Archive for December 2024

The sector is though in desperate need of more money as demand for its service balloons. Spending on children’s social care in England is expected to increase by £8.4 billion by 2030. The Independent Review of Children’s social care stated the sector needed a cash injection of £2.5billion. In the budget in November, the Treasury promised £250 million.

I fought for a colleague’s tenure. Then I started looking deeper.

Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni called the new surrogacy ban “common sense” and celebrated it as protecting women and children from “commodification”. Others see the ban as the opposite of protecting women and children. Above: Italian senators cheer after voting through the ban.

The Social Welfare Department has further expanded the day respite service network for elderly people to relieve the pressure on their carers.

This 2025 theme builds upon the previous recent World Social Work Day themes of Ubuntu and Buen Vivir by recognising the crucial interdependence of peoples and expands on these bodies of knowledge by focusing on intergenerational caregiving. The theme highlights that care is everyone’s responsibility and not just the domain of ‘women’s work’ as some societies promote.

Research shows that individual acts of kindness and connection can have a real impact on global change when these acts are collective. This is true at multiple levels: between individuals, between people and institutions, and between cultures. This relational micro-activism is a powerful force for change – and serves as an antidote to hopelessness because unlike global-scale issues, these small acts are within individuals’ control.

“If a patient chooses to make a request for medical assistance in dying, the patient must do so voluntarily and free from any external pressure. Medical assistance in dying must not be promoted or advocated under any circumstances,” says NWT Health Minister Lesa Semmler.

We’ve long been warned about the risks of binge drinking, usually defined as having four or five drinks in a two-hour span. And now researchers are increasingly focused on a more dangerous pattern of alcohol use that they call high-intensity drinking: consuming eight or more drinks in a row for women and 10 or more drinks in a row for men.