The Newbury property being considered for the proposed juvenile detention facility
Biden’s Mixed Messaging On Criminal Justice Reform
I reached out to Terrence Coffie, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at New York University Silver School of Social-Work, who writes and teaches on criminal justice reform.
Federal Scientists Recommend Easing Restrictions on Marijuana
Marijuana is neither as risky nor as prone to abuse as other tightly controlled substances and has potential medical benefits, and therefore should be removed from the nation’s most restrictive category of drugs, federal scientists have concluded.
Can Host-Home Programs Help Relieve NYC’s Housing Crisis?
As much of the country grapples with an affordable housing shortage, host-home and home sharing programs—which typically pair people who have a room to spare with those in need of a place to live—are a growing intervention. Above: Homes along Tomlinson Avenue in Morris Park, The Bronx.
How woke is the campus left?
An assortment of recent books has sought to reckon with the unnamable specter haunting the political left, especially on college campuses. Two of the most insightful, both published in the past year, are by academics who identify themselves as liberals or leftists…. The schism between “woke” and more traditional left-wing attitudes reflects more than a divergence over style or tactics.
Detoxing from G is ‘100 times worse than alcohol withdrawal’, expert warns
Chemsex has become more common in Ireland in recent years. It involves the use of drugs such as G, crystal methamphetamine, cocaine, ketamine and mephedrone to enhance and prolong sexual activity.
Waterford children in care being failed by Tusla staffing deficits
The latest HIQA report focuses on the services for children and young people in care and while there are positive reports for some children who did have interactions with Tusla workers, the overall view from an inspection in July 2023 shows that children are not having their needs met by Tusla.
Christians-only hiring, pride flag ban divides GR charity
Grand Rapids-based Bethany Christian Services welcomes global refugees to West Michigan, but its staff will no longer reflect the diverse faiths of those it serves. Target 8 has confirmed that the faith-based social service agency, which receives government funding to provide foster care and refugee services, began enforcing a strict Christians-only hiring mandate several months after the arrival of a new chief executive officer.
The State’s Leading Psychiatrist Says Oregon’s Approach to Mental Health Is Wrong
Dr. Keepers noted that Oregon spends more per capita on mental health care than most states but our results are among the nation’s worst. Specifically, Keepers noted, Oregon spends $234.87 per person, compared to $113.27 in Massachusetts. Yet, Keepers says, our results—as measured by access to care and positive outcomes—rank 46th in the nation, while Massachusetts’ rank in the top five.
New Republican bills seek to ban trans people from public spaces, and refer to them as ‘obscene’
Senate Bill 194, proposes a total ban on all gender-affirming care for trans people up to the age of 21. It further adds that therapists and social workers in the state should attempt to “cure” trans identities. The bill expands reach of a current ban on gender-affirming care for those under 18, passed in 2023, and classes being trans as a “sexual deviation”.
Revealed: the nine universities where gender-critical academics are labelled ‘transphobic’
A report by the Committee for Academic Freedom (CAF), a group of academics worried about the erosion of free speech on campus, found that under definitions of transphobia in nine university policies, academics who believe that transgender women are not women are considered transphobic. Above: Prof Kathleen Stock, a gender-critical academic, resigned from Sussex University in 2021 after a campaign of intimidation by trans activists.
The Next Battle in Higher Ed May Strike at Its Soul: Scholarship
Many scholars are worried that attacks on research will be used by politicians, donors and even other scholars as a pretext to go after their ideological enemies. “A broad suspicion toward intellectuals and academics is a rich vein in American culture, and recent events have supported it,” Dr. Voss said.
Lisbon association shelters homeless people with pets during cold snap
During the evening and night, between 18h00 and 09h00, the Casal Vistoso Pavilion, equipped with boxes for housing animals, was prepared to receive homeless people and their animals, thanks to a partnership with Multipet, which was responsible for assembling the boxes and creating a safe space for pets to spend the night.
British Association of Social Workers Northern Ireland
Statement in support of social workers taking strike action
Reading Academic Quit Lit – How and why precarious scholars leave academia
Academic ‘quit lit’ is an emerging genre of academic writing focused on authors’ reasons for leaving academia. Drawing on an analysis of this literature and interviews with precarious academics in Australia, Lara McKenzie discusses what this genre says about the current state of academia, those who leave it, and how not all acts of quitting are the same.
