News (889 posts)

A pair of studies found that both anxiety-related emergency visits and prescriptions of mood medications rose in areas affected by wildfires or wildfire smoke.

Scottish Government proposals would end provision allowing social workers registered with other UK regulators to practise in Scotland, while it also is seeking views on whether social work assistants should be required to register

Social work in Scotland (and no doubt across the rest of Britain) is still under the cosh. Sixteen years of unnecessary austerity — which has only seen the rich get richer whilst public services have been cut to the bone — has impacted on social work as well as on every other public service.

“It is absurd that a court can be certain that a child has been sexually abused and sure of who the perpetrator was but unable to convict. Why? Precisely because the abuse did not occur once, but many times. That is not justice,” writes Azan Aziz Marwah, chairperson of the Hong Kong Committee on Children’s Rights.

Job-ready Graduates cut student contributions (the amount students pay for their studies) in teaching, nursing, engineering and IT courses to encourage them to do degrees the Coalition government saw as “job-ready”. At the same time, student contributions jumped for arts, business and law. In 2024, a major government report on higher education – the Universities Accord – found the policy had “failed” and needed to be replaced.

Sally, a brunette, silicone-skinned android powered by AI, was set to debut this fall in Salamanca’s high school. The town has a population of around 6,000 people and is part of the Allegany Indian Reservation, less than three hours from Cleveland. The robot was to have been manufactured by Realbotix, which has a sibling company that produces sex dolls.

This is the largest documented Cyclospora outbreak in US history, and the coverage has that part right. What has reached the public is a scary number that keeps going up. It misses the fact that, while cyclosporiasis—which is what a Cyclospora infection is called—has now been reported in 41 states, the outbreak is only in nine. The numbers being reported measure different things. The CDC and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have included 1,947 confirmed cases in the nine-state Taco Bell outbreak, which epidemiologic and trace-back evidence links to iceberg lettuce, while the CDC separately reports more than 4,000 confirmed domestically acquired cases nationally since May.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has promised that city-owned grocery stores will bring down prices for shoppers. On Monday, he announced the exact discount: 30 percent for some basic groceries, including vegetables, meat, bread and milk. The city is moving to select private operators to run five city-owned stores, one in each borough. The city will build the stores and waive rent and property taxes. It is also expected to provide an operating subsidy to help pay for the discounts.

My name is Paige Loud. I recently ran for Congress in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. Running for Congress was one of the hardest and most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I launched my campaign during the final semester of my Master’s of Social Work program.

Under the agreement, DAAM will provide financial support for the organisation and launch of the award, which aims to promote a culture of scientific research in the social sector and encourage the production of scientific research that contributes to the development of social services and supports evidence-based policymaking.

Mr Biayi has a social work qualification, but is developing his language skills at TAFE before he enters the workforce. “As someone who is not working in Australia, finding a house is really, really challenging,” he said.

A new study led by UNSW Sydney behavioural scientists, in collaboration with researchers from Griffith University, found no evidence for claims that climate action at the individual level distracted from meaningful action on climate change. After following almost 2800 Australians over four years through the National Climate Action Survey, the researchers found people who made environmentally friendly choices – recycling, using reusable cups and containers, taking public transport, adopting greener diets and cycling to work – were not less likely to support broader climate action.

Thousands of Saskatchewan residents receiving disability income support will see higher monthly benefits this fall as the provincial government introduces changes aimed at simplifying the Saskatchewan Assured Income for Disability (SAID) program.

“We have been supporting each other’s mental health since the beginning of time,” said Dr. Angie Wootton, Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator of LGBTQ SOLACE. “Building networks of mutual aid and peer support involves recognizing the LGBTQ+ community’s strengths and capacities that already exist, and to bolster, amplify or legitimize these efforts through research and intervention development.”

Operation Metro Surge was the culmination of a decades-long campaign in which conspiratorial crusaders have painted Somalis as a drain on social programs, criminals, and extremists.

One in five Europeans and one in four children live in poverty, Social Welfare Deputy Minister Clea Hadjistefanou-Papaellina said on Friday, highlighting Cyprus’ efforts during its presidency of the Council of the European Union to strengthen European social policy.

Do you know how to get an American company to grant you excellent wages and amazing benefits, even for an entry-level job?

Move to Norway and take the job there.

