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The body responsible for the guides is Foundations, the evidence centre for children and families formed in 2022 from the merger of What Works for Children’s Social Care (WWCSC) and the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF). Above: Aoife O’Higgins, Director of Evidence at Foundations
The challenges municipalities are facing are expected to grow significantly in 2025 due to new federal restrictions on unemployment benefits. Starting January, long-term unemployed individuals are gradually losing their entitlement to benefits: first those unemployed for over 20 years, then those out of work for more than eight years (from March), and finally, anyone unemployed for over two years (from April).
Plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit seeking welfare benefit cuts to be revoked and their lawyers walk to the Supreme Court in Tokyo on May 27
How is a bar supposed to last 30 years in New York City? At the West Village’s legendary lesbian bar Henrietta Hudson, the secret to survival has always been care — also, Lisa Cannistraci.
When Rashyah Weatherspoon crossed the stage to receive her Ferris State University diploma, she was celebrating far more than academic success. She was celebrating her survival. A first-generation college student from Flint, Weatherspoon has endured family instability, expulsion from high school, and even homelessness — all while pursuing a dream to help others through social work.
What started as a way for social work students to get real-life experience helping others has transformed into a statewide lifeline.
In recognition of his exceptional dedication, Pearson was honored this week by the Colorado Human Services Directors Association (CHSDA) and received a prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from RESADA, the Regional Substance Use Provider. These honors underscore his career-long commitment to improving lives, particularly in the areas of child welfare, family services, and substance use recovery.
The Department of Social Welfare, Equality and Immigration of the Arrecife City Council, led by Maite Corujo (above), has incorporated six new social workers and a psychologist into its team, with the aim of “strengthening services and speeding up the response to the needs of citizens”.
A deeper understanding of how reward memories work and interact with each other is critical to informing the choices you make and to treating disorders where seeking rewards has become problematic. Eliminating all reward seeking would negatively affect behaviors essential for survival, such as eating and reproducing. But if you can specifically target reward memories linked to different drugs, this could help reduce their abuse.
In the heart of Reno, The Empowerment Center (TEC) is more than a transitional housing facility, it’s a place of healing and forward motion. With a mission to help women in recovery rebuild their lives through sober living, wraparound support and access to essential services, TEC serves as a lifeline for those working to overcome substance use and trauma. And thanks to a partnership with the University of Nevada, Reno’s School of Social Work, that lifeline is growing stronger.
Social Work Professors Lisa Berger (left) and Colleen Galambos launched a new social work microcredential in the Fall 2024 semester on suicide prevention for social workers.
A vigil outside the main offices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on March 28, one day after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced plans to cut 10,000 jobs across the agency.
A University of Arkansas team led by School of Social Work Director Johanna Thomas, Ph.D., LCSW, has been awarded $10 million by the Arkansas Department of Human Services. The team will create a centralized Crisis Hub and Crisis Continuum for the state of Arkansas that will serve Arkansans with behavioral health needs. Above: Dr. Thomas
A number of teams working at the office on Jack Martin Way have recently been moved to “alternative bases”.
Staff evacuated the office and alerted police.
The technology analyzes footage to detect activity and determine a best course of action. This can include directly speaking to individuals with personalized, AI-generated voice warnings, without human intervention.
Social work faculty member Michael Lynch (light blue shirt) and students (from left) Emma McCarthy, Ogechi Kalu and Christian Jepson outside of UN headquarters.
Richard L. Bean, the longtime superintendent of the East Tennessee juvenile detention center that bears his name, abruptly announced Friday that he will be stepping down. His decision to retire came the day after the Knox County mayor said he had lost confidence in Bean’s leadership. Bean, 84, has been superintendent of the juvenile detention center since 1972. A 2023 investigation from WPLN and ProPublica found the facility was using solitary confinement more than other detention centers in the state. Sometimes the children were locked up alone for hours or days at a time. That kind of confinement was also used as punishment, in violation of state law.
