Brewer has already recommended adding more investigators and training and overhauling the hot line for abuse complaints. She has also proposed increasing the CPS budget by $3.7 million.

According to this article in the LJWorld.com, McComas and psychologist Tamera Werth formed Kansans United in Voice & Spirit to protest budget cuts made under Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. They recently organized a rally that attracted 250 people to the state capitol in Topeka.

“Our Kansas way of life is in jeopardy,” McComas said.

To learn more about how social workers are involved in education and their communities visit NASW’s “Help Starts Here” Schools and Communities Web page by clicking here.

One of them was a teenager who was thriving in her foster home and did not want to return to her birth mother, who repeatedly relapsed into drug addiction. Southeastern Connecticut Center for Juvenile Justice successfully fought to keep her with foster parents.

Another person they helped was a disabled teenager who was placed in the home of his sister rather than foster parents. The lawyers and social workers proved that with his disability it was better the teen be placed with a familiar person.

Despite its successes the state-funded center closed on June 30, the victim of budget cuts.

“Going into the job you hoped things work out and people would be an ideal team but when I got there it was unbelievable how everyone meshed together,” said Kristine Johnson, a social worker who used to work at the center. “We had each other’s back. The attorneys always made themselves available for us. As corny as it sounds …I’m going to truly miss everybody, my co-workers as well as the kids. It was an ideal workplace.”

Sherry Saturno

Social worker Sherry Saturno, LCSW, DCSW, wrote a letter to the New York Times in response to its recent article on the death of Massachusetts social worker Stephanie Moulton.

Moulton was allegedly murdered by a schizophrenic client who had committed violent crimes in the past. She was the only staffer on duty at the group home when the crime occurred.

The New York Times article (to read it click here) looked at how budget cuts have adversely affected mental health care and social work staffing and likely contributed to Moulton’s death.

Here is Saturno’s response (you can read online along with other letters to the editor by clicking here).

The violence against social workers has become a risk of the profession, and one that needs to be addressed nationally. Social workers are frequently sent to dangerous situations, alone and unarmed, in neighborhoods that the police do not enter without a partner and a gun. We lack legislation at the federal level to protect social workers, and despite advocacy efforts, the Teri Zenner Social Worker Safety Act has yet to become law.

Detailed safety training for social workers who make home visits is desperately needed. The day before Stephanie Moulton was murdered in Massachusetts, another social worker, Frances Mortenson, was stabbed by a client during a home visit in New York.

Stephanie Moulton’s death provokes questions about the value we as a society place on social workers’ lives.

NASW’s Center for Workforce Studies and the Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University at Albany did a survey that found that four out of 10 social workers face personal safety issues on the job. To learn more about that study, click here. NASW is also committed to improving social worker safety. To learn more click here. And the National Association of Social Workers Massachusetts Chapter Committee for the Study and Prevention of Violence against Social Workers created a general guideline to improve safety. To read the guide click here.

Ed Towns: A Man of the People
Politic365
Social Worker. Professor. United States Army veteran. Ordained Minister. US Congressman. The work Congressman Edolphus “Ed” Towns does today in Washington reflects the conscience of a man who has truly seen the needs of the people.

Today’s Historymaker: Ntozake Shange
Patch.com
Shange was born Paulette Williams in 1948, the oldest of four children by Eloise Owens Williams, a psychiatric social worker, and Paul Williams, a surgeon. Shange was reared in a middle-class household in Trenton, New Jersey.

DC Social Worker Offers Brutal Choice To Homeless Mother
Washington City Paper (blog)
While at Virginia Williams, and in front of Broas, a Child and Family Services Agency social worker delivered the bizarre ultimatum: Give up your kids or take a bus out of town. Broas recalls the social worker explaining: “Because she is not being placed in a shelter, therefore she is unable to provide a safe place for her children to stay. If she does not agree to accept the arrangement that has been made for her [the bus out of town], we will be forced to take her children away from her.”

Suicide Prevention Week caters to GLBT students
UK The Kentucky Kernel
The goal of Suicide Prevention Week is to spread awareness about suicide among college students, discuss risk factors for GLBT students and educate professional students, Julie Cerel, social work professor and child clinical psychologist, said.

