Ian Bell, 18th Logistics Readiness Squadron True North social worker and powerlifter, lifts weights at Kadena Air Base, Japan, Feb. 16, 2024.
Indiana Bill Threatens Faculty Members Who Don’t Provide ‘Intellectual Diversity’
In an echo of last year, state lawmakers in different parts of the country are pushing bills that would diminish tenure protections and target diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Indiana’s Republican-dominated state Senate wants to do both at once.
RMHP announces $500K matching contribution for CMU social work grads
After the Grand Junction City Council’s pledge of $500,000 of the city’s American Rescue Plan Act funds to help graduates of Colorado Mesa University’s Masters of Social Work (MSW) program repay their loans, Rocky Mountain Health Plans (RMHP) on Wednesday announced it would be making a matching contribution to the school for the same purpose.
Student puts up anti-Machine posters in social work building
Social work, hip-hop unite
From left Dr. Anthony D. Greene, director of the African American Studies Program and sociology associate professor at College of Charleston, and from the University of Texas at Arlington Social Work Associate Professor Dr. Jandel Crutchfield, History Assistant Professor Dr. J. Anthony Guillory, Social Work Adjunct Assistant Professor Dr. Pamela “Safisha” Hill, and Dr. Jason Shelton, sociology professor and Director of the Center for African American Studies pose for a photo at CAAS’ 12th Annual Conference
MSW student applies social work practices on campus
Kerrigan Link, a current Master of Social Work (MSW) student at Illinois State University (ISU), is on the path toward becoming a school social worker.
Germany legalises cannabis, but makes it hard to buy
A ferocious debate about decriminalising cannabis has been raging for years in Germany, with doctors’ groups expressing concerns for young people and conservatives saying that liberalisation will fuel drug use.
How to choose a trustworthy mental health app in a market bloated with options
We’re seeing reports that, for all their promise, mental health apps might not be all they’re made out to be. With questions being asked about the need for regulation, is it possible that these apps are doing more harm than good?
Many Americans Believe the Economy Is Rigged
I wonder why.
Founding Dean of School of Social Work Inabel Burns Lindsay, a Social Justice Champion and Innovative Leader
“This is truly a win for our students.” – SSU Associate Dean For Social Work Beth Massaro
Philly mayor might consider these lessons from NYC before expanding stop-and-frisk
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker says she supports the constitutional use of stop-and-frisk to reduce crime in the city.
Social workers attend to rape allegations at Shongweni crèche
Research shows older adults with a history of stroke at high risk of pandemic-induced depression
“People who have experienced a stroke are already highly vulnerable to adverse mental health outcomes, such as depression,” said lead author Andie MacNeil, a research assistant at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work (FIFSW). “Unfortunately, the pandemic caused so many disruptions to care for stroke patients, which has major implications for the physical and mental well-being of this population.”
Social worker changes undermined engagement with children later convicted of violent crimes – review
Inquiry into cases of seven young people charged in relation with deaths of three others finds six had history of involvement with social care marked by significant practitioner turnover
The complicated connections between weight loss drugs and mental health
With the rise of GLP-1s, our menu of treatment options increased, but so have questions about whether these medications can help patients’ mental health or hurt it…. While we wait for more data to clarify the relationship between GLP-1s and mental health, it is crucial for endocrinologists — who prescribe most of these drugs — and psychiatrists to work together to address the tangled connections between body weight and mental health.
What Happens When We Stop Remembering?
SHIFTING BASELINES is the idea that each successive generation will accept as “normal” an increasingly degraded and disorganized ecology, until at some point in the future, no one will remember what a healthy ecology looks and feels like. Absent any personal or societal accounting of migrating butterflies, winter snowfall, or spawning salmon, future generations will have tolerated so many small losses in population, abundance, and habitat that eventually they won’t know what they’re missing. Worse, they may not even care.
Guest Opinion: Lee is the choice for US Senate
Barbara Lee understands our struggles because she’s lived them. She escaped an abusive marriage with her two sons, and for a time she lived on public assistance. Child care was unaffordable, so she had to bring her boys with her to classes at Mills College. What’s more, Lee persevered to lift her family out of poverty because she was able to move into housing, and through a Housing and Urban Development Department program she was able to purchase that house and graduate from Mills and then receive a degree in social work from UC Berkeley.