Dr. Brian Graves, senior author and an Assistant Professor in Florida Atlantic University’s Phyllis and Harvey Sandler School of Social Work, commented that
“[b]arriers to treatment are not only widespread but also evolving over time. Understanding these shifting challenges—and the consistent predictors of who does and doesn’t get help—can guide targeted efforts to expand access and improve outcomes for those struggling with this disorder.”
In addition to pushing researchers out of the state, the policy didn’t seem to lead to an increase in productivity among tenured faculty, the study found; the rate at which faculty produced research remained unchanged before and after the policy went into place.
Young people deserve support and a sense of peace: environments that affirm their identities, honor their voices, and ensure their safety and well-being. They are calling for culturally responsive care, safe spaces in schools, and policies that affirm their full humanity. We are listening to help create the world they deserve.
CoramBAAF recently launched a new form to help practitioners meet statutory requirements in relation to adoption support planning. Jane Poore, adoption consultant at the charity, explains what it includes
New research published in Communications Biology has uncovered the earliest known use of the medicinal and psychoactive plant Peganum harmala, commonly known as Syrian rue or harmal, in fumigation practices and inhaled as smoke. The findings offer unprecedented insight into early Arabian therapeutic and sensorial practices, revealing that native plants were already being deliberately used for their bioactive and psychoactive properties nearly 2,700 years ago.
Scientific management was distinct from actual science in that it did not revolutionize tools or technology. Instead, it sought to perfect capital’s control over labor by monopolizing knowledge of the labor process. Management separated conception from execution, assigning to itself the work of science and depriving the worker of any planning capacity. This negated craft knowledge (a key element of worker power) and degraded work “almost to the level of labor in its animal form.” Braverman’s focus on this particular form of alienation was likely informed by his own experience as a craft worker.
Mainstream medical researchers have criticized the studies, highlighting flaws in their methodology and — in the case of one paper published by the conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) — lack of transparency about the data used to suggest mifepristone is unsafe. The vast body of research shows that the drugs used in medication abortion, mifepristone and misoprostol, are safe and effective in terminating a pregnancy.
Students have been allowed to remain at the facility despite the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services citing in their May 27 letter, “the documented violations indicate that conditions in the facility are found to be detrimental to the health and safety of the clients.”
Advocates say if this decision is not reversed, it will leave more than 250,000 students across the Commonwealth without mental health support. Families will lose access to school counselors, social workers, and programs designed to support students’ well-being and prevent youth suicide.
This is where we’re at. The question blooms by the day – how are we to know if any creative text, novel, essay, poem or short story is AI assisted, or even authored? In time, will it be impossible to tell?
In an age where culture is the primary battlefield, authoritarianism thrives on ignorance, historical amnesia and the brutal aesthetics of cruelty, all normalized as common sense. This is a policy of scholasticide – a full-scale assault on the past – one that aims to erase not only history but the very capacity to critically engage with it.
From 2020 to 2022, Americans saw the state mobilize immense resources to boost their standard of living—and then witnessed the hard political constraints hemming in this capacity. Above: Senator Angus King sets up a sign detailing a proposal for a COVID-19 relief bill on December 1, 2020.
Collaborative, multi-year research effort produces the most comprehensive genetic archive of cannabis plant to date. Above: The flowering bud of a female Cannabis sativa plant. The frosty appearance comes from a dense coating of glandular trichomes, which are tiny, crystal-like structures that produce the plant’s distinctive compounds like cannabinoids and aromatic terpenes.
The White House is downplaying major citation errors in a sweeping report on chronic disease in children released last week by the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission. The report, spearheaded by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cited hundreds of studies and was billed as an example of “radical transparency” and “gold standard” science. But the nonprofit news publication NOTUS reported yesterday that multiple studies cited in the report—which took aim at ultraprocessed foods, pesticides, prescription drugs, and childhood vaccines—don’t appear to exist. The outlet also identified dozens of other errors in the report’s bibliography, including broken links, missing or incorrect authors, and incorrect issue numbers.
