In accordance with the corresponding legal regulations, professional associates in the school perform professional development and other professional tasks in accordance with the requirements of the profession and other tasks arising from pedagogical work. In the Republic of Croatia, professional associates of schools who protect and promote children's rights in their daily work are mostly psychologists and pedagogues, while the role of social workers in this area is not recognized. Social workers, in whatever type of activity they do, proceed from human rights and their protection. The lack of social workers in schools in the Republic of Croatia is the problem that forms the starting point for writing this paper. Namely, social workers were legally and in practice included as professional associates of the school, but today this is no longer the case. The paper analyzes the legal regulations that led to such a situation, but also refers to the issue of acceptance of the profession of social work in general, and especially within the boundaries of the professions of helping professions. There are examples of good social work practice in schools, and one such example in Slovenia will be discussed in this paper. Available literature, research on this topic and analysis of the same show that the role of social workers, in addition to existing professional associates, should still be recognized as important in the schools of the Republic of Croatia. There is a wide range of effective actions that the professional associate of the school, the school social worker, can contribute to the school as a whole, to each individual student, his family, teachers, experts and other non-teaching staff, and ultimately to the betterment of the community. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to show and argue the benefits of including social workers as professional associates in schools and to stimulate a wider discussion on this topic, in practice and theory.