News (1,839 posts)

The term “fidelity” comes from the sciences and refers to the precise execution of a protocol in an experiment to ensure results are reliable. However, a classroom is not a lab, and students are not experiments. As a result, teachers and teacher educators have long decried fidelity and the impact it has on them and their students.

At a Powys County Council meeting on 5 December, social services chiefs explained that they need more money to deal with the increasing demand for care packages for adults and the higher costs of placements for children in care.

Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Professor Nentawe Yilwatda disclosed this in Enugu during the commissioning of a 100KVA Transformer procured by the Ministry for the Federal School of Social Works Emene, Enugu State.

The Ruah Centre for Women and Children has now officially opened and includes eight self-contained Safe Places units that will provide emergency accommodation for up to 307 women and children experiencing family and domestic violence each year.

Data from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel revealed that 485 children were affected by serious incidents between April 1 2023 and March 31 2024.

… when Harris emerged as the party’s nominee, she did so as a moderate, distancing herself from the progressive policies that had defined the Democratic platform four years earlier. She went on to spend much of the campaign trail alongside former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). The shift was glaring: Harris abandoned her earlier posture as a reformer and progressive prosecutor, opting for a new message that mostly — with the exception of abortion rights — tried to shake off any hint of progressive politics, and it instead embraced Trump’s law-and-order rhetoric on the border, deferred to gun culture and American militarism, and distilled free-market principles through the dystopic language of ​“opportunity economy.”

The U.S. is forecasted to fall in its global rankings below nearly all high-income and some middle-income countries. Drug use disorders, high body mass index, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure are driving mortality and disability higher across the U.S. Future scenarios for health outcomes identify the states that are forecasted to gain ground, face stagnation, or grow worse. Scientific evidence underscores the urgent need to prioritize public health to prevent the economic consequences of sickness, disabilities, and premature mortality in the U.S.

According to federal government data, 1,906 deaths apparently linked to opioid poisoning were recorded between January and March 2024, an average of 21 deaths per day across Canada. Of all accidental deaths apparently linked to opioid poisoning, 81 per cent involved fentanyl.

Nearly 16% of people changed their sexual identity over a 12-year period, according to a new study I conducted with my colleagues, involving around 35,000 residents of Stockholm County. This challenges long-held beliefs about sexual identity being largely fixed.

In an interview this summer from her Southern California apartment, a mother from San Pedro described the role her methadone use played in the loss of three children over a decade…. “They basically said I was still on drugs, I was still a drug addict,” she said.

At a meeting of the city’s Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work Committee, councillors voted six to five in favour of proposals to strip people experiencing homelessness of their right to adequate housing through the provision of suitable temporary and permanent housing.

A stark analysis sent to the Government by leading voices in the sector has warned high employment costs, too-low fee rates, and councils struggling to balance their books are all threatening its overall sustainability. Collapses in social care provision could leave those in need without care, add to the responsibility on family carers, and increase pressure on NHS services, Care England and the Homecare Association said.

Fourth-year Bachelor of Social Work student Courtney Williamson is completing her final placement in Sweden, where she’s gaining hands-on experience in the field she’s passionate about. Above: Courtney (right) with her mentor Vasiliki Chaita, Futuraskolan International School of Stockholm’s social worker.

Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, both on their way out of office, took one last chance to help out Republicans, voting to give them control of the NLRB. Sinema is a social worker and is listed as an Assistant Teaching Professor, in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University.

Put differently, private insurers currently have administrative costs that are 1,000 percent what they would be under single-payer, while hospitals currently have administrative costs that are 158 percent what they would be under single-payer. The excess administrative expenses of both the payers and the providers are because of the multipayer private health insurance system that we have.

“I want to express deep disappointment in the fact that Congresswoman Nancy Mace (above) came to a national foster youth event, told participating youth that it was a safe space — and literally had one of them arrested by Capital police for simply shaking her hand and asking about trans rights,” said Lisa Dickson, a veteran advocate for foster youth from Ohio

The Department for Education’s (DfE) proposed reforms include regional commissioning of care placements, greater transparency around provider pricing and new powers for Ofsted to investigate providers of multiple children’s homes and fine providers of unregistered services.