Using donated brain tissue from older adults with and without cognitive decline, along with samples from cognitively healthy centenarians, the team uncovered distinct cellular programs and immune cell states linked to both disease progression and resistance. The findings, published in Nature Medicine, point to changes in microglia, the brain’s resident immune cells, as a potentially important focus for future Alzheimer’s treatments.

Students looking to gain real-world experience in the social welfare sector may soon find a meaningful opportunity with Delhi government-run institutions. The Department of Social Welfare has rolled out a set of internship guidelines, creating a structured framework that connects classroom learning with on-ground exposure.

Reading – not just any kind of reading, but reading long, complex, challenging books – is quickly vanishing from the American scene.

Policymakers, academics, healthcare providers, AI developers, and patient advocates convened by Stanford HAI identify critical gaps in how we regulate AI tools used for therapy and emotional support.

Ask any resident of the southern Ontario city of London, and they’ll likely to tell you that the downtown core of the community, especially Dundas Street, is a “no-go zone” or “zombieland.” What they’re referring to is the daily unfolding of the human tragedies of homelessness and rampant drug addiction that have marred the face of the downtown area. Walking along the streets, there are numerous people lying unconscious, some enduring the notorious fentanyl fold, and needles and drug pipes are left on the sidewalks. London is among Ontario’s hardest-hit cities in terms of homelessness, but it is by no means unique.

In the last five years, UK universities have increasingly experienced similar indictments and have been portrayed as politically charged spaces in the media, described as everything from ‘woke campuses’ to sites of a ‘free speech crisis’. Such media coverage usually claims that British universities exert a strong influence on students’ political views, particularly by promoting left-wing or ‘woke’ ideologies. But what evidence are these narratives based on?

Rather than sparking immediate mass unemployment, artificial intelligence is radically transforming Hong Kong workplaces, with workers facing multiplied workloads, shortened deadlines, and pay rates that have stagnated or have been slashed. Above: Freelance translator Kelly Ng

Social Affairs Minister Saifullah Yusuf speaks to reporters after attending a meeting chaired by President Prabowo Subianto in Jakarta

Battu Sathyanarayana, Vice-Chancellor of Central University of Karnataka, addressing a special lecture on ‘Research, Writing and Publication’, organised by the Department of Social Work in Kalaburagi.

Some lawmakers were pleased with the returned funds, including Sen. Taffy Howard, R-Rapid City. “These are all welfare services, so lower utilization should be cause to celebrate,” she said. “And I hope we aren’t looking for ways to increase utilization just because we happen to have some reversions.”

The politics of artificial intelligence are entering a new phase. In the United States and beyond, communities are protesting data centers that are projected to triple water and electricity consumption by 2030, drive up utility costs, and harm the environment. Artists, journalists, and writers are suing AI companies for using their work without permission. Teachers are questioning whether generative AI is improving education. And workers in many fields are growing worried about automation, surveillance, and job loss or displacement.

Dr. Kyaien O. Conner has been named the dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work following a comprehensive national search.

The study, conducted by University of Malawi researchers Agnes Gogo Wizi-Kambala (above) and Charles Kamwana-Junior and published in the African Journal of Social Work, found that gerontology—the study of ageing—is treated as a marginal subject in the University’s undergraduate social work programme despite older persons becoming an increasingly vulnerable segment of the population.

The focus on housing affordability, however, ignores the issue of housing quality. These are not two separate issues, but rather, two sides of the same coin. Most lower-income families do not acquire affordable housing through government subsidies. Instead, they rent or buy homes that are so deteriorated, or in such disinvested neighborhoods, that they have become “affordable.”

With 58 new measles case announced Friday and 2,318 for the year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed it: The country has already topped the US total for all of 2025…. The total for all of last year was 2,289 infections, which was the most since 1991. The country is on its way to losing its measles elimination status this fall, which it gained in 2000.

With consumer prices rising throughout the country, Americans are feeling the pinch at the grocery store and the gas pump, and they are accumulating “survival debt”—liabilities accrued to pay for everyday expenses. As more people struggle to make ends meet and consumer debt reaches record highs, financial stress is rising.

The message from Washington has been clear: the college campus is a new political battleground. Comply or lose federal funding. Student activists, the Gaza encampments, sympathetic faculty – anyone at the university who is perceived as advocating for Palestinian rights has put themselves at significant risk. University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) has remade itself in anticipatory compliance with anti-war repression.

