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The great boycotts of history did not succeed because millions of people suddenly became heroic activists. They succeeded because buying a different brand of coffee, or choosing a different beer, was something anyone could do on a Tuesday afternoon. The small act, repeated at scale, becomes a political earthquake. Go to quitgpt.org. Cancel your subscription. Using the free version? Delete the app, because your conversations still feed the machine. Then try an alternative, and tell at least one person why.

The chancellor’s reversal is a victory for all who care about higher education in North Carolina and beyond. “This policy would’ve created a Big Brother atmosphere in the classroom that would stifle the free exchange of ideas, chill student discussion, and suppress the requisite willingness to ask questions and take intellectual risks,” said AAUP President Todd Wolfson. “Unethical surveillance policies have no place in higher education.” (emphasis added)

Social work researchers Drs. Holly Matto and Emily Ihara, are teaming up with partners… to develop an AI-enabled virtual reality training for Crisis Response Teams to manage substance use crises. With support from a Virginia Opioid Abatement Authority grant, they will work with George Mason University’s College of Public Health and its Lab for Immersive Technologies and Simulation.

Under the guise of promoting “intellectual diversity,” the report says well-established right-wing groups, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Defending Education, the Goldwater Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, and Speech First, have pushed to abolish campus diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and eliminate coursework championing these values. They’ve also crafted model legislation that can be introduced in state legislatures throughout the country to limit faculty input into decision-making, redesign coursework mandates, and restrict research funding.

“We see that a higher tip credit allows businesses to reduce prices — because they rely more on tips to finance labor,” says Dr. Snitkovsky. “Consequently, they can increase supply and serve more customers. This suggests an element of economic efficiency, but the efficiency in this case comes at the expense of the individual server’s earnings. So essentially, tip credit is a mechanism allowing employers to cut into tips that ostensibly belong to servers, using them to pay wages.”

Mr. Parlatore is one of Denmark’s leading mental health advocates. Ms. Petersen has shared her story in nursing, occupational therapy, social work and medical schools.

Although the idea of the common good in higher education has been used by international organisations, the scholarly community and national governments, several questions remain unanswered: To what extent can the idea of the common good enhance or strengthen existing notions of public and private goods? How is the common good constructed and measured? What are the policy implications of using the idea of the common good in higher education systems?

I have learned that this is not a failure of values but a failure of a system that steadily reallocates judgment away from people and into process—until no one feels authorized to intervene, even when harm is plainly unfolding. We are at an inflection point where we must ensure that judgment and decision-making power lie where they belong: not in arbitrary systems but in the hands of the people—because systems fail arbitrarily, and at times, by design.

Animal-assisted psychotherapy is a form of mental and behavioral health treatment that uses horses and other animals to help adults, children and families to heal from trauma, to manage autism or to overcome anxiety, depression, grief or other emotional problems. The therapy can help anyone but has been particularly effective in aiding Native Americans, who have a deep historical connection to horses as both working animals and companions. Above: A horse stands by as children gather during a group therapy session at Red Horse Healing in Rapid Valley, S.D.

As millions turn to ChatGPT and other AI chatbots for therapy-style advice, new research from Brown University raises a serious red flag: even when instructed to act like trained therapists, these systems routinely break core ethical standards of mental health care. In side-by-side evaluations with peer counselors and licensed psychologists, researchers uncovered 15 distinct ethical risks — from mishandling crisis situations and reinforcing harmful beliefs to showing biased responses and offering “deceptive empathy” that mimics care without real understanding.

The project was led by Dr. Tracey McElwee (above), Associate Professor and gerontology program coordinator at UA Little Rock. It was conducted as part of a graduate social work research course in collaboration with the city’s Department of Housing and Neighborhood Programs.

The center maintains seven to 10 training sites spread from rural Meadville, the seat of Crawford County, to bustling Philadelphia. Each location ensures that no social worker has to drive too far for professional development. In addition, a team of practice improvement specialists — about 14 in all — travels directly into counties to help local agencies strengthen systems, redesign structures or recruit more foster families.

“The need for social workers is expected to grow over the next few years,” said NC Health and Human Services Secretary Dev Sangvai. “Meeting this demand is one of our top priorities, and this exciting and innovative partnership will examine these challenges and help us create a system of care that makes services available when and where they are needed.”

“I truly do not know what this budget is defending Nova Scotia against, and it certainly is not a long-term plan,” said Christine Saulnier, Director at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Nova Scotia (above). “If anything, it is short-sighted, with a view to do the same thing that hasn’t helped most people, except the few at the top, for the last 40 years.”

