Vicki Hart just started as a Wiscasset School Department employee this school year. But it’s her third year in the town’s schools. The Durham-raised, Topsham woman started at Wiscasset Primary and Wiscasset Middle schools in October 2013, when she worked for Providence Human Services of Brunswick.

As an integrated clinical service clinician, Hart supported a caseload of students in school and in their homes. On Oct. 1, she joined the school department as a social worker.

The familiarity her prior job gave her with Wiscasset’s staff and students has helped with the move to being a staff member. “All the kids know me already. I only had a select amount of kids who had services through Providence, so I did not typically engage with the other students, for boundary reasons,” Hart said. “But I was friendly with them, I (would) talk to them if they talked to me ... so it’s helped.

“And I have a really great working relationship with the staff, so it made the transition easy ... I find that this community is really great at wanting to help kids find better coping skills and have a trusted adult they can talk to,” she added.

Hart can now interact more with all students; and her work day ends earlier, without the home visits two days a week.

“Now my day is over when the school day is over.”

The half-hour Topsham-Wiscasset commute is fine, she said. Growing up in a small town, it took a half-hour to get anywhere. “So for me a half-hour is close.”

Working in a day-treatment facility, while finishing her bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Southern Maine, helped lead her into social work. “I really liked to help with positively reinforcing preferred behaviors, so ... I kind of found my niche while I was doing that.”

Hart has a master of science degree in mental health counseling from the University of Massachusetts.

Her biggest adjustment in the new job is working without the home-based piece. “I’ve done (that) for so many years. For home-based stuff, I was, for example, helping parents make an after-school schedule, or if a strategy was working here at school, I would help bring that strategy home.

“And sometimes (home-based work) helps us better understand the emotional state here (at school) ... Sometimes they have a lot of anxiety and they just want to feel connected with someone here. So I’m trying to train my brain to do a little more of that.”

In another change, being on staff lets her be of more help to other staff than when she was with an outside agency. “Everybody had been great about knowing my parameters, not asking me to do recess duty, because I couldn’t. Now, they’ll say, ‘Can you ...,’ And I’ll be, ‘Yeah, I’m school property now.’”