News (1,661 posts)

Toria N. Pettway, LMSW, a psychiatric social worker for the UAB Division of Trauma & Acute Care Surgery, has been named the 2025 recipient of the UAB Social Work Partnership in Community Service Award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to patient care, mental health advocacy and community engagement.

Nearly seven decades ago, Hilda Onley was confined to the Hudson Training School for Girls. She has sought justice for sexual abuse at the facility under New York’s Child Victims Act. Above: Hilda stands in front of banner for the Incorrigibles art project that features a photo of her younger self.

Fentanyl deaths have been dropping, in part because of medications that can reverse overdoses and curb the urge to use opioids. But no such prescriptions exist for meth, which works differently on the brain. In recent years, meth, a highly addictive stimulant, has been spreading aggressively across the country, rattling communities and increasingly involved in overdoses. Lacking a medical treatment, a growing number of clinics are trying a startlingly different strategy: To induce patients to stop using meth, they pay them. Above: Spurwink’s entrance in Bayside, a Portland neighborhood hit hard by meth and other drugs.

Sixty-two former residents of the Small School at the Red House, in Buxton, have claimed they suffered physical, sexual and psychological abuse while in the facility…. A 1994 inspection report by Norfolk County Council revealed the authority was aware of alleged abuse involving 20 children. But it was not closed until 1998, when the Charity Commission investigated claims funds were being siphoned off to private businesses and Tvind’s leaders. Above: The Red House at Buxton, pictured in 1980

A conversation with the medical sociologist about her new book, Get It Out, and the perils of considering abortion, hysterectomy, and gender-affirming care as separate issues.

Asako Yuzuki’s novel has gained a cult following around the world for skewering Japan on its problems with how women are viewed and treated “Japan is a deeply patriarchal country. Very often, it is the father who occupies the central position within the family unit. This is the basis for laws, even,” Yuzuki said.

Noted Native American lecturer and artist Suzanne Cross will shine a light on the history of Indian boarding schools in the United States, with a focus on facilities in Michigan, at a Saturday morning program hosted by the Historical Society of Greater Lansing. Some of Cross’ ancestors were incarcerated at a boarding school in Mount Pleasant.

Data from five large open-access health databases are being used to generate thousands of poor-quality, formulaic papers, an analysis has found. Its authors say that the surge in publications could indicate the exploitation of these databases by people using large language models (LLMs) to mass-produce scholarly articles, or even by paper mills — companies that churn out papers to order.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass) said the financial situation “is as bad as it has been in recent history” with council overspend on adult social care budgets in the year to March hitting around £774 million.

I have worked in the women’s emergency shelter system in Hamilton, Ont., since 2012. I have met many women who have been navigating homelessness for years — with no permanent solution to their housing crisis. For my PhD in social work, I interviewed 21 women who had experienced homelessness for a year or longer in Hamilton. I asked them about their experiences, and through art-based activities, about their ideas for housing and support.

After 40 years, privatisation of our public services has failed. It’s time for public ownership.

We use it, we pay for it, we own it.

The companies promoting AI fail to mention it’s often underpinned not by code but by humans tagging data and viewing unsavoury content – AI could not exist without cheap labour largely outsourced to the Global South

Students have been advocating against changes in the school for the past year, according to Master of Social Welfare, or MSW, program student representative Elia Delphi. After the terminations of practicum consultants Claudette Mestayer and Robert Watts in May, students made their complaints public with a demonstration.

Social welfare programs are supposed to support families during times of need. Instead, they punish people in Illinois and across America as they work their way back to independence by removing health care, food and other benefits – a dynamic known as a “benefit cliff.”

As researchers focused on data management (Kristi) and behavioural sciences (Albert) and whose work tackles the significance of research with open access data, we have been concerned about how the data sets that scholars around the world rely on have been vanishing from U.S. government sites. Vanishing data is of dire concern far beyond the U.S., including for Canadians.

Officially, only 10 per cent of Canadians are considered poor. But if you measure poverty not just by income but by standard of living—whether a person can afford basics, like new shoes, small birthday gifts or going out for special occasions—the number rises to roughly 25 per cent. That’s about 10 million people. I never expected one of them would be me.

Our study shows that mental health and place are potentially locked in a feedback loop. One influences the other and the cycle can either support wellbeing or drive decline. That has real implications for how we support people with mental health challenges.

Recently, the Government published its 10 Year Health Plan…. The plan goes into impressive detail on many areas. From HPV vaccination to GLP-1 medications for weight loss, to genomic sequencing for adults. It shows what’s possible when ambition meets clarity, which makes the total absence of action on drug use, and the brief commitments to alcohol harm, all the more stark.

