Jim MacKay is a member:
Former Concord mayor Jim MacKay wins national award for social work at 88
Concord Monitor (NH)
Jim MacKay has been drawn to leadership roles all of his life. MacKay was the first director of the New Hampshire state offices on Alcohol, Mental Health and Aging. He was one of the first social workers in New Hampshire to open a private practice, served 12 years on Concord’s city council – including four years as mayor – and is in is 18th year as a state representative. Now, at 88, he’s been awarded the Knee/Wittman Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Social Workers Foundation.

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DPI calls for more than $60 million boost for school mental health services
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The state Department of Public Instruction on Monday called for more than $60 million in new spending on mental health in Wisconsin schools.… The biggest push is for more school social workers. Tom McCarthy, spokesman for DPI, said the ratio of social workers to students has been rising since 2012 to a figure “astronomically out of whack compared to national numbers.” In 2012, the ratio was one social worker to 1,050 students.

Rachel Sussman is a member:
Why Won’t Any of My Friends Set Me Up?
The Cut
Experts in these things say that, as with most things that are terrible about modern dating life, we can blame technology. Asking what happened to the setup is “like asking why we don’t communicate via smoke signals anymore,” says Rachel Sussman, a couples counselor and licensed clinical social worker who — twist! — met her partner through a setup. “Technology has made it easier to meet people, so the setup has become less and less the norm.” We’ve become autonomous in our dating lives: We swipe, we slide into DMs, and we creepily watch Instagram stories. We don’t need our friends to intervene anymore.

Tracy K. Ross is a member:
Should I Be Friends With My Ex? 7 Things You Shouldn’t Do If You Want To Stay In Touch
Bustle
Pursuing a friendship with an ex can be difficult for a variety of reasons. “Often one person still has feelings for the other or hasn’t moved on,” couples and family therapist Tracy K. Ross, LCSW tells Bustle. “Maybe the breakup wasn’t their choice, or even though they agree it had to happen, they haven’t found someone new or still miss things about the old partner. New partners are often uncomfortable with these friendships, and some wonder if it’s ever really possible to be friends with someone you were once romantically involved with.”

Sophie Hansen is political director of NASW-MA:
On A Supplemental Budget Informed By Recent School Shootings, Officials Are Divided
WBUR
This use of a fiscal windfall is “a good start,” according to Sophie Hansen, political director of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. “Social workers’ role is to prioritize the students’ well-being and safety,” Hansen said. “And while this is something that is slated to be one year, our hope would be that [more] schools can see the value of a social worker — and think creatively about how they can prioritize mental health going forward.”

Is it ever acceptable for social workers to ignore their clients?
BBC
A representative of the National Association of Social Workers, the largest professional social work association in the United States, told the BBC: “Social workers have an ethical obligation to protect clients’ privacy and confidentiality. “Many social workers make the decision to not approach clients publicly, as a means of protecting that client’s confidentiality. “In this scenario, it may have been a means of avoiding family members asking about the client.”

Timothy Davis is President of NASW-KS:
Kansas Drops Hiring Standards to Attract More Child Welfare Workers
The Chronicle of Social Change
Kansas National Association of Social Workers President Timothy Davis said he understands the difficult position the state is in trying to fill positions that have been open for a lengthy amount of time, but he also feels that this isn’t the answer to solving the problem. “We need to make sure we’re hiring well-qualified, well-experienced professionals into these positions,” Davis said. “A better approach is to say: ‘How can we attract more people to child welfare? How do we make these positions more attractive?’”

Gary Bell is a member
Blacks still suffer from quiet HIV/AIDS epidemic
The Final Call
Gary Bell, CEO of Philadelphia- based BEBASHI Transition To Hope, said it’s true that Blacks are disproportionately affected by HIV. Mr. Bell is a licensed clinical social worker. “One of the biggest determinants is poverty. Black people are disproportionately impoverished and there is a whole host of what we call social determinants of health such as homelessness, substance abuse, domestic violence incarceration, a number of things that make us more vulnerable to any type of major health problems,” he said.

Lorna Benton is a member:
Lorna Benton: Crimes against humanity in the name of the U.S.A.
Times-Call (Longmont, CO)
As a 20-plus-year veteran of the mental health field, child advocate, and basic citizen of humanity, I know that children are being traumatized under the situations and conditions being reported both by the news and personal accounts of colleagues who have gone to these areas — some of these children will surely die. This is not alarmist, this is fact. Failure to thrive is a real condition which can result from the situations currently occurring and can ultimately result in death — if it hasn’t already. Is this why we are not getting current numbers of reunified/detained children?

Kendra Simpkins is a member:
‘Rapid’ trauma treatment gets results — and resistance
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Earlier this year, Kendra Simpkins, a military veteran turned clinical social worker, received a call at her Sarasota practice from a frantic mother whose son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of combat situations during multiple deployments. Over the first three of 12 scheduled weeks of “exposure therapy” at the VA — a method designed to desensitize a patient to past trauma by “reliving” the stressful experience — the mother said she had seen her son grow progressively worse, to the degree that she now feared for his safety. Simpkins, 35, who practices a form of counseling known as “Rapid Resolution Therapy” (RRT), a short-term treatment to neurologically eliminate emotional connections to past events, encouraged the mother to set up an appointment.

Amy Jeppesen is a member:
Since 2013, Boise opioid deaths have increased a hundredfold. How do we stop it?
The Idaho Statesman
Amy Jeppesen sees Treasure Valley residents who are trying to kick opioid addictions every day. “People hear ‘opioid epidemic,’ and they think big city, not Boise,” said Jeppesen, a licensed clinical social worker who owns the addiction treatment center Recovery 4 Life. “We used to have maybe one a week who was an opioid user. Now if we had 10 people come in a week, probably six or seven are opioid users. It’s a big percentage.” She’s increased the number of pro bono slots at her facility from five to 25 in the past year, in large part because there was a state funding shortfall for substance abuse treatment last year.

Amy Starin is a member:
Kankakee County receives $200,000 grant for children’s mental health
Kankakee Daily Journal
“Early intervention is key” when “caring for children with behavioral and emotional problems,” said Dr. Amy Starin, a licensed clinical social worker and ILCHF’s senior program officer for mental health. One in 10 Illinois children suffers a mental illness “severe enough to cause some level of impairment; yet, in any given year, only about 20 percent of these children receive mental health services,” according to the 2017 annual report by the Illinois Children’s Mental Health Partnership.

Jumoke Omojola is a member:
The Death of a Parent Affects Even Grown Children Psychologically and Physically
Fatherly
Studies have implicated the posterior cingulate cortex, frontal cortex, and cerebellum brain regions in grief processing. These regions are involved in retrieving memories and dwelling on the past — but, in a cruel twist of neuroanatomy, they’re also involved in regulating sleep and appetite. “This might provide some explanation for the different and unique responses to grief and loss,” Jumoke Omojola, a clinical social worker in Omaha, Nebraska, told Fatherly. “Physiological changes might include headaches, stomach aches, dizziness, tightness in the chest too much sleep, too little sleep, overeating, or lack of appetite.”