Rebecca Solnit: Slow Change Can Be Radical Change
“Describing the slowness of change is often confused with acceptance of the status quo. It’s really the opposite.”
How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Rose Up and Won an Underdog Political Victory
In this sense, her victory was a triumph for the brand of politics that Occupy Wall Street had brought to public attention seven years earlier. It consecrated Ocasio‑Cortez as the new star of the party’s left flank, perhaps even its future.
‘The Social Contract Has Been Completely Ruptured’: Ireland’s Housing Crisis
Soaring rents have left many struggling to afford homes in Dublin and have created a generational divide. Two-thirds of younger adults in the city live with their parents. Above: A homeless person’s tent on one of the main shopping streets in central Dublin.
I spent a day with Newcastle City Council’s Social Care Coordinator supporting vulnerable people in the city
Carol Connelly, and Michelle Brumwell who work for Newcastle City Council’s Reablement Services.
The reason we dream might be to bring us closer together
In 2016 I began hosting public dream discussions with my collaborator, the artist and academic Julia Lockheart. At these events, I discuss a volunteer’s notable dream with them in front of an audience and, as we’re speaking, Lockheart creates an artwork based on the dream.
Social workers can help children more effectively by assessing the needs of the whole family
Our research in the fields of sociology and development economics suggests that children’s needs are not hierarchical and that they are best met by – and in – families.
The Monstrosity of Maritime Capitalism
Beginning in the late 1860s, the decade that it took to construct the Suez Canal, photographs depicting its feats of engineering circulated across the world (see above). Sold to travelers as souvenirs, featured in Le Monde, and later exhibited at the 1889 Paris world fair, they enshrined on paper the industrial monumentality of the dredgers that excavated earth into sea.
Why and Where the Working Class Turned Right
Losing such blue-wall states as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to Donald Trump in 2016, plus the current erosion of working-class support for Joe Biden that shows up in every poll, has at least sounded a fire bell in the night to Democrats and people who love or merely put up with them. Even critics who fault the Democrats for alienating much of working-class America through their embrace of what they term radical social policies… also lay much, perhaps most, of the blame on the anti-labor and pro–Wall Street economic policies (free trade and anti-Keynesianism in particular) of the Carter, Clinton, and Obama administrations.
‘Whatever it is, I’m against it’: Why US HE needs a reboot
According to Clark Kerr (first chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley (1952-57), the American university is “a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking”. Perhaps because the university he headed from 1929 to 1945 is in the windy city on the great lakes, Maynard Hutchins is reputed to have said that what united the University of Chicago “was the heating system”.
Inequality is dividing England. Is more devolution the answer for its disadvantaged regions?
Twenty-five years ago, when new institutions of national government were created in Scotland and Wales, they reflected the widely held view that the Welsh and Scots should have more control over their economies, aspects of welfare provision and key public services. Yet at that time, hardly anyone thought devolution might be applied to England – despite it being the largest, wealthiest and most populated part of the UK.
One by one, England’s councils are going bankrupt
All around us, a familiar disaster grinds on: constant increases in demand on our most crucial public services, which the financially blitzed councils charged with providing them simply cannot meet. The result is a story that speaks volumes about Westminster’s state of contorted denial: increasing numbers of our cities, towns and counties now face municipal bankruptcy, but no one in any position of national power and influence seems to want to talk about it.
Amazon Woman
An artist swaps her head with everyday objects in a musing on consumerism
ANC says welfare-grant extension non-negotiable
The African National Congress, which is gearing up to contest elections later this year, said the extension of a monthly welfare grant is non-negotiable and the required funding must be allocated in the February budget. Above: Alexandra township in Johannesburg
Intervention at an Early Age May Hold Off the Onset of Depression
The Blues Program was developed by Oregon Research Institute psychologist Paul Rohde and his colleagues at Stanford University, the program is a six-week series of hour-long group sessions that teach students skills for managing their emotions and stress. The goal is to head off depression in vulnerable teens.
The 2 Liberty Universities
The evangelical institution has long had different sets of rules — one for believers and another for the powerful.
Digging for dirt: The wrong way to tackle research integrity
As somebody working to promote research integrity who has lived in several authoritarian countries, the growing weaponisation of research integrity against political opponents feels unpleasantly familiar.
Martin Luther King Jr. Wasn’t a Lone Messiah
Anglia Ruskin University team to study young carers and their duties
Researchers at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) are to investigate how caring duties affect the education and wellbeing of young carers…. Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures show about one in 10 people aged between 16 and 30 provide informal care.