A Hong Kong pilot scheme to identify hidden cases of at-risk carers should be expanded to also cover other low-income families and subdivided flat tenants, a social worker and a district councillor have urged, as a new database to address the issue began operation.

I’m not under the illusion that college used to be regarded principally in such high-minded terms. From the G.I. Bill onward, it has been held up rightfully as an engine of social mobility, a ladder of professional opportunity, yielding greater wealth for its graduates and society both. But there was a concurrent sense that it contributed mightily to the civic good — that it made society culturally and morally richer. That feeling is now fighting for survival. So much over the past quarter century has transformed Americans’ relationship to higher education in ways that degrade its loftier goals. The corpus of college lumbers on, but some of its soul is missing.

Two faculty members have developed a lab to target a growing issue within society. UTA School of Social Work professors, Dr. Dana Litt (left) and Dr. Melissa Lewis, are leading the Studying Alcohol and Related Risks Lab, or STARR Lab, to seek answers to the ongoing issue of youth alcohol use.

In an industry built on the myth of neutral algorithms, Grok reveals what’s been true all along: there’s no such thing as unbiased AI – only AI whose biases we can see with varying degrees of clarity.

Researchers analysed data from nearly 50,000 patients recorded in the Scottish Stroke Care Audit, focusing on a range of post-stroke outcomes, including death from any cause within a year and prescriptions given to prevent further strokes. Their findings reveal patients from deprived areas are less likely to receive guideline-recommended treatment after a stroke – particularly for those with a heart rhythm condition called atrial fibrillation, where blood thinners are more effective than aspirin-like drugs in preventing recurrence.

Dr. Niamh McCullagh points to a map of the excavation site of St Mary’s mother and baby home which was run by the Bon Secours Sisters in Tuam.

“While companies are using AI to reduce costs, students are using it for all uni work and to replace thinking, and are subsequently de-optimising themselves for future jobs.” This sentiment was echoed by dozens of university lecturers from the UK and elsewhere, with many expressing grave concerns about the impact of AI on the university experience, warning that students were graduating without having acquired skills and knowledge they would have in the past because they were using AI to complete most coursework. “Being able to write well and think coherently were basic requirements in most graduate jobs 10, 15 years ago,” said a senior recruitment professional at a large consultancy firm from London, speaking anonymously. “Now, they are emerging as basically elite skills. Almost nobody can do it. We see all the time that people with top degrees cannot summarise the contents of a document, cannot problem solve.

Indeed, since the early 2000s, but accelerating over the last decade, corporate conglomerates and tech startups have flocked to active conflict zones, which are the ideal innovation labs. There, dragnet surveillance, mass incarceration, and unfettered drone warfare serve as the AI hype cycle’s underbelly. Death and destruction double as opportunities for data collection and refinement, allowing the private technology sector to stake out a monopoly over AI development in military and commercial sectors. The end result is our present of endless war

None of this is new in the unbroken American tradition of racist state violence and border rule. Under the administration’s border regime, though, violent escalation in immigration enforcement has been lauded, licensed, and now supercharged with unprecedented funding. The consequence will be more deaths like Alanis’, more deaths in ICE custody, like the 13 that have already taken place this year alone, atop a baseline of suffering for millions.

“We’re sending a clear message: Oklahoma’s schools will not be a haven for woke agendas pushed in places like California and New York,” said state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters (above) in a statement, adding the state is dedicated to “raising a generation of patriots, not activists”…. Teacher workforce studies in 2021 and 2024 found that recruitment and retention continues to be a problem for the state, particularly in rural districts and priority subjects like STEM and special education. The Sooner State relies heavily on emergency certified teachers who have no formal training to fill in the gaps. (emphasis added)

We have witnessed the destructive effects of financialization. Can the millions held in bank deposits, corporate equities, and bonds be used instead to provide for society’s most pressing needs?

The targeting of welfare is no surprise. Recipients of welfare are often castigated as ‘work-shy,’ and ‘scroungers.’ Yet the welfare state’s existence is rarely challenged. Undoubtedly it has been essential for working people, protecting them from the excesses of the free market. But, critically, it has always been valuable for capitalism. Amidst a growing working-class presence, the implementation of state reforms at the turn of the twentieth century was an acknowledgement of the need to cushion the effects of exploitation, or risk rebellion.

Today many of those who as girls who were subjected to the Danish coil campaign in Greenland are dead. In many cases they died of natural causes but in others their deaths resulted from infections of the uterus, which they had to struggle with all their lives. These happened because IUDs were inserted at an unsuitable age, often remaining inside the uterus for years without medical supervision

Activists see the crackdown on alleged obscenity as part of a wider push to suppress LGBTQ expression — an effort that has expanded under President Xi Jinping. China classified homosexuality as a crime until 1997 and a mental illness until 2001. Same-sex marriage is not legal and discrimination remains widespread.

Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri (above) is scheduled to lead a town hall session with stakeholders to provide insights and obtain feedback on the soon-to-be-tabled Social Work Profession Bill. Despite social work and social workers playing a pivotal role in nation-building for over seven decades in Malaysia, the profession and the services they provide are neither regulated nor legally recognised as a profession.

“Yes, video is a tool to show violence,” Gregory said. “But more importantly, it’s a tool to show patterns.” Patterns are what expose systemic, institutionalized corruption and abuse. Patterns allow us to connect an individual’s behavior to the corporate, government, and social structures that have allowed that behavior. Patterns shift the conversation away from the bad apples and instead bring the entire diseased orchard into question.

Gone are the days of eager new recruits, ready to leap into the classroom. Nationwide, 79 percent of public schools reported difficulty hiring teachers last year. Texas has also borne the brunt of this trend. Between fall 2021 and fall 2022, the state saw a record 13.4 percent attrition rate, and the proportion of newly hired teachers without a state-sanctioned certification or permit in the following school year rose to nearly 30 percent. In May, Governor Greg Abbott signed a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in all classrooms.

No burial records. No headstones. No memorials. Nothing until 2014, when an amateur historian uncovered evidence of a mass grave, potentially in a former sewage tank, believed to contain hundreds of babies in Tuam, County Galway, in the west of Ireland. Now, investigators have moved their diggers onto the nondescript patch of grass next to a children’s playground on a housing estate in the town…. The area was once where St Mary’s children’s home stood, a church-run institution that housed thousands of women and children between 1925 and 1961.

President Linda Livingstone (above) has rescinded a $643,000 grant awarded to the Diana Garland School of Social Work from the John and Eula Mae Baugh Foundation. That grant was for an academic study on LGBTQ inclusion in the church and how to address loneliness…. The LGBTQ debate has been a flashpoint at Baylor that Livingstone previously tried to navigate carefully. This time, however, it appears she has ceded control to conservatives both on the board of regents and in the larger far-right evangelical community.

Public housing towers in Melbourne

By the time new research is published in a reputable journal, it has made it past several sets of skeptical eyes.

The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission published their report on July 1, detailing a 7% drop from 2023 to 2024 in reports to the state’s Bias Response Hotline. This includes reports of physical hate crimes and verbal harassment, such as slurs. Meanwhile, hotline staffers dealt with a 165% increase in spam calls, and calls where abusive language and harassment was directed at them, according to the report.

The New York State Tenant Bloc is a 501(c)(4) formed by Housing Justice For All, a statewide coalition of advocates for tenant-centered policy. Tenant Bloc launched a “Freeze The Rent” campaign in February and endorsed Mamdani in May. He was the first mayoral candidate to support a rent freeze and the only candidate to support a four-year rent freeze, which he made a pillar of his campaign.

How, I wonder, did we Americans reach a place where many of us are silent or supportive of a strongman’s $45 million birthday military parade that closed roads to residents and commuters for days? How did we get to a time when our leaders seem loath to invest in healthcare and don’t even hide their disdain for poor people, a significant number of whom are military personnel and veterans? I’m not sure I know what this country stands for anymore. I don’t know about you, but these days America sometimes feels to me like a treacherous foreign land.

The SWU Assignment: World Social Work Day 2025 question was:

“What are the most important things social workers should get from their professional training? What type of social work practice would they like to be involved in as they begin their professional careers, and why?”

Meet Megha Acharya, a social care practitioner based in Belfast. She arrived in Northern Ireland from Eastern India back in 2021 to complete her Masters Degree in Public Health, having already completed a dentistry degree.

For decades, Americans have been told a simple story about addiction: taking drugs damages the brain—and the earlier in life children start using substances, the more likely they are to progress through a “gateway” from milder ones such as marijuana to more dangerous drugs such as opioids. Indeed, those who start using at younger ages are much more likely to become addicted. But a recent study, part of an ongoing project to scan the brains of 10,000 kids as they move through childhood into adulthood, complicates the picture.

The case was brought by the national American Association of University Professors (AAUP); its Harvard, Rutgers and New York University chapters; and the Middle East Studies Association (Mesa) following the arrest and detention of several noncitizen students and scholars who have spoken out on Palestinian rights. The government has claimed the authority to deport noncitizens who have committed no crimes but whose presence it deems poses a threat to US foreign policy.