News (1,260 posts)

Receiving benefits comes with stringent requirements around looking for paid work.

Hypertension, or a consistent elevated blood pressure level, is one of the biggest causes of premature death globally. Affecting 1.28 billion adults around the world, it can lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure, kidney damage and many other health problems, and is often described as the ‘silent killer’ due to its lack of symptoms.

Men and adolescent boys are increasingly at risk of resorting to the dangerous use of anabolic steroids in a bid to achieve the desired muscular build modelled on social media, warn Flinders body image experts.

How the U. of Florida forced faculty cooperation with a GOP-backed civics center.

A new study finds that seniors who tend to mirror other people’s feelings are more likely to show signs of being anxious or depressed themselves.

Marie Mathieu became the first public library social worker in the state when she was hired to work at the Cambridge Public Library.

Today, people in wealthy countries can scarcely imagine life without a refrigerator, television or washing machine, but prior to 1960 very few households owned these appliances. From that point on, however, things moved quickly: just fifteen years or so later these items could be found in pretty much every kitchen and living room in these countries. This development from a society in which households own hardly any of these kinds of items to one in which almost every household has them is what the researchers refer to as ‘the domestic transition’. In their paper, they describe what this transition means for emerging countries and what factors contribute to a faster transition.

In calling for a shift to much more direct contact, the group – which included representation from local government, Cafcass, the law, academia and the adoption sector – recommended significant practice changes for both adoption and child protection social workers.

The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Social Development has laid bare its financial struggles emanating from “significant budget cuts”, limiting its capacity to fill essential posts. This was revealed in a written KZN Legislature reply by Social Development MEC Mbali Shinga (above) to the DA KZN Spokesperson on Social Development, Shontel de Boer.

So even as our hearts break, we go on living. For our part, as a publication invested in the power of books and literature, I think now is the moment to throw out lifelines, to do what we can to offer even the smallest antidote to the kind of despair that makes so much sense this week.

The clandestine sharing of gun buyers’ identities — without their knowledge and consent — marked a significant departure for an industry that has long prided itself on thwarting efforts to track who owns firearms in America. At least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson, Remington, Marlin and Mossberg, handed over names, addresses and other private data to the gun industry’s chief lobbying group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Americans now spend more time alone, have fewer close friendships and feel more socially detached from their communities than they did 20 years ago. One in two adults reports experiencing loneliness, the physiological distress that people endure from social isolation. The nation’s surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, declared loneliness an epidemic late last year.

The United States has almost 2 million people behind bars in prisons, jails and detention centers – the largest such population in any country. Although incarcerated people are locked away from the outside world, they are even more vulnerable to the impacts of disasters, such as hurricanes and wildfires, than the rest of society. Above: Police watch over prisoners from Orleans Parish Prison who were evacuated to an overpass due to flooding after Hurricane Katrina

The sooner a lay rescuer (bystander) starts cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on a person having a cardiac arrest at home or in public, up to 10 minutes after the arrest, the better the chances of survival and brain protection, according to an analysis of nearly 200,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrest cases in the U.S. from 2013 to 2022.

Time alone offers unique psychological benefits, once you learn to embrace these quiet moments rather than escape them

ACOSS warmly welcomes the report of the Independent Inquiry into Australia’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, released by the Federal Government on Tuesday 29 October, and strongly encourages the Federal Government to act swiftly upon the key recommendations.

Despite months of discussion with key representatives from the Department of Health and the five HSCT’s and subsequent assurances that an offer was imminent. Negotiators reported that there has been no contact with NIPSA, from the Department since 4 October 2024.

Any action can seem futile amid so much suffering. I’ve realised the important thing is to stop despairing and do something

Naoki Hyakuta, the leader of a minor Japanese opposition party apologised on Sunday for mentioning a hypothetical idea that women have their uteruses removed after turning 30 so they feel they have a “time limit” on childbirth. He seemed to suggest during a discussion on the country’s declining birth rate that this might make women choose to have children earlier. Above: Naoki Hyakuta

Islamophobia Awareness month is an opportunity to learn about the impact of Islamophobia across the globe. It is an opportunity to highlight how we can stand in solidarity with those who suffer intolerance, discrimination and violence primarily because they are Muslims, and challenge stereotypes and prejudices.

