News (1,493 posts)

Opioid overdoses are the leading cause of accidental death in Pennsylvania, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 2010 to 2019, rates of opioid-related deaths in Pennsylvania almost quintupled, rising from 5 per 100,000 people to 23.7 per 100,000 people. In 2020, it rose to 42.4 per 100,000 people.

Hospital administrators and state regulators say a severe workforce shortage has stymied efforts to restore a majority of the 1,050 inpatient psychiatric beds removed across the state during the height of the pandemic in 2020. Above: Gov. Hochul visits a hospital

Respect instead of policing? That doesn’t sound like America.

Of the more than 100 safe consumption sites worldwide, most are in Canada, Australia and Europe. Only two are in the United States, both in New York, though several states and local jurisdictions have considered opening their own. But the sites are illegal at the federal level and many politicians apparently think safe sites somehow promote drug use.

Slough Children First, which is owned by Slough Borough Council, provides social care and support to children, young people and families in the Slough area. It had previously been inspected in 2019 at which time it also received a ‘requires improvement’ rating.

The true cost of Britain’s unregulated and profit-led housing market was exposed after a blaze killed a man in a tiny flat where 18 people were crammed…. The fire was the deadly consequence of a housing market where predatory landlords prey on the poorest and most vulnerable, and councils who mostly stand on the side of the bosses.

An expanded budget for the new suicide and mental health crisis line would support rapid-response teams and marketing efforts.

Before visiting with patients in their rooms, psychiatric nurse practitioner Ayesha Macon, on video screen, consults with Shaina Flesher (right), a certified nursing assistant at the Accura HealthCare nursing home in Knoxville, Iowa. The two discuss how residents of the nursing home have been faring and what medications they’ve been taking.

Social worker may have abused a student, principal is charged with not reporting it, and Boise school district hasn’t told parents

After college Flinkstrom joined the AmeriCorps Vista program, working in Salt Lake City with developmentally and intellectually disabled people. The experience inspired her to pursue a master’s degree in social work from Colorado State University, where, in the midst of her studies, she worked at a homeless resource center.

Huston Commons opened in 2017 as the third “Housing First” program in Portland. The model provides permanent housing to those who lack it without preconditions such as sobriety. It has 24-hour support services for people with mental health and substance use disorders.

Of course, the most important implications of a ‘closing’ of Chinese higher education will be for Chinese universities. It will be more difficult for the top institutions to achieve true ‘world-class’ status if their academic culture is infused with restrictions, problematic access to knowledge and constraints on the emergence of a truly free and innovative academic culture.

Jeremy Corbyn meeting with Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) campaigners. WASPI seeks to redress disparities in the state pension age for women born in the 1950s, who currently have to wait six years longer than their male peers

Stumbling upon some paintings she made 16 years ago while being treated for cancer, Viney Kirpal is reminded of the meditative power of art-making, and its ability to help us get through trauma.

The new department is seen as a move to strengthen control over non-public sectors and ensure social stability.

Samantha Dwornick (left) has enjoyed making friends with fellow students like Damon Creighton Jr. (middle left) and Kristen Prasiloski (far right) and building relationships with professors like Judith Wineman (middle right).

Many of these solutions CUPE agreed with, noting that more violence prevention training was needed, union education needed to be expanded and onsite social workers and elders were needed.

The Prison Policy Initiative looks at a fast-growing group in the incarceration system and the challenges they are more likely to face.

Jurors in the seventh-floor courtroom have heard detailed testimony of the inner workings of USC’s social work program along with efforts by former dean Marilyn Flynn to curry favor with Ridley-Thomas and maneuver around the university to accomplish her designs. It is a public corruption case built not on wiretaps but emails, largely from Flynn to subordinates or colleagues at the university and Ridley-Thomas himself. Above: Marilyn Flynn

According to Dr Katrin Kinzelbach, one of AFI’s two principal investigators, the “findings are alarming: From autocracies like China, and increasingly authoritarian countries like India, to fully-fledged democracies like Britain and the United States, we found measurable decreases in academic freedom. In the UK, for example, we found declines in ‘campus integrity’, the extent to which campuses are free from politically motivated surveillance, and academics’ freedom of expression on political issues”.

The 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women — the UN’s largest annual gathering on gender equality, the empowerment of all women and girls and their human rights—successfully closed its two-week long session (6 to 17 March) with the acknowledgment of the critical role of technology and innovation in achieving gender equality.

Ofsted says senior leaders ‘have considerably more to do before services and outcomes for children are consistently good’.

Per the suit, Bayada uses a system of “productivity points” to set its salaried employee pay scale. Salaried employees include registered nurses, physical therapists, and medical social workers among others. And at each salary grade, these employees are expected to accrue a certain weekly amount of points. Points correlate to tasks, with one point equal to an estimated 1.33 hours of work. If a Bayada employee fails to meet their productivity point quota, the difference between completed and expected work is subtracted from their banked paid time off, the plaintiffs claimed.

NASW Maine wishes to acknowledge the licensed social workers in Augusta who are tirelessly advocating on behalf of our state’s most vulnerable populations and on issues of health equity, behavioral health access, student-debt relief, workforce development and other issues of vital importance to our state. We also want to express our gratitude for those social workers across our state who are volunteering their time in other local elected roles, such as town councils and school boards, as well as those serving on different boards of directors at nonprofits all over Maine.

We we outline five state anti-tenure proposals. Some plans have progressed into legislation, but the details of others have yet to emerge.

The first precept of survivors’ justice is the desire for community acknowledgment that a wrong has been done. This makes intuitive sense. If secrecy and denial are the tyrant’s first line of defense, then public truth telling must be the first act of a survivor’s resistance, and recognizing the survivor’s claim to justice must be the moral community’s first act of solidarity.

