News (1,500 posts)

Labour wants action. But rent caps, rising interest rates and restrictions on councils have hit the affordable homes sector hard. Above: Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, has set a goal of 1.5m homes built over the course of this Parliament.

Self-reported numbers showed that in 2022, USC admitted the highest percentage of students with legacy and donor ties of any California university, 14.4 percent. It was followed by Stanford and Santa Clara, where those numbers were 13.8 percent and 13.1 percent respectively.

Both major parties—and often the mainstream press—ignore that when it comes to fentanyl, Covid, HIV, mpox, or most social contagions, the community spread inside the United States (or inside people’s homes) is due to America being America, not due to outside agitators.

The Foodbank of Southern California — a grocery-and-meal distribution hub serving hundreds of food pantries in Long Beach and South Los Angeles — has closed its doors amid a state investigation into a possible multimillion-dollar fraud and embezzlement scheme, according to state officials and a nonprofit executive. The closure is expected to severely affect thousands of low-income families, seniors and homeless people who rely on food distribution sites for their nutritional needs.

Militaries want films like Top Gun because they make the armed forces seem glamorous, exciting, social and sexy. So they often give filmmakers cheap or free access to billions of dollars worth of taxpayer-funded jet fighters, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. In return, the movies serve as sophisticated, enticing forms of recruitment propaganda.

To truly change history, it is not enough for the masses to rise up; they must subsequently win concessions such as ceasefires, fair elections, environmental protections, or new policies that promote racial justice. While protests continue erupting with remarkable frequency, they are also failing, at historic rates, to achieve protesters’ stated goals. As Time hailed the power of the protester, the rate at which mass protests succeeded in meeting their objectives was plummeting, from two in three during the early 2000s to just one in six by the early 2020s.

Putting all these stories together, we are left with a picture of a professional regulator that can’t progress its own investigations properly, has subjected a social worker to harassment, needs to train itself on freedom of speech, and is now no longer going to properly review the CPD logs of its registrants.

Malaysia’s most vulnerable communities, including the thousands of children facing abuse and neglect, are at risk due to a critical shortage of qualified, trained social workers. The Social Work Profession Bill has yet to be tabled and social workers continue to await the recognition, resources and support they need to protect those in crisis.

The other day I was stopped on the street by someone who told me that during a particularly bad depressive episode in which she was hospitalised, she just thought of me and realised her life wasn’t actually that bad. Um, thanks? I’m not sure if that comment was more or less offensive than the guy who told me he “wasn’t sure how I got out of bed each day”. Cheers bro.

For almost a decade, researchers have been gathering evidence that the social media platform Facebook disproportionately amplifies low-quality content and misinformation. So it was something of a surprise when in 2023 the journal Science published a study that found Facebook’s algorithms were not major drivers of misinformation during the 2020 United States election. This study was funded by Facebook’s parent company, Meta.

In May, I completed a 120-hour practicum with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) as part of the requirements for the Queen’s Concurrent Education program. The same month, on May 16, the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) celebrated a landmark achievement: the successful lobbying for paid placements for social work students in Australia.

BASW member David Jones on the importance of helping scriptwriters get it right

Catholic cultural warriors often don’t remember the Catholic Church’s history in promoting vital social justice programs like Social Security. Worse still, there are those Catholics who want to rewrite that history altogether. Together these culture warriors, along with the authors of Project 2025, are not only undermining the work of the Catholic Church but Catholicism itself.

Elm City COMPASS announced expansions to its crisis response service…. It emerged as a response to the murder of George Floyd, in the wake of demands to minimize the role of police in managing health and housing crises. COMPASS dispatch teams include an unarmed social worker and a peer with lived experience, who respond to crises together.

Like the Koch brothers, the Mercer family and other conservative billionaires, Dunn and Wilks want to slash regulations and taxes. Their endgame, however, is more radical: not just to limit the government but also to steer it toward Christian rule. “It’s hard to think of other megafunders in the country as big on the theocratic end of the spectrum,” says Peter Montgomery, who oversees the Right Wing Watch project at People for the American Way, a progressive advocacy group.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) program provides important flood insurance relief, researchers say. But due to its design, it’s used more in communities with greater means to protect themselves, while lower-resourced areas benefit less.