Almost 20% fewer newly qualified practitioners started assessed and supported year in employment programmes in 2024-25 than 2023-24, with numbers at their lowest level in at least a decade

Psychiatry has been crying out for new treatments for psychotic conditions like schizophrenia that promise broader benefits and fewer side-effects. However, progress has been blighted by the complexity of the brain and a lack of clear understanding of the causes of schizophrenia. The task has been so difficult that major pharmaceutical companies have largely abandoned mental health for other more tractable and lucrative areas of medicine. The situation has been extremely frustrating for patients, their families and clinicians.

Should a dad be deported for leaving his toddlers alone at home for a half hour 15 years ago?

Dental procedures have often been a first point of opioid exposure, particularly after extractions or surgery, and that reality shapes public perception. If dental visits can serve as entry points to exposure, they should also serve as structured entry points for prevention, screening, education, and referral.

Dr. Kyle Ganson, an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Toronto whose research areas include muscle dysmorphia among boys and young men, said he’s currently analyzing interviews conducted with looksmaxxers…. He said there’s an undercurrent, especially among young men, of feeling like they’re being left behind in a changing world where it appears their economic and romantic prospects are diminished compared to previous generations.

The question Mayer, Oxfeld and Palmer put forth asks whether each town should call upon the Vermont Legislature to take up and vote on a bill that proposes a multi-phased implementation of universal primary care in Vermont…. The bill in question, H.433, outlines a plan for a publicly financed health care program, Green Mountain Care. The program would begin by offering all Vermonters universal primary care and then phase in other services, like dental, vision and maternal health care over a 10-year timeline.

The shift towards algorithmic decision-making, as Guardian Australia revealed in February, can be seen in the new Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT)… The IAT is a rules-based algorithm that sorts aged care applicants into one of eight funding levels, determining both the amount of home care they receive and where they are placed in the queue for services. The tool was intended to enable a faster, fairer and more consistent process for determining eligibility for subsidised aged care. It works like a computerised questionnaire, using scored questions and rules to place applicants into categories of need. The assessments are conducted face to face, but the assessor’s job is mostly limited to feeding information into the algorithm.

The campaign for a tax on billionaire wealth is heating up. An early test will be the California ballot initiative for a one-time tax of 5 percent on California residents with assets in excess of a billion dollars. If proponents can collect the requisite 875,000 signatures, the measure will be on the November ballot. Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders was in L.A. to help kick off the campaign.

Across the country, many school social workers are serving far beyond the recommended 1:250 student-to-school social worker ratio. Many face role confusion, underutilization, and inequitable compensation, even as student mental health needs increase.

NASW is deeply concerned by the path the Trump Administration’s deportation policy has taken – on many fronts – since its inception in January 2025. We are appalled by the dangerously aggressive disregard for due process by ICE agents. However, we are equally shocked by the emerging human rights and child welfare crisis in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) expansion of immigrant detention facilities — driven primarily by its plan to apprehend and deport as many as a million immigrants in a year.

From the low-quality output of paper mills to increasingly convincing content generated by artificial intelligence, peer reviewers are being inundated with questionable research manuscripts.

Hannah Spencer, a thirty-four-year-old who left school at sixteen to become a plumber, took more than 40 percent of the vote, winning 4,000 more votes than the next-place finisher, right-wing gadfly Matt Goodwin of the pseudo-populist party Reform UK. The Labour Party’s third place was, frankly, embarrassing…. It was economic inequality that spurred her to run for office, and by 2023, the party that appeared to actually care about that issue was the Greens…. It was economic inequality that spurred Hannah to run for office, and by 2023, the party that appeared to actually care about that issue was the Greens.

Alice Moxley, CEO of Multibank Scotland, said: “The Multibank concept sources surplus goods at scale from business partners. Through a robust referral system with our network of family charity partners these are redistributed, free at the point of delivery, to people who need them and are struggling to make ends meet”

The Confidential Recipient Office – which examines concerns about Health Service Executive-run services – should remain independent, according to Safeguarding Ireland…. It was founded in 2014 as a result of the Áras Attracta abuse scandal exposed by RTÉ…. The HSE has confirmed that the CEO has delegated the line management and support role of the office to the Chief Social Worker.

Hongkongers pay tribute to the victims who died in the fatal fire in Tai Po Wang Fuk Court.

Only around one-fifth of e-waste is managed in an environmentally sound way, according to 2022 data. This means that out of a possible $91 billion that could have been reclaimed from the raw materials used (iron, copper and gold, among others), illegal traffickers swiped $28 billion, making it a major obstacle to economic sustainability and sustainable development.

Understanding how these groups are recruiting should also inform how elected officials, police and others combat hate said Dr. Ameil Joseph (above) who is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at McMaster University.

We should not come at the truth sideways, with mealy-mouthed euphemisms, but face it head-on, even when that truth is ugly and difficult to hear. Sometimes it’s important to call a penis a penis—and rape, rape. Julia Scheeres on the American Right’s unslakable desire to censor things.