“Native students are never going to feel really welcomed unless the non-Native faculty go out of their way to make sure that those Native students feel welcomed,” said Dallas Pettigrew, director of Oklahoma University’s Center for Tribal Social Work and a member of the Cherokee Nation.

Tan Li-San, the chief executive officer of the National Council of Social Services, says becoming its CEO felt like coming full circle as she’d started out as a youth volunteer.

School-issued laptops, loaded with Beacon software from GoGuardian, awaiting repair at Neosho High School.

Many recent studies assume that elderly people are at particular risk of dying from extreme heat as the planet warms. A new study of mortality in Mexico turns this assumption on its head: it shows that 75% of heat-related deaths are occurring among people under 35 — a large percentage of them ages 18 to 35, or the very group that one might expect to be most resistant to heat.

Homicide deaths are usually omitted from maternal mortality statistics because they aren’t considered sufficiently related to the pregnancy itself. But homicide isn’t a rare anomaly for pregnant and postpartum women — it’s one of their leading causes of death. This makes pregnancy-associated homicides, as they’re called by epidemiologists and health researchers, a real public health concern.

A mentor once told me that we take better care of our pets than we do older victims of mistreatment. As a researcher, I have sat across from people, including grown men, crying while recounting harrowing experiences of discovering and confronting elder financial exploitation within their families — by siblings, sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, girlfriends and neighbors. Above: Dr. Tina Kilaberia

The battle against ‘woke’
Social worker Daniela Zalazar was laid off from the “144 hotline,” a 24-hour public and free service for people seeking help due to gender-based violence. For years, she and her team aided hundreds of women seeking immediate help or advice to face the violence they experienced. But shortly after Milei took office, the program was dismantled down to 30% of its capacity — and people like Zalazar didn’t make the cut.

For many, violence from an intimate male partner becomes a pathway into homelessness, leaving women navigating a world that often feels indifferent to their experience. At Simon Community Scotland, we witness these struggles every day, and our mission is clear: to provide safety, support, and hope to women who need it most. We provide a range of services specifically designed for women and a fundamental priority for us is to provide support that is truly gendered, trauma informed and recognises women’s unique needs.

“If you come from an accredited social work program, you can go anywhere and go into an advanced standing program, meaning you can get your accelerated master’s in social work in a year,” Social Work chair Dr. Tricia Lizama (left) explained.

The accrediting group that oversees about 170 colleges in California and Hawaii is considering cutting the words “commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion” from the standards that its member colleges must meet. The WASC Senior College and University Commission is considering the changes as conservative lawmakers at both the state and federal level consider ways to curb the authority of accreditors and eliminate any consideration of DEI on college campuses.

Character.AI is among a crop of companies that have developed “companion chatbots,” AI-powered bots that have the ability to converse, by texting or voice chats, using seemingly human-like personalities and that can be given custom names and avatars, sometimes inspired by famous people like billionaire Elon Musk, or singer Billie Eilish. Users have made millions of bots on the app, some mimicking parents, girlfriends, therapists, or concepts like “unrequited love” and “the goth.” The services are popular with preteen and teenage users, and the companies say they act as emotional support outlets, as the bots pepper text conversations with encouraging banter.

As recognised by ancestral wisdom and Indigenous practices, our need to repair relationships is a deep-rooted instinct

Trump and his allies have floated a number of changes, such as barring accreditors from requiring that colleges adhere to diversity, equity, and inclusion standards. Republicans have also proposed creating new accrediting agencies that promote conservative values and allowing state governments to take on the role of accreditors.

Over four days this September, mural artist and restorationist Damon Lamar Reed and three assistants restored the burnt panel, which depicts a social worker standing outside a factory with a sign that reads “Legislators Protect Women and Children.” Another social worker bends a metal bar that makes up a web-shaped cage trapping factory workers, allowing a young boy to climb out. Above: The restored panel of Astrid Fuller’s 1977 mural “Pioneer Social Work” along the 57th Street viaduct

The Safer Futures domestic abuse helpline is run by First Light in partnership with Barnardo’s

The Department of Social Work plans to prioritize applications for the supervision program from graduates who are working in nonprofit or governmental settings, due largely to the great need for licensed professionals in these areas.

