News (1,559 posts)

George Kennan, head of the State Department planning staff and one of the leading architects of the post-World War II order, outlined the basic thinking in an important 1948 planning document:
We have about fifty percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population in this situation, we cannot fail to be object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction… We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

How could this happen? The problem goes far beyond a three-person majority on the trustee board of a small community college. NIC and many other institutions are in danger because, over the last decade and a half, a core group of extremists has slowly taken over the Idaho Republican Party in the same way that a parasitic wasp slowly takes over its host. This required no astroturfing or Koch-fueled cash infusions, just a regular, everyday indifference to hyperlocal politics. The tactic is underway elsewhere, but Idaho got a head start. This crisis is what happens when insurgency bears fruit.

According to new research, men and women rely on different biological systems for pain relief, which could help explain why our most powerful pain medications are often less effective in women.

Our team explored who is considered wise in cultures with contrasting philosophical traditions. The results surprised us.

The report said the council had made the area “a more attractive place to work” and permanent staff numbers had risen from 30% to 70%. “Newer workers told inspectors that they chose North East Lincolnshire because they are excited by the noticeable changes and want to be part of the improvements for children,” the report said.

More pensioners will die because of the decision to withdraw the winter fuel payment, Wales’ older people’s commissioner has said. Rhian Bowen-Davies said UK ministers needed to reverse the decision that will see 90% of pensioners between 66 and 79 lose the payment.

The Chairs of the National Adult PSW Network respond to concerns regarding Social Work England’s decision to not review a sample of CPD records following current registration renewal period.

The more men are concerned about appearing masculine, the less likely they will forgive a co-worker for a transgression such as missing an important meeting, a study has found. What’s more, such men are also more likely seek revenge or avoid the transgressor, which contributes to an unhealthy and less effective work environment.

Twenty-five years of policy show that social support helps people thrive – and doesn’t disincentivise work. Above: Two people react to the police ‘cleanup’ operation of a tent encampment in Edmonton, Canada.

The uninsured rate for children rose, however, jumping from 5.4% in 2022 to 5.8%, with about 4.4 million children lacking coverage in 2023. Coverage fell for children of all races and ethnicities, but dropped the most among Hispanic children, 9.4% of whom lacked insurance last year. About 4.8% of Black children were uninsured, as were 4.4% of white children and 4.2% of Asian children.

More than 2,000 unionized mental health workers in Southern California went on strike against Kaiser Permanente on Monday after the two sides failed to reach a new labor agreement.

Mackenzie Fierceton attended the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate in political science and then as a master’s student in social work.

Health workers and campaigners are furious with Labour’s plans for “job coaches” to tour mental health wards trying to push seriously ill people into work. Work and pension secretary Liz Kendall told BBC News she thought her plan would have “dramatic results”. She said she wanted it rolled out as part of her drive to shrink Britain’s annual disability and incapacity benefits bill.

From 14 to 18 October 2024, the European Youth Centre Budapest hosted 40 youth and social workers for the study session Transforming Social Work with the Power of Youth Work.

Swiss cantons and cities have decided to strengthen social welfare services and increase basic needs provisions for children in poverty.

In a career spanning five decades, Dr. Zimbardo (above in 1971) served as president of the American Psychological Association and pursued research on topics including shyness, the psychological roots of evil and the way dwelling on the past can affect decision-making. At the “core” of his interest… was “the process of transformation of human nature.”

Cigarette smoking kills nearly 500,000 Americans each year, and over 28 million adults currently smoke in the United States. Though most adults who smoke report that they want to quit, only 31% of those interested in quitting receive counseling and/or medications, and less than 8% effectively quit each year.

Tanton’s Network: Today’s contentious immigration debate is the construct of one man’s effort to halt overpopulation, brace for climate change and preserve “European” culture.
Green Hate: Now climate change is amplifying environmental concerns that have always run through the white supremacy and the anti-immigration movements.
Eco-Fascism: Experts warn that extremists who seize on global warming to justify violence are part of a far right trend to reclaim environmentalism as their own.