Rep. Noelle Kahaian’s bill focuses on their parents and caregivers. The first-term Republican frames her newly introduced legislation as providing “protections for children who adopt an identity that differs from their sex.’’ It would establish that parents, foster parents and kinship caregivers have the right to raise their children in accordance with their biological sex — even if the child identifies differently. The proposed measure specifically safeguards caregivers’ “religious or sincerely held beliefs.”

“Hallucination” is a popular if controversial term often used to describe chatbots’ tendency to make errors, but University of Exeter philosopher Lucy Osler says that instead, we actually “hallucinate with them.” She recently laid out why this distinction matters in a paper published in the journal Philosophy & Technology.

If I spend even 10 minutes on an app such as Instagram, I will close it, feeling disheartened and unhappy about being a girl. When nearly every comments section on a video of a girl my age is filled with disgusting and objectifying comments about her body from boys, it causes me to feel deeply uncomfortable in my own body, and compare myself to her; especially if she is beautiful and still being deemed unattractive. Endless emphasis on beauty as worth and all kinds of videos criticising specific features, some of which I possess, have made me start to loathe my own face, as difficult as that is to admit. But the worst thing is knowing how much hate there is from men and boys for all women and girls, including me.

Alec Stratford, the Executive Director of the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers, said it is “definitely a relief to see this crucial office come to life.”

A record high number of people sleeping on England’s streets has been branded “devastating” as new data also showed record levels of homelessness among children. There were 4,793 people estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night in autumn last year, according to the Government’s annual snapshot of the situation across the country.

Audit Scotland has produced a report saying that mounting financial pressures are forcing tough decisions on the country’s Integrated Joint Boards (IJBs), which are leading to devastating cuts. These affect crucial services and third sector organisations.

At a time when Albertans are facing rising costs of living, new research shows that failing to prevent male perpetration of domestic violence comes with a steep public price tag — and that investing earlier can save both money and lives…. New analysis from UCalgary researchers shows that investing in prevention could save taxpayers more than $93 million.

A five-day burst of brain stimulation could offer depression relief that once took six weeks.

Practitioners saw meaningful benefits from using the tools, including saving time on administrative tasks, improving relationship-based practice and enhancing work-life balance, said the report from AI and data research body the Ada Lovelace Institute. However, the study warned that there was a “great risk” of inaccurate information being entered into care records amid inconsistent safeguards on use of the tools, and a lack of consensus on when use was appropriate.

Nova Scotia College of Social Workers ‘disappointed’ by the Houston government’s decision

AI is a new layer on top of an old story of austerity, privatisation and a politics that treats survival as an individual problem to be solved with self-help content and good ‘scripts’

International NGO Greenpeace has criticised the 2026 Hong Kong budget for lacking “people-centred climate initiatives,” as the city battles extreme weather. Meanwhile, the Society for Community Organisation (SoCO) has urged more support for low-income families. Above: Hong Kong recorded the hottest day of the year on June 9, 2025, with temperatures reaching a maximum of 34.3 degrees Celsius.

There’s an important caveat that my colleagues and I have recently begun to explore in our research: Positive views of creative work often shift once people learn that AI was involved. Because generative AI can produce original content with minimal human input, its use raises questions about quality, authorship and authenticity. Especially for creative work closely tied to personal expression and intent, AI involvement can complicate how audiences interpret the final product. Organizational behavior researchers Anand Benegal, Lynne Vincent and I study how people establish, maintain and defend their reputations, particularly in creative fields.

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, whose diocese Notre Dame occupies, issued a statement urging the school’s leaders to rescind the appointment. Rhoades described Ostermann’s public support for legal abortion and her criticism of the modern pro-life movement as “outrageous” and “ludicrous,” saying her position “need not all be repeated here.” Her “disparaging and inflammatory remarks” about pro-life Catholics, he added, conflict with “a core principle of justice” central to Notre Dame’s mission.

The 2026 Social Work Resource Fair is a free event and is open to the public. More than 20 community organizations will be represented through individual booths, offering attendees the opportunity to connect directly with local agencies and nonprofit partners serving Fairfield County and the surrounding region.

Policy debates around public lands point to larger unresolved questions about the nature and function of the public trust. What should we do with this national resource at a moment of major transition? Above: Solar panels outside the proposed Chuckwalla National Monument in California

In a study testing stigma across nine diagnoses – measured by how much people wanted to keep their distance from someone with each condition – depression and anxiety drew the least stigma, while schizophrenia and personality disorder drew the most. Across diagnoses, fear was the most consistent driver of stigma.

Many people can recall moments when they have been mocked, judged or subtly excluded because of where they are from, how they speak or because they seem out of place in certain settings. These moments rarely look like overt discrimination. Instead, they might take the form of jokes, assumptions or signals that someone doesn’t belong. Above: Former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has spoken of the online attacks she has received because of her accent.