Protesters demonstrate for Sámi rights in Oslo, Norway, March 3, 2023.

Ruth Allen (above), the BASW chief executive, said taking a job with the Home Office’s National Age Assessment Board (NAAB) was a “risk to professional objectivity and could compromise the judgment of social workers”, in the light of government rhetoric about adult asylum seekers exploiting the system by claiming to be children.

An emphasis on the individual can lead us to neglect communal approaches to treatment. Often overlooked are the ways in which social norms, cultural beliefs and communal attitudes contribute to mental illness. Ancient Chinese scholars understood this well.

A $1.1 million legacy gift from Dr. James McCullagh will provide financial support for students pursuing a social work major at the University of Northern Iowa. McCullagh taught with UNI’s department of social work for 40 years and retired in 2021. He died in April 2022 at age 85.

According to the Allegheny County jail’s legally mandated solitary confinement reports, excluding two days in January 2022, the jail was in lockdown, when incarcerated people often spend 23 hours per day in their cells. The months before, during, and after Thomas’s death, it was the same. Including January, the jail was on lockdown for eight months in 2022.

A likeness of Cesar E. Chavez during the Cesar E. Chavez Social Justice march on Thursday, March 16, 2023.

The participants presented the mechanism and results of a study on Youth and Social Work in the State of Qatar

In a familiar story, reflective of our recent regional inspections and independent Serious Further Offence reviews, work to reduce the risk those released from prison pose to others fell well short of expectations.

Let me just offer one other bit of context for the congressional canceling of those extra SNAP benefits. Late last year, as the pandemic was “ending” and Congress was planning to cut those benefits, it noticed another truly needy place to put our taxpayer dollars. In fact, Congress found that institution so desperately needy that the representatives of the people offered $45 billion more than it even requested for 2023. And yes, I’m thinking about the Pentagon (as well, of course, as the military-industrial-congressional complex it’s part of).

More than a year later, their daughter, now 2, remains in foster care. The Hackneys, who have developmental disabilities, are struggling to understand how taking their daughter to the hospital when she refused to eat could be seen as so neglectful that she’d need to be taken from her home. They wonder if an artificial intelligence tool that the Allegheny County Department of Human Services uses to predict which children could be at risk of harm singled them out because of their disabilities.

Lorenzo Montoya, 14, during a taped interrogation by the Denver Police Department in 2000. During the interrogation, Montoya falsely confessed to a murder and was later sentenced to life in prison. He was exonerated on DNA evidence after serving more than 13 years.

Those testifying in support of the measure, like Jerry Gearding of the conservative Campbell County group Moms for Liberty, said the bill is needed to shield children from the sexual content in books like “Gender Queer.” This group for liberty wants to deny the liberty of others?

“During the nineteenth century, anti-cross-dressing laws operated as flexible tools for policing a wide range of gender transgressions.” Above: Drag Queen Brigitte Bandit laughs with supporters during a story-time reading at the Cheer Up Charlies dive bar in Austin, Texas.

We see patients who feel demoralized by the implied and untrue notion that their depression is “incurable” after only trying medication but not lower-risk treatments like psychotherapy and other effective alternatives.

Gender segregation in sectors, occupations and roles still sees women persistently losing out.

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt MP delivered the UK Government’s Spring Budget to the House of Commons, outlining his plans for spending and taxation.

Los Angeles County Undersheriff April Tardy, the Sheriff’s Department’s second-highest-ranking official, said she has a tattoo on her ankle that signifies her dedication to a station she was assigned to early in her career. But several current department sources say the tattoo signifies membership in the V Boys, a deputy gang.

Today, around two-thirds of American addiction treatment programs for alcohol and other drug disorders, including over 90 percent of residential treatment centers surveyed, use the 12 steps originated by Alcoholics Anonymous, often telling patients that this is the only way to recover. These 12 steps — common to other “anonymous” groups, like Narcotics Anonymous — are based on Christian principles. A.A.’s founders were members of an early-20th-century revival movement known as the Oxford Group, and they adopted the steps from its doctrine.

If it wasn’t for the love Vicki Britton has for the children she serves every day, the school social worker would have left a long time ago.

Health insurance companies have rejected medical claims for as long as they’ve been around. But a STAT investigation found artificial intelligence is now driving their denials to new heights in Medicare Advantage, the taxpayer-funded alternative to traditional Medicare that covers more than 31 million people.

NYC Health + Hospitals plans to hire an outside organization to help its homeless patients find housing, a $14 million investment that officials said would improve health outcomes and slash costly emergency room visits.

The report from the University of Birmingham and rights-based organisation Changing Our Lives has been released in conjunction with an exhibition from the subversive street artist Foka Wolf titled Why are we stuck in hospital?

“Working in Tusla offers structured opportunities for both personal growth and career development. We have a range of roles available so if you’re considering a career change or a new challenge now is the time to apply.”

The Single Room Shared Facility Scheme will enable tenants to have their own room while sharing facilities such as the bathroom, kitchen, and other common spaces. The new scheme is a pilot project, and the 480 single rooms will be sited at the former Anderson Junior College hostel in Ang Mo Kio.

For nearly half a year, many people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have struggled to obtain their medication amid a nationwide shortage. The F.D.A. first announced the shortage in October, and Adderall is still in short supply. Among the patients who do manage to find Adderall, health care providers are left fielding their questions, though some say the concerns aren’t new. Danielle Stutzman, a psychiatric pharmacist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, estimates that up to a quarter of her patients over the past few years have said their medication seems less effective, a trend she said began around the start of the coronavirus pandemic.