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A lot of my work consists of supervision—not in the sense of training and managing people or telling them what to do, but instead offering a reflective space for them to consider their thornier problems. This kind of supervision is regarded as essential in some other professions dealing in complexity, such as social work.

To understand what we mean by class, we need to return to Karl Marx writings. He identified class primarily as a social relationship between groups of people based on exploitation. So, it’s not about how you identify, it is about the objective relationship one group of people has with other groups of people in society or the power held over one group of people by another. Above: Striking rail workers rally outside Kings Cross in London during their first round of strikes

E says she has come a long way from the early days of her illness, but lingering symptoms of long COVID are still present. Chronic fatigue is what plagues her the most, she says.

Throughout most of human history, retirement had no meaning. Given the shorter life spans of earlier eras, most people worked until they no longer could or until they died. Those unable to work had few options other than to turn to family or charity. If one had no family, among the few options were alms houses and mental institutions. The only exceptions were the wealthy.

Overdoses took over 108,000 lives this year, more than any year on record. Overdose deaths affect all of us — whether we are Black, brown, or white, and whether we live in a big city or a small town. Every one of these deaths is a tragedy.

During an interview with The Guardian, Piven, now 90, warned, “I don’t think this fight over elemental democracy is over by any means. The United States was well on the road to becoming a fascist country, and it still can become a fascist country.” Above: Dr. Piven at Columbia University in 2012

Over one million Americans have died of drug overdoses since 1999, with around 110,000 deaths alone in the 12-month period ending in May 2022. Every single person that overdosed had parents. They were someone’s child at some point.

Bob “Buddy” Hackett, owner of Renaissance Firearms in Barrington, grew up hunting and fishing. He shot pistols and rifles competitively around the world. He served in the Marine Corps for a decade. Guns were always part of his life. Now in his mid-50s, Hackett holds a master’s degree in social work and counsels veterans struggling with suicidal thoughts.

The announcement came after the government in October extended the pay equity settlement to nearly 500 social workers following strong encouragement from unions. The push came after a pay equity settlement was reached with Oranga Tamariki social workers, prompting many personnel to transfer there because of higher wages.

Today in England and Wales, an estimated 300 women will be raped. About 170 of those cases will be reported to the police. But only three are likely to make it to a court of law. Above: Protesters occupy London’s Parliament Square following the murder of Sarah Everard, March 2021

The homeless camp set up under I-95 in Bridgeport, Connecticut

Ramsey County social workers, already embedded with three police agencies, will partner with St. Paul Fire and 911 dispatchers in the most significant evolution of the emergency call system since its inception half a century ago.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework provides an opportunity for universities to “collaborate across differences” and represents a new “common language” for social responsibility, according to speakers at the University Social Responsibility (USR) Summit

For years, the Israeli filmmaker Doron Abrahami understood that his parents, Yosef and Zilli Abrahami, planned to take their own lives together rather than advancing far into old age. In the wake of this revelation, his ‘[camera] lens tightened further into them’ as he tried to make sense of the pact that they had made despite both still being happy and having, it seemed, several years of life left.

K was told last month that he faced eviction, but the threat was withdrawn after an 11th-hour deal.

Wheatlands House in Galashiels, Scottish Borders Council’s (SBC) register home for children and young people, won the Scottish Social Services Award for Outstanding Residential Care Service for 2022.

Ng Wai-tung of the Society for Community Organisation, who works with the homeless in Sham Shui Po.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond (above) is a Canadian lawyer, judge and legislative advocate for children’s rights.

Though roughly the size of New Jersey, the San Luis Valley is home to fewer than fifty thousand people.

Registered social workers working in the community and NGO sector will likely receive an increase in their salary of around $20,000-30,000 per year.

The risk of suicide is six times higher for Travellers than the general population, with 82% of the community having been directly affected.

A team led by Dr Stephanie Holt, associate professor at the School of Social Work and Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin, distributed a survey to more than 1,300 members of the Irish Association of Social Workers. Those who responded were clear as to the rise of certain types of domestic abuse.

After witnessing the social media debate about whether to sell sanitary pads on trains, university student Wendy Kou made posters about fighting “period shame” and hung them around her campus.

“We hope our findings can help health and social work professionals improve targeted screening and outreach to identify and serve older adults most at risk for depression,” said Andie MacNeil.