Why 140,000 pupils are ‘severely absent’ from school in England – and what we can do about it
The gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children hasn’t gone away, head teachers say.
Alberta minister calls Edmonton mayor’s efforts a political ‘stunt’ as war of words over homelessness continues
Mayor Amarjeet Sohi responds to Alberta housing minister Jason Nixon criticism of the mayor’s call to declare a citywide homelessness emergency, calling it a political move that “will have no force and no effect.”
State investigation reveals social service gaps that left an elder to die alone in the cold
The Alaska State Ombudsman’s 31-page report issued Jan. 11, 2024.
Column: LAPD’s Michel Moore is (finally) leaving. Here’s what L.A. needs in a new chief
A month ago, not long after the news broke about Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore supposedly ordering a probe of Mayor Karen Bass’ scholarship to USC, a group of Black religious and civic leaders gathered at a church in South L.A. to make some demands.
Biomedical STI Prevention Evidence Is Inadequate for Cisgender Women
Scanning electron micrograph of Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacteria, which causes gonorrhea. Captured by the Research Technologies Branch at the NIAID Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana.
Physicians who oversaw diagnostic manual’s revision had pharma funding
Researchers used a publicly accessible federal government database to track how much drug and device manufacturers paid U.S.-based physicians just before they began working on the DSM-5-TR.
The Gasmen of Holman Prison: If at First You Don’t Kill, Try, Try to Kill Again
Two KU students join state social social work boards
Twente Hall, home to the School of Social Welfare
MSF to launch standardised tools for frontline workers to better detect, report domestic violence
This comes after several recommendations were given by a government-led task force on family violence in 2021, said Minister of State for Social and Family Development Sun Xueling in parliament on Wednesday (Jan 10).
Dan Fumano: There are fewer tents today in Vancouver’s Oppenheimer Park, but what happens next?
Vancouver police and Park Rangers move campers from Oppenheimer Park on Wednesday.
Vancouver police and Park Rangers move campers from Oppenheimer Park… “They’re saying that there are shelters. There aren’t. It’s truly bizarre to see park rangers in a city enforcing this bylaw and not having social workers. No outreach, no coordination … it comes across as unorganized.”
‘Memory’: Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard glow as wounded souls making a connection
The following morning, Sylvia finds a rain-soaked Saul huddled outside her door. Sylvia’s social work training kicks in; she realizes this man is not well. Saul’s brother Isaac (the reliable Josh Charles) picks him up, and we come to learn Saul has a form of dementia in which he remembers some things clearly but often fades into a place where he cannot take care of himself and forgets sizable chunks of his life, from the distant past to just a few minutes ago.
Protect Social Security by dumping GOP ‘Death Panel,’ say 116 House Dems
Decrying Republican plans for “ripping away Social Security from seniors behind closed doors” via a so-called fiscal commission, more than half of U.S. House Democrats on Thursday urged congressional leaders to scrap plans to fast-track the controversial panel.
‘Soul-warming’: the mystery man who chops wood to keep his neighbors from freezing
The woodsman, who requested anonymity, is an accomplished director, writer and producer with several popular film and TV credits on his IMDb page. But he now devotes much of his time to supplying his struggling – and sometimes freezing – neighbors with free firewood.
Government sets out plans to develop the domestic care workforce
Social care staff will have better training, clearer career paths and improved job prospects thanks to government plans to develop the domestic care workforce… The Department of Health and Social Care has unveiled a package of measures that will reaffirm care work as a career, helping to recruit and retain talent by providing new, accredited qualifications, digital training and funded apprenticeships.
30 years of LGBTQ+ history in Russia: from decriminalisation in 1993 to ‘extremist’ status in 2023
The progression in the mistreatment of LGBTQ+ people in Russia has coincided with the progression of Putin’s regime, which has become more autocratic. The Russian supreme court’s recent judgment that the international LGBTQ+ community is an “extremist” movement represents a hybrid recriminalisation of homosexuality 30 years after the ban was removed.
Overall health and well-being are about much more than just weight management
The FDA has approved the drug Zepbound by Eli Lilly to treat weight loss in patients, but it’s expected to cost more than $1,000 a month.
CMU, GJ developing social work loan repayment program
Colorado Mesa University and the City of Grand Junction are working on a program that would provide student loan reimbursements to graduates of CMU’s master’s of social work program who agree to practice locally.