All societies – and the states that serve them – have a responsibility to protect their children from harmful addictions. And addiction is exactly what social-media companies are trying to cultivate. As Facebook’s founding president, Sean Parker, revealed in 2017, the process of building the platform was guided by a simple question: “How do we consume as much of [users’] time and conscious attention as possible?” The answer these firms reached lay in “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology”: the desire for social validation.

Dr. Margaret Paauw (left) and Chelsea Muto at the YDL Superior Branch. Dr. Paauw oversees intern placements at the Ypsilanti District Library…. She previously specialized in library social work in Chicago.

Emerging data suggests the biological response to mental health stressors may be more pronounced in women, a possible explanation for gender disparities in cardiovascular disease following abuse.

I wouldn’t get too optimistic about imminent systematic change. Rather than making their business models more humane, it’s likely that health insurance companies will simply invest more money in private security. Indeed, it seems that security companies are already seeing an uptick in business.

Theta burst stimulation (TBS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique known for modifying human behavior and treating neurological diseases. A group of scientists conducted a systematic review and network meta-analysis to determine the effective TBS protocols for addressing schizophrenia symptoms and cognitive impairment. Their findings suggest that intermittent TBS over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex may offer a promising alternative to antipsychotic drug-based treatment.

Michigan has poured roughly a quarter of a billion dollars into D.E.I. since 2016, according to an internal presentation I obtained.

Texas leaders have shown a decadeslong antipathy toward Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program that covers millions of low-income and vulnerable residents. They declined additional federal money that, under the Affordable Care Act, would have allowed Medicaid to offer health care coverage to more low-income families. The state was among the last to insure women for an entire year after they gave birth. And when the federal government last year ended a policy that required states to keep people on their Medicaid rolls during the coronavirus pandemic, Texas officials rushed to kick off those they deemed ineligible, ignoring persistent warnings that the speedy process could lead to some people being wrongfully removed.

Deaths of despair, which are caused by drugs, alcohol or suicide, are disproportionately experienced by men. Meanwhile, many of the traditional markers of manhood – earning enough money to raise a family, buy a home or even rent an apartment – are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. What does it mean for society if young men sense that their masculinity is under threat? Or for our politics if young men see less hope for the future?

More recently, New York Attorney General Letitia James (above) launched an investigation into non-consensual drug testing of mothers and infants. The AG’s special prosecutor, Galen Sherwin, has stated that the routine testing leads to “the separation of newborns from their parents in the first days of life, interfering with bonding and breastfeeding and causing government agencies to open unwarranted, invasive child welfare investigations.”

Access to psychotherapy has risen substantially among U.S. adults with mild to moderate distress since 2018, according to a new study. The increase in psychotherapy use is particularly notable among younger adults, women, college-educated individuals, and those with higher family incomes. Privately insured individuals also experienced greater gains in psychotherapy use compared to those who are publicly insured or uninsured.

Matt Moore, Ph.D., associate dean of student and academic affairs in the College of Social Work at the University of Kentucky, has been elected president of the Alliance of Social Workers in Sports.

Its annual report says education and social care professionals “are working hard under immense pressure” but “where systems are under strain, it is vulnerable and disadvantaged children” who are being most adversely impacted.

The study found widely varying responses in rats, revealing that individual reactions to the unpleasant aspects of drug consumption can be important in determining susceptibility to addiction.

Last week, Parliament passed sweeping reforms to Australia’s aged care system. These “once-in-a-generation” changes, set to begin next year on July 1, aim to improve how care is provided to older Australians at home, in their communities and in nursing homes.

Fluoridated water has been extensively studied, and its benefits are well documented. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, water fluoridation reduces cavities by about 25% across all age groups. It’s a public health measure that works passively – every sip of water helps protect your teeth, without requiring you to change your behavior. This is especially important for vulnerable populations. Above: ‘Stop Fluoridation’ banners hang from an overpass in Dallas.