Children’s Services Commissioner Margie Quin sought $156 million in new funding from the governor in budget hearings last week and described a scenario in which children in state custody are sleeping in offices and being sent to hospitals for months at a time, because the state has no place else to place them

The government’s audits uncovered about $12 million in net overpayments for the care of 18,090 patients sampled, though the actual losses to taxpayers are likely much higher. Medicare Advantage, a fast-growing alternative to original Medicare, is run primarily by major insurance companies.

DfE appoints second commissioner for Sefton after first concluded that removing services would be a distraction, but that significant practice and leadership problems remained

The world could still, theoretically, meet its goal of keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius, a level many scientists consider a dangerous threshold. Realistically, that’s unlikely to happen.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact on the workplace. Of the 1.8 million suffering a work-related illness, an estimated 585,000 reported it was caused or made worse by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Around a quarter of these workers were in human health and social work.

Around 70,000 university workers across Britain launched the first of three strikes over pay, working conditions and pensions on Thursday. The UCU union members are the latest group to take to the picket lines as the cost of living crisis deepens. They were out alongside Unison union members at 18 universities and Unite union members at five who are fighting over pay, and 115,000 Royal Mail workers.

“When your child needs this kind of help, and you go on a waiting list because your insurance can’t find you a placement, or the school district can’t find you a placement, it’s terrifying,” Poole said. “A lot of times, the emergency rooms can’t give them the care either, and so they just get released, and they get sent back to school, where teachers, and school psychologists, and school social workers have to try to keep them safe… The human toll is stunning on everyone involved. And then, God forbid, we lose a kid.”

Jacqueline is now raising her 7-year-old granddaughter; the child’s father, Shaun, died of a drug overdose this fall. There are thousands of similar “grandfamilies” in the U.S. She believes those families should have a voice in determining how the settlement money from cases against opioid manufacturers and distributors are spent.

After recommending PPE Medpro for £203m government contracts, the Tory peer spoke of how business was hard but ‘rewarding’

BASW and SWU provide an update on activities focused on helping people stay, survive and thrive in social work.

The education system has been riven by decades of marketisation and more recently ten years of stagnant funding. Whether it’s tuition fees, rankings and league tables, private finance initiatives, bloated over–paid senior leadership teams, academisation, incorporation – the market has been forced on us and we have all suffered as a consequence.

Rosemary Agnew, the Scottish public services ombudsman, who is tasked with ensuring that complaints against public bodies are dealt with fairly, echoed Fitzhenry’s concerns about public scrutiny of social care. “Put simply, we don’t think we would be able to challenge professional social work decisions in complaints,” she said. “This would be a very retrograde step.”

Caitlyn Capela, left, and Tina Marie James pose in front of police headquarters, in Milford, Conn. Capela and James are both social workers hired by the department this year.

Dr. Karen Stipp, an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Illinois State University, said people may think having an animal in the same room as a child could be distracting, but it actually can help with the child’s focus.

Speaking ahead of the international day for eliminating violence against women, Queensland MP Karen Andrews told parliament the issue was a blight on society that had “transcended time, culture and location”.

A young mother rents a house near Milwaukee. The previous tenant tells her, “Baby, they shouldn’t have let you move in.” Above: 7750 West Hicks Street, West Allis, Wisconsin

After Johnson was sacked by Lancashire County Council, the local authority referred the matter to Social Care England, a body whose “primary objective is to protect the public”. While they said no-one was harmed through the dishonesty, they also pointed to the wider implications.

Educators at Dalhousie University who are part of Nova Scotia’s largest university union, CUPE 3912, representing teaching assistants, sessional instructors and markers, withdrew their labour on Oct. 19, after multiple rounds of negotiations failed.

The current draft of the bill would provide the government with arbitrary powers to terminate language or cultural programmes at universities if they were deemed to threaten freedom of speech and academic freedom.

You probably have a sense that the world has sped up—that more change is happening, and that it’s happening faster than ever before. You’re right: the pace of change has accelerated. For hundreds of thousands of years, the lives of parents and children were largely similar. Now, our lives change from year to year, decade to decade.

The wood-fired oven at the WSU Bread Lab is a converted WWII anti-submarine net buoy that weighs more than 800 pounds.

Of the 8,176 children in the care of the Department of Children and Families, 5,083, or 62%, are classified as in “continuous placement,” according to March 2022 Department of Children and Families [DCF] data obtained by 25 Investigates.

A judge has ruled the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services discriminated against two social worker trainees by subjecting them to unlawful preemployment psychological evaluations and withdrawing internships and job offers based on assumptions about their mental health.

Why are the childfree by choice such a threat?

Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphrey confirmed that 81,000 more people will become eligible for the Fuel Allowance payment in January as changes are made