Use of pepper spray at Rikers Island is skyrocketing, even on suicidal detainees: report
The city Board of Correction found chemical agents were used 2,972 times during the first 10 months of 2023, a 50% increase from the same period of 2018, despite the jail population shrinking by about 2,000 people over the last five years…. The report found that officers pepper-sprayed a detainee “who was engaged in self-harm with a ligature around their neck” on eight occasions in October alone, instead of following protocol and cutting down the item used in the hanging attempt.
Children’s services ‘improve but problems remain’
A new report said too many children in care were still waiting for plans about their future to be sorted out, and many had to deal with multiple changes in social workers.
Children’s services leaders in England call for national ‘plan for childhood’
The government’s failure to prioritise the post-pandemic needs of children in England was a “massive missed opportunity” that would leave many thousands of youngsters “left behind”, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said.
Students Lose Out as Cities and States Give Billions in Property Tax Breaks to Businesses − Draining School Budgets and Especially Hurting the Poorest Students
The Kansas City Public School system has lost tens of millions of dollars to corporate property tax breaks over the last five years.
Alito Renews Threat to Overturn Marriage Equality
Trial attorneys in the U.S. frequently stop potential jurors from serving on cases based on their stated biases, but… Samuel Alito indicated on Tuesday that he was disturbed by a case out of Missouri in which three people were eliminated from a jury after expressing homophobic views—and suggested the high court should reconsider marriage equality to prevent such outcomes.
Poverty Has Soared in New York, With Children Bearing the Brunt
A new report found that 25 percent of children in New York City lived in poverty in 2022, the highest rate since 2015.Credit…
Rubber hand illusions shed new light on our bodily sense of self
When you wake each morning, you not only become freshly aware of your thoughts, you also resituate yourself in your body. We don’t experience the world purely in our minds, but as ‘embodied agents’, says Roy Salomon, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Haifa in Israel. Your sense of self is as connected to your limbs and guts as to the thoughts racing in your mind.
Dr. Sandra Butler named 2024 UMaine Distinguished Professor
A long-time educator and leader in social work, whose research and advocacy influenced state and federal policy, has been named the 2024 Distinguished Maine Professor, the University of Maine’s most prestigious faculty accolade.
A matchmaking service is coming for Mainers who want to share their homes
It’s getting more difficult for seniors to stay in their larger homes as they age, and younger people are navigating an increasingly unaffordable rental market. So Maine is starting a pilot program that seeks to house those generations together.
Why this budget failed to put Scotland’s children first
Fiona King argues that the 2024/25 Scottish Budget misses a critical opportunity to make further progress on child poverty and puts the Scottish Government’s own legally binding 2030 child poverty reduction targets at risk
Northamptonshire Children’s Trust Fostering Agency rated ‘good’ by Ofsted for first time
Northamptonshire Children’s Trust in One Angel Square, Northampton.
COVID-19 vaccination and boosting during pregnancy protects infants for six months
These findings, published in Pediatrics, reinforce the importance of receiving both a COVID-19 vaccine and booster during pregnancy to ensure that infants are born with robust protection that lasts until they are old enough to be vaccinated.
Wisconsin’s first Black mayor continues to serve the Madison area
After attending a predominantly white high school, Frances Huntley-Cooper decided to attend the historically Black university North Carolina A&T State to study social work. In 1973, she moved to Madison to pursue her master’s in social work at UW-Madison. Above: Huntley-Cooper, the first African American mayor in Wisconsin, points out her photo on the wall from when she served as mayor from 1991 to 1993, at City Hall in Fitchburg
Lawsuits claim South Carolina kids underwent unnecessary genital exams during abuse investigations
The South Carolina lawsuits — which involve children who live in different parts of the state and who were assigned to different social services caseworkers — aren’t the first to raise red flags about the potentially harmful effects of forensic medical exams on children. Since the 1990s, federal courts from New York to California have ruled that government agencies violate children’s and parents’ civil rights when the exams are conducted without a court order or parental consent.
Death and redemption in an American prison
The cemetery at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola, is for prisoners who don’t have families that can give them a burial. Hospice began at Angola in 1997, when 85% of inmates were serving life sentences.
Against Medical Advice: Another Deadly Consequence of Our Opioid Epidemic
From 2016 to 2020, the annual rate for patients leaving “against medical advice” after they are admitted to hospitals with opioid use disorder from over 30 states increased from approximately 9 to 17 percent. In contrast, the rate for all nonopioid admissions remained around 1 percent during that time period. These discharges can be deadly and expensive. They are associated with twice the odds of all-cause death and hospital readmission within 30 days.