The case of a Muhlenberg College faculty member whose anti-Israel comments have been at the center of campus controversy for months has reignited in recent days, prompting a new wave of discussion about whether professors’ extramural speech is protected by academic freedom.

Dr. Ian Rice, the program’s Director and an Associate Professor of Social Work was instrumental in developing the curriculum and ensuring that the inaugural cohort of 33 would be well-supported. Rice emphasizes the importance of the program in addressing the chronic shortage of social workers across the region.

Research at the University of Portsmouth has explored the relationship between high impulsivity and boredom, in an effort to find out what drives rash and sometimes unhealthy decisions.

German Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Hubertus Heil speaks during the “Jobturbo” round table in the Federal Chancellery.

The hype surrounding machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, can make it seem like it is only a matter of time before such techniques are used to solve all scientific problems. While impressive claims are often made, those claims do not always hold up under scrutiny. Machine learning may be useful for solving some problems but falls short for others.

Psilocybin, the psychedelic substance found in magic mushrooms, is a promising new treatment for psychiatric disorders, especially depression. The beneficial effects on mood and anxiety of psilocybin are rapid and pronounced after just a single treatment. A small study even suggested that these benefits remain after a year. But what is really needed is a comparison of the long-term effect of psilocybin with another treatment (an antidepressant) or a placebo.

A new regional model for victim services that rolled out this week is prompting major concerns from Albertans who’ve utilized the program, and for former social workers who worry that the proper level of care won’t be provided. Above: Alberta’s provincial flag

Compared with inactivity, a weekend warrior pattern of exercise (concentrating most moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in one to two days during the week) or a more evenly distributed physical activity pattern were associated with similarly lower risks of diseases across 16 categories — from heart and digestive conditions to mental health and neurological illnesses. The findings indicate that concentrated physical activity patterns may be just as effective for disease prevention as patterns where exercise is spread out throughout the week.

Other lawsuits filed against the city under the law allege abuse at juvenile jails, including Crossroads in Brownsville, Brooklyn; Horizon, the city’s juvenile jail in the Bronx (above); Spofford, a now-shuttered juvenile jail in the Bronx; and Rikers, where the city used to jail 16- and 17-year-olds before outlawing the practice. The accusations range from the 1960s to the 2020s.

Ms. Triantafyllia Athanasiou, President of Hellenic Association of Social Workers and Dr. Ghassan Khalil, UNICEF Representative in Greece, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 30th September 2024, to strengthen Child Protection in Greece.

Children in youth offender institutions (YOIs) are being denied access to education, with too many being kept in their cells as staff struggle to keep warring youngsters apart, a damning new report has found.

A new data set put together by Bank of England economists has revealed that over two million Brits are employed by private equity-owned firms – or around 10 per cent of the private sector workforce.

The sign briefly tells visitors about the cemetery’s history, explaining that many of the hundreds of unmarked graves belong to people who died at “Sunnyside Lunatic Asylum where people with mental illnesses and intellectual disabilities were treated”.

In fact, in aggregate, the recent surge in immigrants will reduce the federal deficit, the Congressional Budget Office found; it indicated this was more so for higher- than lower-skilled migrants, although it said an increase in less-educated workers would also trigger stronger wage growth for the more educated people needed to work with them.

Vermont’s Roman Catholic Diocese has filed for bankruptcy protection in the wake of more costly lawsuits alleging priest misconduct as far back as 1950….The church, ultimately spending more than $30 million, thought it was done with such payoffs with the arrival of a 2012 state deadline for filing any related actions. But the Vermont Legislature adopted laws in 2019 and 2021 repealing the statute of limitations for submitting civil claims, leading to a new wave of cases that now number at least 16, according to lawyers.

New figures released to TFN through freedom of information legislation found widespread mishandling of homelessness cases in Edinburgh during August’s Fringe and in the days surrounding Taylor Swift’s record-breaking concerts at Murrayfield.