The danger is not that AI will fail us, but that people will accept the mediocrity of its outputs as the norm. When everything is fast, frictionless and “good enough,” there’s the risk of losing the depth, nuance and intellectual richness that define exceptional human work.
Student debtors are under attack on all sides. Government contractors make their life miserable, and financial predators are poised to capitalize.
NYC Health + Hospitals today announced the Social Work Clinical Licensure Training Program.This program provides Licensed Master Social Workers (LMSWs) at NYC Health + Hospitals with training and financial support to attain their clinical licensure in exchange for a two-year commitment to the health care system.
There are few decisions more fraught for members of my generations — the cusp of millennial and Gen Z — than whether or not to become a parent. In 2023 the U.S. fertility rate fell to a record low. Some of the decline can be explained by a delay in having children or a decrease in the number of children, rather than people forgoing child rearing entirely. But it still seems increasingly likely that millennials will have the highest rate of childlessness of any generational cohort in American history.
About 1 in 4 U.S. children – nearly 19 million – have at least one parent with substance use disorder. This includes parents who misuse alcohol, marijuana, prescription opioids or illegal drugs. Our estimate reflects an increase of over 2 million children since 2020 and an increase of 10 million from an earlier estimate using data from 2009 to 2014.
However, as the U.S. heads into what forecasters predict will be an active 2025 hurricane season, June 1 through Nov. 30, that guidance has changed again. The administration’s new FEMA Local Mitigation Planning Policy Guide 2025 talks about public involvement in planning but strips any mention of equity, income or social vulnerability. It mentions using “projections for the future” to plan but removes references to climate change.
Medical credit cards have gone mainstream, preying on sick people at their most vulnerable…. The typical medical credit card has an annual percentage rate (APR) of 26.99 percent interest, compared to an average of 16 percent for regular credit cards. Consumers who aren’t able to pay off the charges before the deferred interest kicks in end up paying about one-quarter more than the original amount they were charged. American consumers paid $1 billion in deferred interest between 2018 and 2020.
A brief overview of BASW’s recent impact in parliament
Four experts on public education in the US spoke to The Nation about how the dismantling of the Department of Education will hurt students immediately and in the years to come.
The European Trade Union Confederation is urgently calling for a new directive to protect workers from the escalating dangers of extreme heat.
The chicly futuristic branding of IQOS, a heated tobacco product owned by Philip Morris International, is one of several things worrying researchers and anti-tobacco advocates. The company is rolling out pilots of the device in Austin and Fort Lauderdale, peddling IQOS (pronounced “eye-koss”) as “the next step in tobacco harm reduction.” In its marketing, the company positions the devices as a better alternative for smokers compared to cigarettes, reducing the production of harmful chemicals while containing “real tobacco,” “less lingering smell,” and no fire or ash.
Last week’s budget allocated NZ$472 million in new funding to deal with a growing prison population caused by greater use of prison remand and proposals to increase prison sentence lengths. The new funding comes on top of $78 million provided in the 2024 budget to extend rehabilitation to remand prisoners, enabled by an amendment to the Corrections Act late last year. The question is, will any of this make New Zealanders safer?
Teaching, nursery, midwifery and social work students to benefit, as government urged to expand eligibility and increase pay to minimum wage
To deliver plentiful housing and clean energy, we have to get the story right about what’s standing in the way. Above: The stacks from the Gavin power plant behind a nearby home in Cheshire, Ohio.
A report by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s health commission cited nonexistent studies on mental illness and children’s asthma medication.
The earliest state residents and New Jersey social workers will be able to benefit from the law Gov. Phil Murphy signed this month will be in late 2026, according to Dr. Dawn Apgar, an Associate Professor at Seton Hall University and a former deputy commissioner for the state Department of Human Services.
McKenna Tobin is independent: she’s got a new place to live, two dogs, a job and a diploma from Lowell High School. She’s ready to have a fun summer, and then major in social work at Aquinas College.