Roane schools seeing impact of education bill with wraparound services
WV Metro News
A new school year began Wednesday in Roane County and according to Superintendent Dr. Richard Duncan, students were welcomed with additional support. House Bill 206, the omnibus education reform bill signed into law by Gov. Jim Justice in late June, appropriated an additional $30.5 million for support services in schools such as social workers, psychologists, and counselors.… Roane County now has two full-time school psychologists, one full-time school social worker, a counselor in every school, a nurse in every school, and additional counselor in Roane County High School, according to Duncan.

Yekaterina Kosarenko is a member:
13 Habits of People Who ‘Split’ Because of Childhood Abuse
Yahoo!
As many survivors of childhood abuse know, part of surviving trauma means wearing emotional “armor.” This armor can take many forms, from denying the abuse to regressing back to a child-like state or “forgetting” what happened to you. One trauma defense mechanism we don’t talk about enough is splitting, also known as black-and-white thinking. Though it’s commonly associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD), splitting can also affect childhood trauma survivors. “Splitting is an inner process of seeing oneself and others in absolutes or extremes,” Katya Kosarenko, LCSW, a certified sensorimotor psychotherapist, told The Mighty.

Marianne Yoshioka is a member:
Powerful Voices for Justice
Smith College
In a ceremony that was equal parts hope and determination, humor and joy, the Smith College School for Social Work awarded master’s and doctoral degrees to some 126 graduating students Friday afternoon. Marianne R.M. Yoshioka, dean of the School for Social Work, congratulated the graduates and urged them to do great work, saying, “The people and communities you will serve deserve nothing less than your powerful voice for justice.…”

NJ social workers in Texas to provide aid at migrant detention center
New Jersey 101.5
Apprehensive and not knowing what to expect, a trio of social workers from New Jersey flew out Thursday morning to the U.S. border in Texas to provide aid and document the living conditions of hundreds of migrants at the McAllen detention center. Leading up to their departure, the three members of the National Association of Social Workers’ New Jersey chapter had raised nearly $5,000 for purchasing and bringing supplies to the center, the largest in the country for processing unauthorized immigrants. “We’ll be providing breakfast, lunch and dinner for them. We’ll be interacting with them,” said Jennifer Thompson, executive director of the New Jersey chapter. “The other really important thing for us is to understand firsthand what’s happening at the border, understand the conditions that these detainees are being held in.”

Did Public Assistance Programs Exist in the United States Before Social Security?
Truth or Fiction?
Claim: No public welfare programs existed to help new immigrants in the United States prior to the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935. Rating: Not True.… A report published by the National Association of Social Workers in 2013 pointed out that colonial communities — themselves immigrants — adopted similar programs: As early as 1632, town authorities assigned “overseers of the poor” to investigate poverty and problems such as physical and mental disabilities, crime, or vagrancy. Their tasks were to assess need, collect and distribute funds (from a combination of taxes, private donations, church collections), and decide the fates of needy or deviant townspeople.

Kimberly Spader is a member:
Kimberly Spader running for Wilmington City Council with focus on ‘communication, affordable housing, and public transportation’
Port City Daily
The 2019 local elections will feature several crowded races, including Wilmington City Council, where three incumbents and six challengers are running for three open seats. Kimberly Spader, a licensed clinical social worker who runs a private practice in Wilmington, is one of several new faces running for council. Spader has lived in the area for 20 years and recently moved downtown with her husband.

Nancy Kislin is a member:
School Shootings and Lockdowns: How do Kids Cope?
WebMD
School shootings rank as the second most common worry among children ages 6 to 17, according to a 2018 survey by the Children’s Defense Fund, a nonprofit child advocacy group. A Pew Research survey finds that most teens worry that a shooting at their school is possible. “So many kids have said to me, ‘It’s not if, it’s when,'” says Nancy Kislin, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist in Chatham, NJ, and the author of Lockdown: Talking to Your Kids About School Violence. “To me, that equals a pervasive sense of feeling hopeless.”

Paul Schmidt is a member:
Community Conversations Dinner to gather public input about substance use in Vernon County
LaCrosse Tribune (WI)
The core prevention team consists of Paul Schmidt, licensed clinical social worker and substance abuse counselor who provides supervision for the programming they do, licensed substance abuse/mental health counselors LeJeune and Jessica Leinberger, licensed nurse Emma Hood, and an intern, Robin Hoseman, an educator currently in training at Viterbo University in the Master of Science in Mental Health Counseling program.

Katrice Byrd is a member:
Mental health during college: A guide for students and parents
The Weekly Post
First off, having a support system is key to adjusting to college, said Katrice Byrd, a licensed clinical social worker at Novant Health Midtown Family Medicine in Charlotte. “Connecting with other college students that are going through a similar situation is important,” Byrd said. “You can tell yourself ‘I’m not the only one that’s going through this right now,’ which can make you feel better.”

Karen Perez is a member:
The mental health conversation begins
Tampa Bay Times
Hillsborough County School Board member Karen Perez wanted to know what people thought about mental health. She learned a few things Wednesday evening.… Perez, a clinical social worker, invited school district administrators and elected officials, and they showed up in full force. Superintendent Jeff Eakins addressed the small audience at Middleton High School. State Attorney Andrew Warren and Public Defender Julianne Holt described initiatives they have launched in their offices.

Mollie Volinsky is a member:
How Do You Stop Negative Thoughts? I Gave My Inner Voice A Name & Learned A Lot About My Thinking Patterns
Bustle
Understanding the origin lends compassion towards the self-centered nature of the negative thinking struggle — but it also underlines that it’s a helluva pattern to break. According to research, trauma wires your neural pathways differently. Mollie Volinsky LCSW, tells Bustle that in her trained therapeutic modality, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing), it is believed that ways of thinking and feeling — both physically and emotionally — can get get “stuck” in our brains to ensure survival.