If a hard day in the office leaves you crabby and uncooperative, you may have an excuse: scientists say exercising self-restraint can exhaust parts of the brain related to decision-making and impulse control, leaving you less able to manage your behaviour towards others. The researchers say their results tie into the theory of “ego depletion” – a controversial idea in psychology that willpower is a limited resource that gets used up by effort.

Supporters and critics of the postponed Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act (HEFSA) argue the pros and cons of the legislation at a panel event at City St George’s.

Helen Bader School of Social Welfare faculty presented at the Council for Social Work Education’s (CSWE) annual program meeting in Kansas City…. Social Work Assistant Professor Angela Matijczak and collaborators presented, Conducting a Photovoice Study with LGBTQIA+ Latine Adults: Methods and Lessons Learned.

Their new approach was more accurate than tools that look only at diagnostic codes, and found that 22.8 percent of the population experience symptoms of long COVID, a greater figure than previous estimates that may be less biased and more representative of national trends, according to the study’s authors.

As a great loss loomed, I feared straying too far from the hard truth. But I learned to distinguish denial from hope.

Seriously ill patients and family members face intense emotional suffering, and researchers, say clinicians must engage in ‘compassionate communication’ as part of the treatment process. They have identified so-called ‘never words’ that should not be said under any circumstances; offer methods for clinicians to identify their own never words; and provide more helpful language to use instead.

When we see the outputs of AI, we can see these as the result of a very sophisticated process of extracting raw materials, labor, and our collective intelligence and repackaging these and selling it for a profit. Above: Nets outside of a Foxconn Technology Group employee dormitory in China in 2010 to help prevent suicide attempts.

The children spent an average of 6.5 hours per week (0.92 hours per day) using tablets when they were 3.5 years old, 6.7 hours per week (0.95 hours per day) when they were 4.5 years old, and 7.0 hours per week (1 hour per day) when they were 5.5 years old. The researchers found that each 69-minute increase in tablet use when the children were 3.5 years old was associated with a 22% increase in expressions of anger and frustration when they were 4.5 years old. In turn, each standard deviation increase in anger and frustration at 4.5 years was associated with an increase of roughly 17 minutes in tablet use at 5.5 years.

Commentators often blame the rise of the far right in East Germany on the social and economic consequences of “failed” reunification. But right-wing extremism is by no means exclusive to the neue Bundesländer in the East. In the postwar West, former Nazis were rehabilitated and integrated into the federal bureaucracy. The far right shaped the core institutions of the Federal Republic, which affected their ability—or willingness—to investigate or prosecute its crimes. Above: Scenes from the 1992 riots in Rostock-Lichtenhagen.

The Rev. Blair Moorhead (left) with colleagues in ministry at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in McLean, Virginia.

How trustworthy is a positive HIV test result? How probable is an actual infection when the test is positive? Even professionals often get such questions wrong, which can lead to misdiagnoses and unnecessary surgeries in practice. In a new study with medicine and law students, a team of mathematics education scholars from the Universities of Regensburg, Kassel, and Freiburg, Heidelberg University of Education, and LMU Munich has compared four different training courses designed to help students gain a better understanding of probabilities.

Social work interns are stepping into critical roles at the Uniondale Public Library, providing essential support to the community. The initiative, a collaboration with Adelphi University, is an effort to both enhance the interns’ education and help local residents. Above: Natasha Holder, one of the Uniondale Library’s two social work interns

“This funding is a lifeline to several New Mexico counties that are impacted by healthcare and provider deserts,” Dr. Anna Nelson, Director of the Center for Excellence in Social Work, said. “It will enable us to provide educational resources for social workers who serve in these communities while creating better pathways for social work as a career. The more well-trained social workers we have in our state, the better prepared we are to meet the urgent mental health needs of our communities.”