Forbes has been publishing its “rich list” of the 400 wealthiest Americans since 1982. In that first year, Forbes estimated the combined net worth of its 400 at $92 billion — not a small sum, but only 0.8 percent of total U.S. wealth and 3.2 percent of national income. In 2025 the Forbes 400 were worth $6.6 trillion. That was 3.7 percent of national wealth and 26 percent of national income.

The agency has still not explained how thoroughly it investigated David’s background before giving him a gun. What is clear from court records and interviews is that the agency hired him despite accusations of abuse by two ex-wives and years of professional struggles.

“The federal government has used the threat of withholding billions of dollars in research funding, not to enforce civil rights law, but to demand sweeping changes to institutional governance, hiring, curriculum and campus policies,” AAUP President Todd Wolfson said Wednesday

A man checks out a rifle during a gun show in Chantilly, Virginia. The Circuit court ruling against New Jersey’s assault weapons ban is likely only the first, and could mark the beginning of the end for similar laws in nearly a dozen states.

State legislatures are setting up tip-lines for anonymous reports about educators. Online vigilantes are scouring professors’ social media activity and syllabi to create watch lists, generate outrage, and call for their firing. Students are recording professors in class, sometimes to report them, sometimes to circulate the recording online, and sometimes both.

SASW’s response to the Scottish Government consultation on proposals to expand the SSSC register

Since its launch, the 988 Lifeline has received more than 23 million contacts, including more than 15 million calls, 4 million texts, and 3 million chats. The number of total contacts increased 11.5% from the first quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026, demonstrating substantial growth and demand for these services. The rise in use also underscores the continued unmet mental health needs in the United States, and the critical role that the crisis response system plays in suicide prevention.

The Christian Brothers has for 150 years run schools and orphanages across Australia.

“However commendable [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s] desire to improve mental health in the workplace, like all agencies, OSHA’s authority to regulate toward that end is constrained by the limits of power Congress delegated to the agency,” wrote Judge Cory Wilson of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, … “OSHA’s reading of [the Occupational Safety and Health Act] to encompass the power to regulate workplace mental illnesses may be plausible. But the best reading of the statute is narrower: that ‘illnesses,’ as used there, refers to physical, and not mental, work-related ailments and conditions.”

A team of social workers at Public Health – Seattle & King County works with people who will be released from jail to link them to vital services, ensuring people receive the care, medications and support they need to make a smooth transition from incarceration to the community. Maliha is a social worker in the Release Planning Program.

A year after expanding to round-the-clock operations, Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare’s Mental Health and Addictions Urgent Crisis Centre has recorded more than 4,200 visits from those seeking help. The centre, also known as MHAUCC, officially began operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week in July 2025, completing its transition to a fully accessible crisis service that includes walk-in appointments, referrals from police and paramedics, and support through its crisis phone line.

FABBS submitted comments in response to the White House Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) proposed rule that would make sweeping and overwhelmingly negative changes to current practices across all federal agencies that govern grants, cooperative agreements, and other forms of federal financial assistance. The rule, if finalized, would have damaging implications for individual researchers, scientific societies, universities, research institutions, hospitals, nonprofits, state and local governments, and other organizations that receive federal funding.

Deputy Tóibín said “The figures provided to me through parliamentary questions paint a deeply worrying picture of persistent staff turnover at the very heart of our child protection system. Between 2020 and 2025, a total of 3,057 staff left Tusla. Of those, more than 2,000 were Social Workers and Social Care staff, the professionals who work directly with vulnerable children, young people and families every day.”

A single dose of psilocybin, the psychedelic substance in magic mushrooms, may produce physical changes in the brain that remain detectable for as long as a month, according to researchers at UC San Francisco and Imperial College London.

Google’s “AI overview,” which appears at the top of search results unless users opt to filter them out, and “AI mode” a chatbot-like tool built into Google search, were each rated “Unacceptable” by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that evaluates technology tools for safety, educational use, and other factors. Common Sense Media advises elementary school educators to bar their students from using Google search at all.

In July 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) mandated significant health care funding cuts and policy changes related to low-income health insurance programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) administration. As of April 2026, 1.59 million Americans had lost their Medicaid insurance because of OBBBA-related cuts. Because of the bill, an estimated 13 million more people will lose their insurance over the next three years. Above: The Snake River near Annex, Oregon