Rochdale grooming: ‘I was raped more than 100 times from age 12’
Child sexual exploitation is still happening in Rochdale and across the country, Maggie Oliver says
Mental health needs of many young people ‘are not being met’, Auditor-General investigation finds
The mental health needs of many youth “are not being met” and waiting times for specialist care are getting longer, a new report from the Auditor-General finds. The report Meeting the mental health needs of young New Zealanders, was tabled in Parliament last week.
New benchmark for measuring poverty to be announced within this year, says welfare chief
School of Social Work Finds a New Campus Home
In early January, faculty and staff moved from temporary offices on the Fayetteville Square into the ground level of Gregson Hall (above), a historic 1948 dorm located at the top of Dickson Street.
York County student part of new lawsuits against model policies in Virginia
Dr. Jamie Harris (above) who is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology said personal and social identities are always works in progress.
State warns of ‘major’ vacancies in agency overseeing services for vulnerable populations
Nevada, she said, has one of the fastest growing “graying populations,” adding that this year for the first time the population for those 55 and older is projected to outnumber those who are 54 and under.
New report on tent encampments adds nothing new to decades-long crisis, says advocate
Federal Housing Advocate Marie-Josée Houle has released a new report on tent encampments, but longtime housing advocate Julia Janes (above) says there’s nothing novel about it.
Answer this question before Arizona bans efforts to ‘defund police’
House Bill 2120, sponsored by first-term lawmaker David Marshall, R-Snowflake (above), passed its first hurdle out of a committee on Monday by a party-line 8-7 vote.
More than 500 complaints about Ofsted inspectors last year, FOI request reveals
Across all complaints, just 18 were fully upheld last year, but Ofsted was found to be partially in the wrong in 263 cases. The inspectorate is responsible for monitoring various educational and childcare settings, such as schools, early years and social care providers.
L.A.’s Incarceration of Youth Again Falls Short of Humane Standards, State Regulator Calls Two More Juvenile Facilities ‘Unsuitable’
Less than a year after a California regulator shut down its two juvenile halls, Los Angeles County is again being slammed for housing youth in substandard conditions at poorly staffed facilities.
On Portland streets, recovered drug users offer lifeline to fight fentanyl’s cruel cycle
AH, 22, left, MM, 34, RM, 50, walk downtown earlier this month. The team is part of a small pilot project that pairs police with people in recovery, known as peers, to respond to people who want help. The field of peer support has undergone a rapid expansion, driven largely by significant investments through Measure 110.
Beyond dogwhistles – racists have a new rhetorical trick
Traditionally, the image of a figleaf was used by artists to cover the body parts (think Adam and Eve) that they were not supposed to show in their paintings. As I use the term, a figleaf is a communicative device that provides just a bit of cover for something that one isn’t supposed to show in public – like racism. To see how this works, let’s first take a closer look at Trump’s call for a Muslim ban.
Where Will the Right-Wing War on Curricula Go Next?
The conservative charge that academic historians are out-of-touch radicals bent on indoctrinating America’s youth is old, with roots in the Red Scares of the 20th century.
Protecting the human rights of sex workers
The lived realities of sex workers across Europe raise serious human rights concerns. It is crucial to approach this important and complex issue with a full understanding of the human rights consequences of the experience of high levels of violence and inadequate protection from law enforcement and the justice system; stigma; and multiple layers of discrimination that result in isolation and limited access to essential services, including housing and healthcare. All these factors pave the way for a persistent culture of impunity for crimes committed against sex workers, which in turn leads to even more violence.
Acid attacks are a form of violence against women – the law needs to treat them as such
Corrosive substance violence is horrific in any case. But what is often left out of the discussion is that it is a form of gendered violence that mainly targets women. While acid attacks are perpetrated against both men and women, the vast majority of victims – 80% globally – are women, and the majority of perpetrators are male.
EU and UNDP establish Educational and Training Centres for Social Work in Chernivtsi, Dnipro, and Poltava
Opening of the Educational and Training Centre for Social Work in Chernivtsi.
It’s the Working Class, Stupid
The true culprit for cultural radicalism, Judis and Teixeira argue, is the Democrats’ “shadow party”—advocacy groups, think tanks, foundations, and other donors as well as liberal media that have pushed the party toward positions that make no sense to working-class voters. Basically, Judis and Teixeira think that neoliberal economics and cultural radicalism make a deadly combination, appealing to an elite but not to the mass of voters. They want Democrats to move left on economics and toward the center on culture to recreate the politics that sustained the New Deal.