Sheffield is moving at pace to meet the current and future demand for more carers in the city. It’s expected that there will be 13,000 more people aged over 65 by 2030 in Sheffield, so anticipating and responding effectively to changing health and care needs is key.

Beyond his contributions to the educational field, Galbreath’s commitment to ethical practice and lifelong learning has set a high standard for social work education in Ohio. His former colleagues and students regard him as not only a knowledgeable educator but also as a model of integrity and competence. Through his efforts to create inclusive policies and environments that welcome every voice, Galbreath has fostered a legacy that will undoubtedly shape the future of social work in Ohio.

A Victoria police crime scene at a Melbourne tobacco shop. Such fires have occurred on high streets across Victoria in the past 18 months.

Eight in 10 councils in England are on course to bust their budget on adult social care by March, according to a survey said to show the “ongoing and intensifying pressures” facing the sector. Such conditions do not provide the environment in which the new Government’s proposed National Care Service “can hope to succeed”, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass) warned.

The innovative technology combines expertise in engineering and social work to proactively detect and intervene in incidents of violence in caregiving environments.

We present qualitative data from interviews and focus groups with people who have been incarcerated in prisons and/or jails in Colorado regarding their experiences with incarceration infrastructure, amplifying the voices of formerly incarcerated people to identify vulnerabilities which have been deliberately hidden by carceral social and institutional processes, and adding them to the academic dialogue around incarceration and climate change.

Asha Warsame) (right) led the way for her younger siblings, Ayan Warsame (left) and Abdi Najim Aban (center). All three graduated on the same spring day — Ayan with a master’s in social work and Abdi, a computer science degree.

Muscle mass and strength tend to wane over time. So do balance and other factors related to walking. These are all important to independent living and well-being. But it has not been clear which of these characteristics decline more quickly with age, and at what rates.

“During and after the pandemic, we see a greater difference between regions in terms of children’s weight. It even looks like it has exacerbated health inequalities,” explains Charlotte Nylander, a researcher at Uppsala University and the Centre for Clinical Research in Region Sörmland, where she is also a Senior Consultant in Child Health Care.

The 1945 Labour Manifesto was a startling feat of political imagination. Does Starmer have the courage to go big again? Above: Anenurin Bevan, Minister of Health, on the first day of the National Health Service, 5 July 1948 at Park Hospital, Davyhulme

Social work is vital to the Party’s long-term governance, the country’s enduring peace and stability, social harmony and stability, and the well-being of the people, Xi said in the instruction.

Researchers have joined forces to give a boost to spatial memory by creating a unique experimental setup that combines non-invasive deep-brain stimulation, virtual reality training, and fMRI imaging. The study demonstrates that targeted, painless electric impulses to the hippocampus and adjacent structures, a deep brain region implied in memory and spatial navigation, can improve the brain’s ability to recall locations and navigate more effectively.

The cost of childbirth and postpartum health care results in significant, ongoing financial hardship, particularly for lower-income families with commercial insurance. About half of people who give birth in the United States are covered by commercial health insurance, which typically requires cost-sharing in the form of deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance.

Consider an example from climate science. Experts studying large atmospheric circulation patterns and their impacts on global weather would like to know how these systems might change with warming climates. Here, many variables come into play: ocean and air temperatures and pressures, ocean currents and depths, and even details of the earth’s rotation over time. But which variables cause which measured effects?

Partisanship and ideology can not only affect individuals’ mental health and social relationships; they can also intensify disease outbreaks, affecting the whole society.

Our research project, Dying In The Margins, was established in 2019 to better understand the experiences of people dying at home in circumstances of financial hardship and deprivation. Perhaps surprisingly, it is still not widely understood that the age we die at, what we die from, and the way we die are largely determined by our socioeconomic circumstances over the course of our lives.