differences were found between the social problem solving inventory and perceived social support scale and some of the demographic variables, and the results were statistically interpreted and reconciled with the social work literature.