Trailer, Poster & Images from Oranges and Sunshine
HeyUGuys.co.uk
Synopsis: Oranges and Sunshine tells the story of Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham who uncovered one of the most significant social scandals of recent times: the deportation of thousands of children from the United Kingdom to Australia.

Smart Men, Foolish Choices
Match.com
Men — even very smart men — can find themselves in all sorts of pitfalls, pratfalls and bizarre situations on the journey to finding true romance.

School initiative combats bullying
7Online.com
“Healthy relationships vs. unhealthy relationships, we start to develop a language where they can tell the difference between a great friend and a not so great friend,” said Cheryl Hurst, a licensed clinical social worker from the Montefiore School Health Program.

Health scare can inspire start of business
USA Today
For those who feel beaten down, self-employment can look appealing, says Penny Damaskos, a social worker who leads the post-treatment resource program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. “If they have their own business, then they have more freedom and more control,” she says.

‘King’s Speech’ rings true for many
msnbc.com
She chose to study social work instead and go into counseling and felt she was successful at it. She filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights, retained a lawyer, and after two years the case was settled.

Mental Health and Medicaid Costs: Why Ignoring Mental Health Is Expensive
The Huffington Post
Better behavioral health services for this population would be likely to reduce the costs of their physical health care and produce significant overall savings in health spending.

Social worker title bill clears Senate
The Free Lance-Star
According to the website of the Virginia chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, “this legislation simply ensures that Virginians know that when a person says they are a social worker, they have the education and credentials to back it up.”

Ohio social worker dies days after attack by youth
WFMJ
AP – February 23, 2011 1:25 PM ET CLEVELAND (AP) – Authorities in Ohio say a social worker assaulted by a 15-year-old boy at work last week has died. Cuyahoga (ky-uh-HOH’-guh) County says 42-year-old Tashia Burch-York of University Heights worked for Cuyahoga County.

Woman charged in soldier stalking
Topeka Capital Journal
By The Capital-Journal A former licensed clinical social worker at Irwin Army Community Hospital at Fort Riley has been indicted by a federal grand jury for stalking a soldier being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder.

ASU Honors Alum Killed In Arizona Shooting
ABC News (blog)
Zimmerman, congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ community outreach director, earned a master’s degree in social work from ASU’s School of Public Programs in 2006. Now the university intends to pay their respects to him for years to come with a $5000 scholarship that’s part of ASU’s Spirit of Service Scholars Program.

State Budget Problems:

The Morning Plum
Washington Post (blog)
These are folks who are teachers and they’re firefighters and they’re social workers and they’re police officers. “They make a lot of sacrifices and make a big contribution. And I think it’s important not to vilify them or to suggest that somehow all these budget problems are due to public employees,” said Obama.

Stop the scapegoating of public employees
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
But here, too, deficit scolds blame ballooning deficits on teachers, public health nurses, sanitation workers, librarians, social workers, health inspectors, firefighters, cops and all other government workers who provide vital services.

Kelly Kjos: State GOP wrongly targeting women
La Crosse Tribune
Scott Walker’s budget repair bill affect mainly teachers, social workers and nurses — jobs primarily filled by women. Interestingly, unions that represent state troopers, police officers and firefighters — jobs primarily filled by men — are not affected.

A career of public service in Wisconsin no longer seems a good bet
Minnesota Public Radio
I am a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, majoring in human development and family studies with a minor in social work. After college I plan on working for local or state government as a licensed social worker.

Pro-union protesters, Jesse Jackson enliven Wisconsin Capitol
Detroit Free Press
Lisa Haberling, a 35-year-old social work student at the University of Wisconsin, drove the six hours from the northern Wisconsin town of Superior to show her support. It was the second time she’s made the drive and she has no plans to stop.

That program pays for home care for children who must be removed from abusive homes. The state already slashed $5 million from the current program budget and is considering another five to 10 percent cut, according to this editorial in the Salt Lake City Tribune.

“Such severe cuts would cripple the state’s ability to properly care for the children who need help most,” the editorial said.

Social workers help foster children find stable homes and adequate care. To learn more, visit the National Association of Social Workers “Help Starts Here” Adoptions and Foster Care Web page by clicking here.