Alcohol consumption is also linked to other aspects of our own health and lifestyle and it’s important not just to consider this alone. Tobacco use and smoking, for instance, can significantly amplify the cancer risks associated with alcohol.

A new study has lifted the lid on how couples living with rheumatoid arthritis cope with the debilitating disease finding that those who cope with problems together had less psychological distress and better relationships.

A couple who were left with life-changing injuries after their Uber crashed have been told they cannot sue the company because of the terms they accepted when using the app.

This resource from PAARI draws from the experiences of embedded social workers in Jeffersontown, Kentucky

Naloxone is an “opioid antagonist” medicine. It attaches to opioid receptors in the brain to reverse and block the effects of opioids. Opioids include heroin, fentanyl, oxycodone, and morphine, to name a few. When someone overdoses on opioids, their breathing can slow or stop altogether. Naloxone can quickly and safely restore regular breathing.

Memory loss is the most well-known symptom of dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease. But experts say there are other warning signs that can signal early brain changes — ones that are especially important for types of dementia where forgetfulness is not the primary symptom. Just like occasional lapses in memory, these issues can also be attributed to other age- or health-related changes (or just a bad day), so experts emphasized that they aren’t necessarily red flags for dementia in isolation. But, especially in combination, they might be a sign that it’s time to see a doctor.

For many of those who have been trained by or worked with Teach First, this idea of floating between careers, in particular between public and private sector roles, bringing the connections and insider information along, will make perfect sense. That does not mean it makes sense for the teaching profession or those who rely on it, as 22 years of Teach First have demonstrated. Instead, all efforts should be dedicated to making teaching a more attractive profession to join and remain in for the long haul. Teachers need higher salaries, more funding, lower workloads, more trust. That is the real message from this new report. Not lie-ins, lucrative contracts or private sector influence.

Biomedical sciences are bringing increased focus to social determinants of health…. Very often, commercial interests are intertwined with these social and environmental factors, which has led to the recognition by WHO and other agencies of the need to study and address so-called commercial determinants of health. Commercial interests are an important component of the social determinants of addictive behaviors and disorders.

For months, professors, students and preservation groups have been fighting to save the School of Social Work building, which dates back to 1933 and was once the University Junior High School, which played a large role in the desegregation of Texas public schools. Its model of a successfully integrated school eventually led to the end of school segregation in Austin. Replace an historic building with a football practice facility that facilitates young men acquiring CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy)? Of course… it’s America.

Perhaps, on the debate stage, Mr. Walz can push Mr. Vance to commit to legislation geared toward treating people with substance use disorders. Mr. Walz can also expose how Mr. Vance turned his back on the things that helped make him who he is — public schools, public college and Ivy League opportunities — and catapulted him onto the very stage from which he will speak this week.

So even though my joints ache and my body slips into perimenopause, even though my marriage is going through a rough patch and my creative practice has seemingly died, I know I’ll be OK. In the words of Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, “At least I have her love, the city, she loves me. Lonely as I am. Together we cry.”

In many parts of Florida, where housing costs are soaring and lawmakers have sharply curtailed abortion access, pregnant women and teens who need a safe, stable place to live are increasingly turning to one of their few options: charity-run maternity homes…. But Florida allows most homes to operate without state standards or state oversight. An examination by the New York Times and Reveal found that many homes require residents to agree to strict conditions that limit their communications, their financial decisions, and even their movements.

Mr. Kennedy has no meaningful claim to health expertise beyond an impressive geriatric six-pack and a do-your-own-research mantra. Nonetheless, he has gone from a fringe voice to the national leader of a rising “health freedom” movement powered by conspiracist thinking, resentment against the public health establishment and anti-vaccine fervor.

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Board of Directors is aware of the online posts that have been maliciously published about alleged unfounded grievances against NASW Chief Executive Officer Dr. Anthony Estreet and several other employees at the Association.

Hundreds of social workers in England have begun using an artificial intelligence system that records conversations, drafts letters to doctors and proposes actions that human workers might not have considered.

China’s government has announced it is lifting the retirement age for workers. The changes set to go into effect from January 1, 2025, are seen as an attempt to mitigate the effects of a rapidly ageing society and slow down the draining of pension funds.