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News Items – August 12, 2015

Lara Sobel. Photo courtesy of boston.cbslocal.com.

Lara Sobel. Photo courtesy of boston.cbslocal.com.

[Video] Officials: DCF worker killed after custody dispute
Burlington Free Press
A Vermont Department for Children and Families worker was shot and killed in Barre City on Friday afternoon by a mother unhappy with losing custody of her child, city and state officials said. Lara Sobel died from two gunshot wounds as she left the DCF office at the Barre City Place, 219 North Main St., at about 4:45 p.m., Barre City Police Chief Tim Bombardier said. The suspect, Jody Herring, was tackled by eyewitnesses and held until police arrived, the chief said.

DCF worker allegedly killed by woman who lost custody of child
VTDigger
Eilis O’Herlihy, executive director of the Vermont chapter of the National Association of Social Workers celebrated the work of DCF employees in a statement. “Every day, these workers do their best to navigate sometimes-impossible challenges in an environment of scarce resources,” O’Herlihy said. “This work helps ensure the safety and wellbeing of communities throughout Vermont.” O’Herlihy went on to express the group’s solidarity with social workers across Vermont and the country. “While we know that incidents such as these have been known to occur to child protection workers across the country, it is impossible to prepare for or fathom the devastation that a crime such as this causes,” O’Herlihy said.

[Video] Community to DCF: ‘You are all heroes’
Burlington Free Press
Lara Sobel was a state employee. She enjoyed Thai food. She loved her two daughters and her husband. She cared not just for her own family, but for families across Vermont — so much that she devoted her life to helping them. Those recollections were among sentiments shared at a Sunday-evening vigil for Sobel, 48, who was shot and killed on Friday outside her workplace, the Vermont Department for Children and Families office in Barre. Between 250 and 300 people turned out at the Old Labor Hall to remember Sobel, celebrate her life and mourn her sudden and tragic death.

Mom charged in social worker’s death blames DCF ‘injustices’
WCVB (Boston, MA)
Angelo McClain, CEO of the National Association of Social Workers and former commissioner of the DCF in Massachusetts — where a social worker was slain in 1996 — said there is a level of danger for social workers. “Social workers sign on for this,” McClain said. “We know that’s part of the risk, that you could be assaulted potentially, though you don’t think you’re going to be murdered.”

Vermont Killing Highlights Dangers of Social Work
ABCNews
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2013, nearly 1,100 social workers — including private and governmental — were injured as a result of violence. Among the 490 state government social workers injured by violence that year, nearly a third worked with children and families. A 2005 study that interviewed more than 1,000 social workers found 15 percent had been assaulted by a client within the past year, while nearly a third had been assaulted at some point during their career. The National Association of Social Workers said that was the last time a survey like that had been done.

[Audio] Debriefing And Processing The Four Deaths In Central Vermont
Vermont Public Radio
And as the killings are investigated, many Vermonters are struggling to come to terms with an unprecedented crime. We’ll hear about the latest we know and don’t know about the murders – plus the ongoing investigation, reactions across the state, and what it means for the DCF and other public servants. We’re joined by DCF Commissioner Ken Schatz. Also by VPR reporters Taylor Dobbs and Peter Hirschfeld who have been following the story, Elodie Reed of the St. Albans Messenger, and Angelo McClain of the National Association of Social Workers.

NASW CEO Angelo McClain talks about ways to improve social worker safety
Social Workers Speak!
National Association of Social Workers (NASW) CEO Angelo McClain said Monday during an interview on National Public Radio Vermont that there should be a National Social Worker Safety Act to help protect social workers from violence. The national law should be modeled after a Massachusetts law passed in 2013 that followed the recommendations of the NASW Massachusetts Chapter, McClain, PhD, LICSW said.

 

Social work degree to be available online

Military Times
The University of North Dakota is taking steps to help address an expected increase in demand for social workers, with a new degree program and a collaboration with an American Indian tribe. UND in the fall will begin offering an online bachelor’s degree program in social work. The university cites a U.S. Labor Department study that demand for social workers will grow 19 percent by 2022, with the growth in rural areas potentially higher.

Indiana State professor named Central Indiana’s Black Social Worker of the Year
Indiana State University
Portia Adams, associate professor of social work at Indiana State University, was honored by the Central Indiana Association of Black Social Workers as their Social Worker of the Year at their 30th anniversary gala in June. “I was really humbled,” Adams said about being given this award. “There were just so many people I want to thank that I couldn’t have done it without, I just wanted to stand up there and talk about how great they all are,” she continued.

Kristen Costa is a member:
[Audio] Anxiety as ‘frenemy’ – the good and the bad of dreadful stress
KPCC Public Radio
Stress and burnout specialist, Kristen Lee Costa, Ed.D., encounters people dealing with anxiety regularly and counsels that instead of escaping or medicating anxious feelings, people should first distinguish between beneficial and harmful anxiety.

[Video] Building an oasis in a Philadelphia food desert
PBS NewsHour
There’s also a walk-in clinic where the uninsured can see a nurse practitioner for $20, with just a short wait, can access an on-site pharmacy.  An in-store social worker helps customers apply for public benefits. There’s even a credit union with no minimum deposit on your account, free check cashing, instead of the typical high-fee alternatives in low-income neighborhoods, and a low-cost bill payment service.

Sherry Saturno is a member:
Tarrytown Director Films Documentary on Investing in Humanity
The Hudson Independent
When Saturno, LCSW, DCSW, who now works as the Executive Director of the Hudson Valley Care Coalition in Tarrytown, was a fellow at New York University, she had to do a capstone project to complete her Post-Graduate Fellowship Program, an 18-month long program that NYU offers for those with master’s degrees who wish to pursue social work and learn more about the industry. Wanting to take a different approach in telling the story about healthcare professionals and human investment, she decided to make a film in order to reach a larger audience than writing an article would. She was invited to the Care Management Summit at Binghamton University, and Saturno’s colleague, fellow social worker and organizer of the Care Management Summit, suggested the documentary be filmed there. They eventually got permission from the school and the participants of the conference to conduct and record interviews.

Holly Heath-Shepard is a member:
Holly Heath-Shepard works to help patients with traumatic brain injuries
The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)
Holly Heath-Shepard guided her son through a year of treatment after an improvised explosive device in Iraq took two of his limbs and left him with a mild brain injury. But, she says, her recent efforts to help victims of traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, resulted not from his injuries, but from glimpses of other soldiers during the year she spent with her son at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.… After several years of volunteering with the families affected by TBIs, Heath-Shepard was appointed by Gov. Pat McCrory to the N.C. Brain Injury Advisory Council this summer, and was immediately voted in as chair of the group, which is exploring ways to better support victims of brain injuries and their parents.

Jessica Retrum is a member:
Older adults living alone at greater risk for social isolation
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Being cut off from family, friends and community can be bad for your health. But determining who is socially isolated is not as simple as counting people who live alone, according to speakers at a daylong program Monday focused on eliminating social isolation in older adults. “It’s really stunning what negative impacts are associated with isolation, and it’s also interesting the protective factors related to having connection,” said Jessica H. Retrum, one of the authors of a 2012 AARP Foundation report on social isolation in people over 50 years old.

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