News (1,669 posts)

Highlights include Adult Social Work’s improvements to the delayed discharge process which has resulted in a reduction of 50 percent, thereby enabling a greater number of people to move from hospital to a more suitable setting in a timely way. What Matters Hubs drop-in sessions and appointments successfully provided advice, information and support to over 2,500 people while an expansion of the Shared Lives Programme which enabled more adults to be matched with approved carers.

You may never have seen it yourself, but there’s a dark part of the internet, lurking closer than you think. It’s an online world where men reign supreme. They are fit and powerful, rich and muscular. They welcome confused, angry men and boys, promising them wealth, status and success with women.

In 1963, a family surviving solely off a median married man’s wage would have an income that was 81 percent of the median family income. In 2024, such a family would have an income that is just 55 percent of the median family income.

The two suits challenge a policy change by the Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner (above) which mandates that only 30 percent of the agency’s Continuum of Care funding can be used for permanent housing, down from roughly 90 percent. The program provides money to local organizations and agencies to connect people experiencing homelessness to housing and resources. The policy change, which was first reported by POLITICO, would move most of the funds to temporary transitional housing assistance with some work or service requirements.

Mount Sinai Hospital in New York has disciplined three nurses who discussed their concerns about workplace safety with their coworkers and the media. The cause of the nurses’ concerns was an attempted shooting in the hospital’s emergency room last month.

The author, Kevin Zhu, recently finished a bachelor’s degree in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and now runs Algoverse, an AI research and mentoring company for high schoolers – many of whom are his co-authors on the papers. Zhu himself graduated from high school in 2018. Papers he has put out in the past two years cover subjects such as using AI to locate nomadic pastoralists in sub-Saharan Africa, to evaluate skin lesions and to translate Indonesian dialects. On his LinkedIn, he touts publishing “100+ top conference papers in the past year.”

The acclaimed Irish documentary Born That Way — winner of Best Irish Documentary at the Dublin Film Critics Circle Awards (DIFF 2025) — will screen at McDonagh Museum, Cloughjordan on 14 December. The deeply moving film follows the final year in the life of Patrick Lydon, whose pioneering work in inclusion, community living, and social work has shaped Irish life for more than five decades.

The scale of the incident involving female interns working at the Grand National Assembly restaurant being sexually abused by Grand National Assembly employees is growing…. According to the young woman, who stated that she began her internship at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on 9 September 2025, the chef working at the Assembly Restaurant verbally and physically harassed her.

Anyone passing Krauss Hall in October may have noticed an uncommon campus sight: kūpuna (older adults), mākua (adults) and ōpio (youth) sharing pizza and meaningful conversation. The gathering marked the launch of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoaʻs new Age-Friendly University Initiative, a long-term effort led by the Center on Aging (COA) in the Thompson School of Social Work and Public Health, with campus partners including the UH Retirees ʻOhana and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

In the U.S., approximately 2 in 10 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 20 drink alcohol. About 1 in 10 smoke cigarettes. For teens living in neighborhoods with high levels of disadvantage and social disorganization, the odds are 35% to 72% higher. Disadvantaged neighborhoods generally have higher levels of economic hardship, poorer educational opportunities and limited resources. Those factors weaken the social fabric of a community.

Boston College School of Social Work Associate Professor María Fernanda Piñeros-Leaño, whose research focuses on health and mental health inequities among Latin American migrant and immigrant families, has been awarded the inaugural Anita Wong and Wilson Lai Family Fellowship.

The FBI is drawing up an enemies list that could encompass well over half the US public: Do you “advance… opposition to law and immigration enforcement”? Do you have “extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders”? Show an “adherence to radical gender ideology,” meaning you think trans people exist? Do you exhibit (what the administration would interpret as) “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism” or “anti-Christianity”? Do you display “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion and morality”?

French health officials are working to trace all the contacts of two men who contracted Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), a potentially deadly disease that typically only occurs in the Middle East…. The men, both of whom are in their 70s, are in a stable condition. About four in every 10 people who have a MERS infection die of the illness, and there is no cure or vaccine.

President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is studying Australia’s social media restrictions.

