News (1,559 posts)

The limits of the administration’s “industrial policy,” touted as marking a “post-neoliberal” paradigm shift, have been extensively documented; it was always a national security program first—an ill-conceived reaction to fears of a rising China—and a pro-worker agenda second, if at all. The bigger, less talked-about picture is the long arc of ten years of failure to confront inequality after the Piketty moment in 2014. Across four key policy areas—taxation, labor standards, the welfare state, and antitrust—Democrats could have pursued a comprehensive program for combating plutocracy and empowering workers. But the opportunity was frittered away through a relentless focus on playing by the old rules of policy debate and routing reform through the usual elite channels, insulated from—and often outright hostile to—the voices and views of on-the-ground constituencies. All that came at the cost of forging a durable political coalition.

Harm reduction advocates are implementing solidarity-based strategies for curbing drug overdoses in Minneapolis. Above: Harm reduction advocate Marissa Bonnie displays a syringe used to administer Naloxone, a highly effective overdose reversal drug

The state has made only meager progress in implementing the plans laid out in that law, and the number of domestic violence killings continues to increase. The bill called for building the network over six years, but nearly four years after Gov. JB Pritzker signed it, only seven of the state’s 102 counties have helped establish fatality case review teams.

Taisha Mathieu, center, works with 8th-grade students participating in the Teen Outreach Program, a weekly workshop led by social workers that focuses on mental health, at a middle school in New Jersey

The cliche of the loutish, emotionally inadequate boyfriend is everywhere. The truth is more complicated

The results from the clinical trial, published in The Lancet: Healthy Longevity and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), evaluated the effect and cost-effectiveness of a new service, consisting of six personalised home-based visits from a support worker, tailored to each person to identify what they need to stay well and independent. Interventions could include home exercise programmes, nutritional support to improve energy levels, improving mental wellbeing and increasing social connections.

The SSSC currently regulates about 176,500 of the approximately 213,000 people working in the sector in Scotland, including social workers, social work students, children’s and adults’ residential care staff, day care workers in children’s services and adult home care workers. The proposed new groups would add about 7,400 to this total, including 2,800 social work assistants.

The scientists identified 24 systematic reviews of single-session mental health and behavioral health interventions, which included 415 clinical trials. Of the 24 systematic reviews identified, they found that 83% reported positive effects from SSIs for one or more of the following outcomes: anxiety, depression, externalizing problems, eating problems, substance use, and treatment engagement or uptake.

The generative AI models we’ve been using since ChatGPT launched in November 2022 are generally well behaved. There are signs this may be about to change.

Ben and Moira aren’t alone. Experts estimate there are hundreds of thousands of scammers in the industry across Southeast Asia. Some of them are unrepentant criminals, ruthlessly exploiting victims across the world. Others are victims themselves, trafficked and held against their will. Others still are desperate people willing to participate in the industry to survive, but once inside, find they can no longer leave.

I don’t see near enough squirming

The end-stage dystopia of the deprofessionalization of teachers is already apparent in some parts of the US. A new online charter school, Unbound Academy, plans to teach kids for two hours a day using learning apps driven by artificial intelligence. Afternoons will be spent on activities like public speaking and group projects. Initially approved for grades four to eight, this school replaces teachers with “guides,” who provide emotional support and individual coaching, at a ratio of one guide to every thirty-three students. For the moment, these guides still need teaching degrees, at least according to the charter school’s initial application for approval. Yet the idea that machines should be the ones delivering curricula and humans are needed only as cheerleaders shows how low our appreciation of pedagogues has fallen.

Unison branch secretary Robin Taggart says the huge stress levels among social work staff, combined with lower pay in Inverclyde than in other council areas, lie behind high vacancy rates.

ACOSS CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie AO said: “ACOSS welcomes the Australian Labor Party’s commitment to invest $8.5 billion to increase access to GP bulk billing, and the Coalition’s commitment to match it. Reducing out of pocket costs for primary health care is a vital step to improve access and outcomes, including for lower income patients.

International researchers warn that the ongoing mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has the potential to spread across borders more rapidly. The mpox virus has mutated, and the new variant, clade 1b, has become more infectious.

Ian Dave Serbado, a first-year social work student at the University of Cebu, was one of the 250 students who attended the ‘Dialogue with Social Work Students’ organized by the Social Welfare Institutional Development Bureau (SWIDB) of DSWD-7.

Social workers from across Kentucky gathered at the Capitol to meet with legislators and discuss the myriad challenges facing their profession. Among them was Alaina Sweasy, who views her role not merely as a job title but as a chance to help individuals who have faced similar struggles.

To paraphrase Captain Renault – I am shocked to see this development…

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner speaks at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference

Statement of Sharon Parrott, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities President, on passage of the House budget resolution

The researchers found dementia risk decreased with higher amounts of physical activity. Dementia risks were 60% lower in participants in the 35 to 69.9 minutes of physical activity/week category; 63% lower in the 70 to 139.9 minutes/week category; and 69% lower in the 140 and over minutes/week category. For their analysis, the researchers analyzed a dataset covering nearly 90,000 adults living in the U.K. who wore smart-watch-type activity trackers.

One solution for avoiding ongoing austerity lies in raising a higher proportion of taxes from assets. For despite the UK enjoying a long personal wealth boom, little of this boom is the result of new wealth creation or higher productivity.

The ethics are muddy, the country is divided and the world is watching Canada’s next move. Inside the crusade for psychiatric MAID.

Generative AI allows you to blow through the thousands of little decisions that go into a work of art.

This is an example of how one disaster can exacerbate the risk of others, an effect known as cascading disasters. The Ruidoso fires (above) and floods also highlight the need to understand how disaster risks are interrelated and why it is important to address those risks as early as possible, especially as the U.S. experiences a higher frequency of billion-dollar disasters over time.

