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News Items – October 27, 2015

Marilyn Flynn is a member:
USC School of Social Work changes course(s)
USC News
Revolutionary changes in the U.S. health, education and welfare systems demand a different kind of social worker — one who has the knowledge, skills and attitudes to work in emerging and evolving areas, and even for jobs that do not yet exist. To address this need, the USC School of Social Work has redesigned its curriculum, ensuring it is producing social workers prepared for current and future challenges. “Our curriculum has an entirely new profile. We have completely revised all our courses, housed them in a new departmental structure and changed the underlying concept of what our graduates must master,” said Marilyn L. Flynn, dean of the School of Social Work. “I was honored to witness the leadership and extraordinary collaboration of our faculty and staff in developing this new curriculum structure that strengthens the ability of our graduates to lead 21st century programs.”

Edwina Uehara is a member:
Incoming $20 million of scholarship funding to the UW School of Social Work
The Daily of the University of Washington
The UW School of Social Work was recently gifted $20 million from Connie and Steve Ballmer, philanthropists passionate about education and Seattle communities. This gift is principally to fund student scholarships and reduce the debt to salary ratio for professionals in social work. “In social work, like in all higher education, the cost of going to graduate school is expensive,” Dr. Edwina Uehara, dean of the School of Social Work, said. “Upon graduation social workers do amazing, but their salaries tend to be relatively low. That debt to salary ratio is what we’re most concerned about.”

Allan Barsky is a member:
FAU Professor to Receive ‘Excellence in Ethics Award’ from the National Association of Social Workers
Newswise
The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) will be honoring Allan Barsky, JD, MSW, Ph.D., professor in the School of Social Work at Florida Atlantic University, on Friday, Oct. 23 in Washington, D.C., at its upcoming 60th Anniversary Conference’s Pioneer Induction Ceremony. Barsky is being honored with an “Excellence in Ethics Award” for his contributions to professional social work ethics. He also will chair a panel on the history, evolution, and future of the NASW Code of Ethics in a conference seminar that will be livestreamed (at 11:25 a.m. to 12:25 p.m. on Friday) by the NASW (see www.socialworkers.org/nasw/nasw60th.asp for more information). “I am deeply honored to receive this award from my peers, and to help advance and promote the important work of the National Association of Social Workers,” said Barsky.

Vermont grapples with social worker safety after shooting
Bradenton Herald
For eight months before a social worker was gunned down, a labor-management committee in the Department for Families and Children warned that too-heavy workloads were hurting relationships between social workers and families and contributing to increasing danger, a legislative committee heard Tuesday. “Relationships are really important with respect to worker safety. That does relate to caseload,” Ken Schatz, the department’s commissioner, told the Joint Legislative Child Protection Oversight Committee during a daylong hearing Tuesday.

Sam Hickman is executive director of the National Association of Social Workers West Virginia Chapter:
Advocates: Fight doesn’t end with WV addiction forum
Charleston Gazette-Mail
According to Shapiro, 12-step recovery programs, which have become increasingly popular over the past few decades, have approximately a 5 percent long-term success rate. Additional clinical research needs to be conducted, Shapiro said, and more strategies need to be identified that could produce better interventions for addicts looking to recover. “I think more needs to be made of the fact that one size won’t fit all, and we have to come up with a menu of options to try to do as much good as we can,” he said. Sam Hickman, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers — West Virginia Chapter, agreed. “A lot of people I talk to will say, ‘You know what works? X works,’ because they’ve seen it work for themselves or somebody they know, and they don’t understand that people are in different places in the addiction continuum,” he said. “We need a full array, a full continuum of care, in order to meet them wherever they are and support them in recovering successfully.

State social workers to get ‘verbal judo’ training
Athens Banner-Herald (GA)
To equip social workers for dangerous confrontations, the state is giving them all judo training, “verbal judo” that is. The training has been used for years by police agencies since it was developed by a one-time English professor who became a policeman. The techniques are designed to calm tense situations that threaten to turn into violent challenges of authority. Social workers in the Division of Family and Children’s Services often make evening home visits in high-crime neighborhoods, acting on anonymous tips. And the parents they meet with typically expect to be blamed with something that will result in the social worker taking their children away.

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