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News Items – April 22, 2022

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A Caseworker Quits Over Texas’ Trans Kids Policy
Slate – What Next Podcast
One transgender man quit his job as a child welfare worker in Texas after having to investigate families of trans kids for child abuse. Morgan Davis saw his job as an investigator in the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services as a calling. As a transgender man, he joined the child welfare agency to be the advocate he never had while growing up. But Davis eventually quit, following Governor Greg Abbott’s order to investigate the families of transgender children. While Abbott’s order is currently paused due to an injunction, many families are still left in limbo due to open cases – and other child welfare workers are handing in their notices.

[Audio] Texas welfare workers are resigning over orders to investigate trans kids’ families
NPR
You know, most of them are social workers. They got into this job to investigate serious concerns of child abuse and neglect. And now they’re being sent out or fear being sent out on investigations where a child is receiving medical care in consultation with a doctor and being asked to sort of intervene between that relationship between the parents and the child’s doctor. And that paired with some of the, you know, concerns over how these cases are being handled has left them, many of them say, with no choice but to resign.

She wrote a book on body safety for kids. Will it get past the adults?
The Washington Post
Johnson, whose résumé shows she received a master’s degree in social work in 1996 and has spent decades working for Baltimore City Public Schools, published the book “Body Safety Zones BSZ” in April 2020. The main character in it is a school social worker named Ms. B Persistent and she works at the Rhoda Lee Jones Elementary School. There, she teaches students about body autonomy and how to ask for help if someone touches them inappropriately.

Mamie B. Todd, an outspoken civil rights activist whose work as a social worker led to the founding of the state’s Child Protective Services Agency, dies
Baltimore Sun
Mamie B. Todd, the granddaughter of a slave who became an outspoken civil rights activist and social worker whose advocacy for children led to the founding of the state’s Child Protective Services Agency, died in her sleep April 8 at her Pacific Grove, California home. The former longtime Ashburton resident was 105. “My grandmother was always impatient when it came to the humiliation and degradation of segregation, because she knew who she was descended from,” said her grandson, Benjamin Todd Jealous, who had been head of the NAACP from 2008 to 2013 and was the Democratic candidate for governor of Maryland in 2018. “She was a quiet humble power.”

Columnist Sara Weinberger: A diminishing social worker supply chain
Daily Hampshire Gazette
The clinical social work supply chain is diminishing. Once licensed to become independent practitioners, increasing numbers of social workers are leaving community work for private practice, which is often inaccessible to low income, uninsured, and/or non-English speaking people. The public is largely unaware that social workers represent the largest group of mental health providers in the nation. The past two-plus years have and continue to exact a heavy toll on people’s mental health. We are in a mental health crisis, where the vast need for treatment clashes with staff shortages.

Greg McGann is a member:
‘The 1619 Project’ shows how the legacy of slavery continues to keep us divided
The Gainesville Sun
I just finished “The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning collaboration by multiple academics and historians on the history of slavery and its impact on America. I labored through the book, not because it is poorly written; it is compelling, exhaustively researched and documented with extensive footnotes. “The 1619 Project” is a difficult read because the account is so harrowing. To dehumanize an entire race required legalizing unbelievable savagery. An estimated one-third of those kidnapped from Africa died in passage. There are multiple accounts of enslaved families being torn asunder, husbands separated from wives, children sold away from parents.

Chad Dion Lassiter is a member:
COVID-19 proved we need more diversity among social workers
Penn Live
All of us are watching the birth of new disparities. COVID came and swept millions of Americans – most of whom were already working low-paid jobs – into poverty. About 37 million Americans try to make a life below the federal poverty line, an impossibly low $500 a week for a family of four. From poverty comes a litany of woes – housing insecurity, utility shut offs, poor health, hunger, substance abuse and mental health issues. During COVID, these vulnerabilities that we had ceased to see, revealed themselves.

Ravita Omabu Okafor is a member:
[Video] On the Record: Mental health is a matter of life and death
WRAL
From the onset of the pandemic to the great resignation, mental health challenges are shifting the climate of life as we know it. Anxiety and depression are impacting so many of us. One in five North Carolinians admits to struggling, but so many more often feel too afraid to speak out. Our guests are two people who know that mental health is a matter of life and death. Chris Curley lost his sister Jenny to suicide in 2018. He and his wife are now working to raise awareness about the importance of talking about mental health with those you love. News station WRAL featured NASW-NC member Ravita Omabu Okafor in the “On the Record” segment about access to mental health services.

WRAL Documentary ‘Pandemic Generation: Kids in Crisis’
WRAL
As part of our commitment to providing solutions and real help to the community, WRAL News, in partnership with the National Association of Social Workers NC and the North Carolina Psychological Association, will host a mental health pros on call hotline to help anyone struggling with mental health issues. Dozens of licensed professionals will be on hand to answer your questions about mental health issues and access to help. WRAL’s Mikaya Thurmond and Cristin Severance will host the phone bank.

DSPS head pushes back on criticism of agency amid licensing delays
Wisconsin Business
Marc Herstand, executive director of the Wisconsin chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, spoke about the issue in mid-March during a meeting of the Assembly committee. “In my 29 years, I’ve never, ever seen the backlog as bad as it is now,” he said. “In the past, I generally received two or three contacts per year, mostly from out-of-state folks having difficulty getting licensed. In the last year or so, it’s been one to two a week. So it’s been really bad.”

Carali Mclean is a member:
A Dunnellon Town Hall meeting brought awareness to opioid deaths in Marion County
WCJB
According to the CDC opioid abuse has caused the death of more than 75,000 people in the U.S. alone. “Teenage overdoses have gone up about 80% in the last couple of years,” said clinical social worker Carali Mclean. At the Boys & Girls Club in Dunnellon, they talked about how to prevent this in our youth. “The access to opioids and the fentanyl that is so lethal,” said Mclean.

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