The survey asked questions about things such as health and well-being, pay and conditions, and what people like about working in the sector. This year, we also asked more questions about things such as bullying, harassment and discrimination, to get a deeper understanding of workers’ experiences.

How do societies address poverty and tackle the shifts taking place in labour markets that make work less attainable, less remunerative and less predictable – particularly for people with disabilities? How do we manage the associated rise in personal debt? Are our welfare systems up to the task of giving people the support they need not simply to survive but also to flourish as our economies change? How have neoliberal political economic norms and policies impacted work and welfare, and what does the future hold as those norms and policies shift?

A letter sent to the chancellor by a leading health charity, thinktanks and the body that represents accountants says carving out a new category of preventive spending would mean a healthier population and save the NHS money.

Everyone has stretches of sadness. Shifting how you think about and relate to sad feelings could help you through these times

A quantitative analysis of 16 million articles related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) revealed only a modest relationship between conventional indicators of research quality and citation in policy documents as indicators for article influence in formulating policies.

The new home for UMMSW prioritizes sustainability with features like a high-performance building wrap, solar panels, green roof with trees, bike lockers with showers for commuters, geo-exchange wells underneath the building that are part of a robust energy and emissions system that will make it the first net-zero emissions building in downtown Baltimore.

Fall graduate Kendall Kivigalok Aknavigak says pursuing a degree in her home community allowed her to engage with her Inuit culture and have the love, support and understanding of her family.

Over 18 months, Dylan Russell, an opioid user, purchased at least 15 guns at shops around the state. The weapons were for drug dealers, authorities say.

On a bright autumn afternoon, a plain wooden box crafted by a local cabinet shop containing skeletal remains was returned to its final resting place during a simple reburial ceremony in Brentwood. Researchers and students from the University of New Hampshire’s Forensic Anthropology Identification and Recovery Lab worked for two years with town officials and the New Hampshire state archaeologist to investigate and document the remains, which were uncovered more than 20 years ago during construction and were identified as being from a farm for paupers during the mid-1800’s, commonly known as a poor farm.

Disruptions, from phone alerts to sick days, can derail our writing. Four authors talk about how they manage to (mostly) maintain the flow, with the help of timers, candles and compartmentalizing.

The Irish Association of Social Workers (IASW) is concerned about the ongoing lack of clarity in relation to the “Pay and Numbers Strategy” and the recruitment of Social Workers within the HSE.

At its core, science is about playing with stuff to uncover new things about the universe (which, by the way, includes our planet and everything on it) that are brand-new to you—and maybe brand-new to anyone.

One boarding school survivor chooses to hold a bundle of sweetgrass, sage and other healing herbs as she sits for a photo in Michigan.

A memory quilt created in a collaboration between UWM, MIAD, House of History MKE, and Diverse & Resilient was on display at the UWM Student Gerontology Association’s Oct. 15 event exploring and celebrating the older adult LGBTQ+ community.

By the late 1990s, the US Department of Defense was beginning to sense the power of the games industry over adolescent men — the Department’s main audience — and created a campaign of recruitment and manipulation around gaming. Serious institutional power underwrote the move to tie the global video games industry to the Western military complex. The Pentagon spent more than $150 million on military-themed games or simulations in 1999 alone, with another $70 million injection in 2008 and still more since, all on projects with their own, very particular political agenda.

A National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded clinical trial of an mpox vaccine in adolescents found it was safe and generated an antibody response equivalent to that seen in adults, according to a planned interim analysis of study data. Adolescents are among the population groups affected by mpox in the current Clade I mpox outbreak.