Australia recorded in 2024–25 the largest number of Indigenous deaths in custody since 1979–80, when monitoring began under the National Deaths in Custody Program. In the 2024–25 year, 33 of the 113 deaths in custody were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people.

There is a joke I’ve always loved (jokes are a favorite subset of talking to each other). Two fishermen stare out over a lake. “Boy,” says one, “that sure is a lot of water.” After a pause, the other fisherman nods. “Yep, and that’s just the top of it.”

Regular polling from YouGov shows that more Americans than ever say their incomes aren’t stretching to meet their expenses, and nearly half of those who make less than $50,000 a year are worried about paying for basic necessities. Increasingly, they’re blaming rising prices not just on government spending—which voters usually think is the cause of their economic woes—but on large corporations trying to maximize profits, as well as Trump’s tariffs, which economists do believe are driving escalating costs right now.

Developed in collaboration with faculty and staff at Plymouth State University, the new offering allows students to earn an associate degree at LRCC, then transfer to a four-year school like PSU or the University of New Hampshire to complete a bachelor’s degree with the same focus.

After 40 years as a member of the National Association of Social Work and 10 years as the Executive Director of Kentucky’s chapter, Brenda Rosen (above) was let go in November in a process that is drawing sharp criticism from social workers throughout the state.

Higher education is, by nature, very slow to change. So it is with embracing artificial intelligence. Yet, when they finally come, the changes will come in an avalanche.

Fewer than 60,000 people – 0.001% of the world’s population – control three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity, according to a report that argues global inequality has reached such extremes that urgent action has become essential. The authoritative World Inequality Report 2026, based on data compiled by 200 researchers, also found that the top 10% of income-earners earn more than the other 90% combined, while the poorest half captures less than 10% of total global earnings.

A Welsh vaccination policy unintentionally created near-perfect conditions to test whether the shingles vaccine lowers dementia risk—and the results were remarkably strong. The findings point to both preventive and potentially therapeutic effects, motivating calls for a large randomized trial.

“The people of Hong Kong understandably want answers and accountability, so that the hundreds of victims are properly compensated, and to avoid such a tragedy occurring again,” UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk (above) said in a statement.

The Chicago Police Department’s promotions system allows officers’ disciplinary records to be ignored. Despite years of reform efforts, nothing has changed.

Nayeli Hernandez was part of the flow, helping load up boxes into cars. She’s getting her social work degree at the University of Wyoming and was heading back to Jackson to see her family for Thanksgiving break…. She said the on-the-ground food distribution has direct connections with her classes in school. “Food security is a big protective factor, specifically in child abuse, but honestly in all issues,” she said. “General welfare for the community is really important for social work.”

A Virginia Tech study shows that ultra-processed foods may influence adolescents differently from slightly older young adults. Participants aged 18 to 21 ate more at a buffet and snacked even when not hungry after two weeks on an ultra-processed diet. Because eating without hunger predicts future weight gain, these findings hint at a heightened vulnerability during late adolescence.

Never heard of the Journal of International Relief or the International Humanitarian Digital Repository? That’s because they don’t exist. But that’s not stopping some of the world’s most popular artificial intelligence models from sending users looking for records such as these, according to a new International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) statement.

The story of Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital is the story of American health care.

Chief Secretary Eric Chan (above) spoke to journalists after voting on Sunday, responding to reports that social workers assigned by the government to help fire victims were also tasked with promoting turnout in the Legislative Council (LegCo) elections.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Academy has intensified its training programs, expanded its facilities, and widened the access for the upskilling of social welfare professionals and partner institutions nationwide…. The DSWD Academy operates in a department-managed learning facility in Taguig City, offering both basic and specialized courses designed for licensed social workers, local social welfare and development offices, municipal social welfare and development offices, community development workers, paraprofessionals, and social work auxiliaries.

Saint Louis University (SLU) has launched ServeTheLou scholarship, which includes $1.5 million in program support… “This exciting new opportunity is designed to invest in the next generation of social workers and criminal justice professionals — students who are passionate about serving and strengthening the St. Louis region,” said Noelle E. Fearn, Ph.D., Dean of the School of Social Work.