This study comprehensively examined trends across different states, regions, metropolitan versus non-metropolitan areas and by racial and ethnic groups. It also is one of the first to incorporate registry data from all 50 states to examine age-specific breast cancer trends.

In her budget address last week, Ayotte said people enrolled in the safety-net insurance program would pay a “nominal” share of their health care costs…. Currently, people enrolled in New Hampshire Medicaid don’t pay a monthly premium. Ayotte’s plan would change that for people over a certain income threshold.

Infants were taken from their mothers in Chile in a money-making scheme involving doctors, social workers and judges, according to investigations into the matter. They were delivered to foreign adoptive parents, in some cases for as much as $40,000…. Bizama recounted how she was bullied into giving up her newborn daughter by a social worker who told her she could not adequately care for another child.

Under the Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill, new placements in for-profit children’s homes, secure accommodation or foster placements, by Welsh or English councils, will be banned, other than in exceptional circumstances, in April 2030.

A Wiley journal has retracted more than two dozen articles in the last few months for peer review issues. The articles, which appeared in Environmental Toxicology, have been retracted in batches, the latest on February 16-17, with previous sets in January and November.

Patricia Chan, an officer-in-charge and social worker at Rainbow Lutheran Centre

We are (still) in the majority.
They are divided.
The separation of church and state is a good idea—and we should try it.
Extreme levels of material inequality are eroding democracy.
Knowledge is power.
Organization matters.

Text of bill here: https://ndlegis.gov/assembly/69-2025/regular/documents/25-0830-02000.pdf

Dr Jennifer Davidson is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Melbourne.

Prior research shows that upward of 70% of pregnant women use acetaminophen during pregnancy to control pain or reduce fever. The drug, which is the active ingredient of many pain-relief medications, is one of the few considered safe to take during pregnancy by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The new findings suggest, however, that doctors should reconsider prescribing medications with acetaminophen to mothers during pregnancy, the researchers said.

Kosovo authorities closed four facilities of the Center for Social Work – which operated within the parallel Serbian system – on Friday due to suspicion that “illegal acts related to the electoral process” were carried out there…. According to the statement, these officials of parallel and illegal institutions are suspected of having called citizens and threatened them, or shown them how to vote, making them conditional on the payment of social assistance.

Care minister Stephen Kinnock (above) has said “we need to take a fundamental look” at how care homes, mental health support and other similar services are funded as boroughs face mounting costs to take care of some of their most vulnerable residents.

Cold violence is a form of emotional abuse that occurs within care relationships. It happens when the person with more power and resources in the relationship completely and intentionally withdraws communication and emotional support for a sustained period. Cold violence is used to punish people for particular conduct or to limit their independence and freedom.

On 7 February 2025, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a policy that could weaken the position of the United States as a global leader in scientific innovation by slashing funds to the infrastructure that allows universities and other institutions to conduct research in the first place.

The National Institutes of Health has stopped considering new grant applications, delaying decisions about how to spend millions of dollars on research into diseases ranging from heart disease and cancer to Alzheimer’s and allergies…. Already, the meeting freeze has stalled about 16,000 grant applications vying for around $1.5 billion in NIH funding, one of the people who is familiar with the grant-making process said.

In Deep South states, the chill over academic freedom has turned to ice at many primary and secondary schools and institutions of higher learning. Emboldened conservative students, parents and state legislators pressure academic leadership to curtail inclusive curricula and classroom discussion. All five Southern Poverty Law Center focus states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi — now have education censorship laws.

Those Long Island residents include 103,400 seniors, four in nine children, four in nine people with disabilities, and 48% of births, according to data presented by the Healthcare Education Project during the session. Medicaid covers over $9 billion in medical services for Long Islanders.

On Trump’s first day back in office, the president removed existing federal safeguards for AI. After a $1 million donation from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to Trump’s inaugural fund,the company announced it would create a version of the popular artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT for government agencies — including highly sensitive information like nuclear weapon security. The contract followed the president’s $500 billion commitment to a joint venture by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank to build new data centers.

Dorothy Poku and Yvonne Adade, master’s in social work students at the University of Winchester, have been gaining experience at The Boaz Project

Emergency provisions given by New Horizon Youth Centre to young adults who are sleeping rough.

Kenyan lawmakers have introduced a bill seeking to formalize and regulate the social work profession by ensuring practitioners are trained, registered, and licensed. The Institute of Social Work Professionals Bill (National Assembly Bill No. 17 of 2023) aims to elevate social work to a recognized profession, enhancing service delivery and upholding ethical standards.

“Today in America we are rapidly moving toward an oligarchic form of society where a handful of multibillionaires not only have extraordinary wealth, but unprecedented economic, media, and political power,” said Sen. Sanders in Iowa City, which like Omaha is represented by a Republican U.S. House member who narrowly won reelection last November and has faced pressure to reject the GOP budget plan. “Brothers and sisters, that is not the democracy that men and women fought and died to defend.”

In 1840 John Anthony Gardner Davis, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, was shot by a student and died three days later. This is the earliest documented case of gun violence in schools that I can find.

Academic tenure is one of American higher education’s few guarantees. It protects scholarship and teaching from political constraints and censorship, earned after years of research and training. It’s a promise. Until, for Dr. Maura Finkelstein (above), it wasn’t.

The new regime’s brazen aggression and extreme goals are most visible in the frontal attack on the U.S. federal workforce, which has witnessed the gutting or disabling of several agencies, layoffs at virtually all others, the shredding of collective bargaining contracts with federal unions, and an attempt to effectively break the civil service.