Our investigative unit examined more than 900 inspection reports from the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) in 2023. We found that charitable-run disability centres were significantly less compliant than those managed directly by the HSE. Above: Hiqa offices in Dublin

Proponents of AI envision the technology helping to manage health care supply chains, monitor disease outbreaks, make diagnoses, interpret medical images, and even reduce equity gaps in access to care by compensating for healthcare worker shortages. But others are sounding the alarm about issues like privacy rights, racial and gender biases in models, lack of transparency in AI decision-making processes that could lead to patient care mistakes, and even the potential for insurance companies to use AI to discriminate against people with poor health

The researchers examined data from 4,018 university students collected during the 2022-23 school year. Participants answered questions about substance use, their sense of belonging at their school and their mental health — specifically about anxiety, depressive symptoms, perceived stress, flourishing in life and confidence in their academic success.

DB… lives alone in a 100-year-old house…. She has cognitive problems related to a stroke 28 years ago, Alzheimer’s disease, and serious vision impairment. With help from a few artist friends, she throws ceramic pots about six days a week. “I’m a very independent person and I find that I want to do everything I possibly can for myself,” she says. “It makes me feel better about myself.”

Dr. Eileen Joy is a Professional Teaching Fellow in Social Work, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

A young man stares at what is left of his family’s homes after Hurricane Helene

When politicians invoke the need to shield children from the dangers of the internet, they often do so as a pretext for introducing sweeping, authoritarian measures that curtail privacy, erode civil liberties, and fundamentally reshape the relationship between the state and the individual.

Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said: “Children must not pay the price for balancing budgets.” Local government minister Jim McMahon said the new government had inherited a crisis and there was “no shying away” from the scale of it.

Morgan State University’s School of Social Work is preparing a new crop of social work professionals with the skills and training to address the public health crisis caused by the rapidly escalating opioid misuse epidemic, thanks to a new $500,000 State Opioid Response grant. Awarded by the Maryland Department of Health’s Behavioral Health Administration and funded through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the grant will support the establishment of 38 social work student fellows made up of undergraduate seniors and master’s degree candidates, and eight doctoral training fellows as part of the Substance Use Disorder and Health Initiative for Education and Leadership Development (SHIELD) initiative.

Algorithms can be employed to sniff out desperation for income based on the extremes people are willing to take on the job, such as high trip acceptance rates among Uber drivers. With this hoard of granular information, A.I. can calculate the lowest possible pay that workers across sectors will tolerate and suggest incentives like bonuses to control their behavior. While bosses have always offered so-called variable pay—for instance, paying more for night shifts or offering performance-based salary boosts—high-tech surveillance coupled with A.I. is taking real-time tailored wages to new extremes.

As a recent White House convening underscored, Latinx communities continue to face disproportionately high rates of HIV, driven by structural inequities, stigma and limited access to culturally responsive care. The summit highlighted the pressing need for cities across the U.S. to implement community-driven solutions that effectively address barriers to accessing life-saving HIV prevention and care services.

“Property insurers who deny legitimate claims,” notes Martin Weiss, the founder of the nation’s only independent insurer rating agency, “are sending the implicit message, ‘If you don’t like it, sue us.’”

To add injury to that insult, Weiss adds, Florida governor Ron DeSantis had just before last year signed into law new legislation that makes policyholder lawsuits against insurers “far more difficult.”

More than 30 years ago, Leslye Lyons, AB ’79, sat down with a book club for the first time. As a new mom stepping aside from a career in social work, Lyons craved social connection. She didn’t expect to discover a passion that would lead to the birth of a literacy organization serving thousands of children and families. Above: Elementary school students proudly display their new books from Words Alive.

Above: ‘Rachel Reeves must remain committed to building a fairer and more productive economy.’

Vegetables are chopped on the floor. A kitchen is set up in the bathroom. Water leaks through the walls during typhoons. These are some of the struggles for people living in Hong Kong’s subdivided flats. NGO Social Work Dream invited 32 women living in subdivided flats to share about their lives for a photo exhibition last month. The event showed how these tiny spaces hurt women’s physical and mental health.

The mood to confront sexual violence shows no signs of going away, as protesters take to the streets of Turkey and France. Above: Turkish students at Istanbul university protesting on 7 October against a sexist system