The litigation, which alleges that social media platforms have been purposefully cultivating addiction among adolescents, has been working its way through the courts since 2022. But the details laid out in this new court filing, and reported recently by Time, contain genuinely horrifying claims about Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. And they suggest that—in addition to the tort claims being pursued by the families, school districts, and state attorneys general behind this multidistrict litigation—the corporate executives responsible for these harms could and should be criminally prosecuted for child endangerment…. The brief also makes clear that Meta fully understood the addictive nature of its products, with plaintiffs citing a message by one user-experience researcher at the company that Instagram “is a drug” and, “We’re basically pushers.”

A unique vaccine rollout in Wales gave researchers an accidental natural experiment that revealed a striking reduction in dementia among seniors who received the shingles vaccine. The protective effect held steady across multiple analyses and was even stronger in women. Evidence also suggests benefits for people who already have dementia, hinting at a therapeutic effect

Social workers across the country are concerned, confused, and angry. How can the organization that claims to represent us, the steward of our Code of Ethics, so blatantly violate the values it taught generations of practitioners to defend?

IU School of Social Work lecturer Jessica Adams returned to graduate level class after a six-week suspension over a graphic she used illustrating different forms of white supremacy.

Increased funding from the City of Edmonton will allow iHuman Youth Society to provide 120 daytime shelter spaces for youth experiencing homelessness…. The city said about 5,000 people experience homelessness in Edmonton, including more than 1,000 youth.

Members of Dudley Council’s Social Care and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee heard a hard-hitting account from a member of the public speaking on behalf of families on the estate where he lives.

Aisling Golden was one of the first to detect a growing trend in Dublin of vulnerable young people being drawn into anti-immigrant and far-right violence. Since then, racist attitudes among some of these teens have solidified, driven by social media and prominent anti-immigrant campaigners in the local community, according to a group of youth workers who spoke to The Irish Times this week. Some young people become involved out of boredom, some out of a misguided sense of patriotism, and some because it gives them a sense of purpose, they said.

The attack highlights perennial concerns at San Francisco’s only safety-net hospital. The number of Sheriff’s Department staff posted at SF General has dropped from 45 in 2022 to 28, according to the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs Association. The change was made due to purported inequities(opens in new tab) in how force was used against the hospital’s patient population.

Measles deaths have dropped by 88 per cent since 2000 – yet an estimated 95,000 people, mostly children, still died from the virus last year, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Friday.

“Our deepest sympathies are with the individual’s family, loved ones, colleagues, and the entire hospital and DPH community as we mourn this devastating loss,” DPH officials said, in the statement. “Hundreds of people have come forward over the past several days to offer support, reflecting the profound impact our colleague had as a caregiver, friend, family member, and human being. Their dedication to serving others was evident in every aspect of their work, and they will be deeply missed.”

Liberal feminism is collapsing. Who’s really to blame?

Director Kim Stauffer prepares actors to be clients for Master of Social Work students at the University at Albany. The students practice counseling skills while the actors are trained to create obstacles, from a panic attack to disinterest.

A downtown Scranton church will start its workplace training program for formerly incarcerated people in January…. Goody and other Cypress board members say their organization will connect program members to a “community of support.” Alejandra Marroquin, a board member and social worker with the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, said St. Luke’s will create a kind of referral service. “Most of the individuals (formerly incarcerated people) sometimes have difficult backgrounds, so we want to be a support for them,” Marroquin said.

SASW welcomes the opportunity to respond to this consultation on NHS Delivery. We recognise the Scottish Government’s ambition to transform health and social care services through improved digital capabilities, workforce development, and streamlined national structures. However, we have significant concerns about the consultation’s approach to social care and social work.

John Lovatt (centre), Hartlepool Borough Council’s assistant director of adult social care, was presented with a Silver Lifetime Achievement Award at the Social Worker of the Year Awards.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly one in seven people across the globe lived with a mental illness in 2021, with anxiety disorders and depression occurring most frequently. These conditions often stem from a mix of influences, and genetics play a major part in shaping a person’s risk. Having a close family member with a mental illness remains one of the strongest known predictors. Until recently, research suggested that psychiatric disorders typically develop from the combined effects of many different genes. Cause?

A review into the case of missing schoolboy Kyran Durnin in the Republic of Ireland has found that what happened to him “could not have been anticipated from knowledge that was available” to Tusla, the state agency responsible for child welfare.