8 Michigan families allege state adoption fraud
Lansing State Journal
Kallman alleges adoption agencies and social workers in seven cases covered up or lied about the level of abuse and neglect the children endured before being removed from their birth parents. Kallman also accuses DHS of denying all eight families access to Social Security funds through an adoption assistance program called Title IV-E, designed to support families who adopt children with special needs.

Poorest miss out on benefits, experience more material hardship, since 1996 welfare reform
Phys.Org
Marci Ybarra, assistant professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, and lead author H. Luke Shaefer, assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, explore the changes in a new paper, “The Welfare Reforms of the 1990s and the Stratification of Material Well-being among Low-income Households with Children,” published in September in Children and Youth Services Review.

Putting Your Mental Health in Order
U.S. News & World Report
“We’re stuck in a continuing worry cycle by staying glued to the 24-hour news cycle,” said Karol Ward, a New York City psychotherapist, author and member of the National Association of Social Workers. “We fear if we’re not plugged in, we’ll miss something.

Silver School of Social Work studies mental health in adulthood
NYU Washington Square News
An August study from NYU’s Silver School of Social Work revealed that young adults who have a history of mental illness and used public system services in their younger years often stop seeking mental health services when they reach young adulthood.

Brene Brown
KXAN.com
Published on Sep 14, 2012 by kxan. Nationally acclaimed author Brene Brown, a University of Houston research professor in the College of Social Work, is one of the keynote speakers. KXAN’s Leslie Rhode talked to her about her latest book Daring Greatly.

Wayne State University receives CDC grant for research into intimate partner violence
News-Medical.net
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has awarded Wayne State University’s School of Social Work a three-year, $1,049,223 grant for researching the factors that facilitate and discourage intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration among middle school and high school youth.

Cat in condo? OK. Companion dog? No way
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Diane Orenstein’s doctor, her psychologist and her social worker all say that a trained “companion dog” would help the 55-year-old woman cope with anxiety, depression and social isolation that she suffers because of brain damage. But the Calhoun-Isles Condominium Association isn’t buying it.

How to cope with trauma in social work
The Guardian (blog)
How to cope with trauma in social work. Those in social work can often come across people who have experienced trauma. Yet there are a few simple steps that can be taken to help deal with this.

Feds Can Sue for Social Workers‘ Texas Overtime
Courthouse News Service
Texas does not have immunity from a complaint seeking $1 million in unpaid overtime for Child Protective Service workers, the 5th Circuit ruled.

School Social Workers Association of Georgia-District 7 elects Chickamauga’s Kulik as president
walkermessenger
The School Social Workers Association of Georgia-District 7 recently elected Linda Kulik, school social worker for Chickamauga City Schools, to serve as district president this year. The district encompasses several north Georgia school systems, including Bartow, Calhoun City, Cartersville City, Catoosa, Chattooga, Chickamauga City, Dade, Dalton City, Floyd, Gordon, Murray, Polk, Rome City, Trion City, Walker and Whitfield.

Crack cocaine wreaks havoc in Rio shantytown
Medical Xpress
Firecrackers and sporadic gunfire greeted the police-escorted social workers as they drove into northern Rio’s Jacarezinho shantytown, home to a large population of crack cocaine addicts. With one million users, Brazil is the world’s largest market for crack, a highly addictive cocaine derivative which is wreaking havoc in impoverished slums, according to a study by the Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP).

Davidson County Schools’ first social worker retires
Lexington Dispatch
Barbara Barnes, the first social worker for Davidson County Schools, stands in her backyard in Tyro where she plans to spend some of her free time after retiring. She came to the system in 1984 as the only social worker.

Foster care infants and toddlers to benefit from new program backed by $50000 Kalamazoo Community Foundation grant
Kalamazoo Gazette – MLive.com
$50,000 grant will benefit local infant and toddlers under foster care supervision thanks to a grant proposal written by eight social work graduate students at Western Michigan University.

Health care, social work employment up in Fairbanks North Star Borough
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Employment in the health care and social assistance sectors in the Fairbanks North Star Borough grew by nearly 12 percent from 2008 to 2011, according to the latest edition of the borough’s Community Research Quarterly.

LICADD Hires New Director Of Employee Services
Long Island Exchange
Monica joins the LICADD team with over twenty years of professional experience in social work and employment support services, and her primary focus will be to expand and administer the Open Arms Employee Assistance Program. Serving more than 60,000 employees in the tri-state area, LICADD’s roster of EAP clients includes some of the region’s largest labor unions, schools districts, nonprofit organizations, corporations and municipalities.

Medical, social services working to help opiate-addicted women deliver healthy babies
Columbus Dispatch
Medical and social workers, meanwhile, tend a widening battlefield where newborns scream and writhe with the pain of opiate withdrawal. “We’re in the throes of an epidemic, and the babies are the most-innocent victims,” said Dr. Rob Crane, a family physician at Ohio State University. “The rise has been astonishing, terrifying.”