News Items – March 29, 2017
Social Workers to Stage Raise the Age Rally at State Capitol
U.S. News & World Report
More than 800 social workers and students from across the state are expected to take part in a Raise the Age rally at the state Capitol on Tuesday. They will gather to protest New York criminal law, which treats 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds as adults. New York is one of only two states that continues to process, prosecute and incarcerate 16-year-olds as adults. According to the National Association of Social Workers, the only other state is North Carolina, and it’s in the process of increasing its age of criminal responsibility to 18.
Rebecca Gonzales is the NASW-CA Director of Legislative Affairs:
Social workers charged with felony child abuse in boy’s death at the hands of his mother
ABA Journal
Rebecca Gonzales of the California chapter of the National Association of Social Workers told the Post that the case could have bad consequences for social workers as a whole. “We do think it could have a negative effect on social workers wanting to pursue the profession, especially in child welfare,” she said. “They work in a system where it’s very difficult to be successful because they’re expected to track so many cases and be on top of so many family situations.”
Allison Scobie-Carroll is president of NASW-MA:
Social workers, students rally at Faneuil Hall to tout bills
Sentinel & Enterprise
Budding social justice advocates on Tuesday sought to sway lawmakers laboring under tight budgets toward legislative proposals that would ease the financial burden on social workers and make life easier for the vulnerable populations they serve. After rallying at Faneuil Hall, social workers and social work students filed into the State House touting bills that would eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, offer social workers student loan forgiveness, and lift the cap on cash welfare benefits for children conceived while the mother is on welfare.
Julie Carney is a member:
How Parents, Teachers Can Help Teens With Loneliness
U.S. News & World Report
Parents should model for their kids how they deal with loneliness instead of sharing stories about what happened to them in high school, says Julie Carney, a licensed clinical social worker at Wood River High School in Hailey, Idaho. Perhaps parents like to go for a walk when they feel lonely – they could share that with their child, she says. Parents should know being a loner isn’t necessarily a bad thing either – everyone is different, Carney says. “Be careful not to make them feel like there is something wrong with them, like there is something weird.”
Iris Waichler is a member:
When You’re Taking Care of Your Kids and Your Parents at the Same Time
sheknows.com
Iris Waichler, co-author of the award-winning Role Reversal: How to Take Care of Yourself and Your Aging Parents, is one woman who knows exactly what it’s like to be sandwiched between a young child and an aging parent. Her father had two major health care crises, the first a brain hemorrhage at age 90, when Waichler was 55, and her daughter was 9, followed by a bout of pneumonia at age 96, when Waichler was 61 and her daughter 15. Both times, Waichler — a licensed clinical social worker and advocate for health awareness and caregiver support — was with him daily for several months, arranging his outpatient therapies, attending his therapy sessions, acting as a conduit with her siblings and offering emotional and moral support whenever it was needed.
Laura Minier is a member:
Scituate receives MassHousing grant funding
WickedLocalScituate
“Our team has met over the past three years to work on this important public health issue,” said Laura Minier, clinical social worker and Manager of Social Services. “I’m fortunate to work with a group of dedicated professionals who have created resources to assist residents impacted by clutter.” Efforts to date have included a public education forum and panel discussion, “In Pursuit of a Life Less Cluttered,” in April 2016, a four week Clutter Reduction Support Group that met in June 2016, and three “Buried in Treasures” Clutter Reduction Support Groups that met in October 2016 through February 2017.
One of the authors, Dan Buccino, is a member:
The sublime psychology of Baltimore
The Baltimore Sun
It’s impossible to appreciate life here without considering Baltimore’s psychology. Freud cautioned against “wild” analysis — efforts at understanding art, culture, history, (or a city) through a psychological lens. Nevertheless, wild analysis may be what we attempt this week, when hundreds of psychoanalytically-minded clinical social workers from around the country come to Baltimore for the biennial American Asssociation for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work (AAPCSW) conference, and we introduce them to our city — the birthplace of American psychoanalysis. As psychotherapists with over 30 years’ experience, we still look to our patients to teach us about their multiple Baltimores. But Baltimore has a certain psychology, a sublime sensibility at once obvious and ineffable, not unlike the unconscious itself: tender and tough, wounded and surviving, swaggering and fearful, Northern and Southern, black and white. The resigned resilience many of our patients embody transcends the quirky eccentricities of a John Waters movie or the bleak urban and institutional wastelands of “The Wire.”
Emily Perez is a member:
As threat of deportation looms, parents make agonizing decision
NJ.com
Undocumented immigrant parents in New Jersey and across the country are desperately seeking solutions and legal protections for their U.S.-born children who might be left behind should they be deported, according to immigration advocates. And increasingly, some are considering the extraordinary step of signing power of attorney documents that would give friends or relatives the ability to make decisions on behalf of their children if they are no longer here. “That’s huge,” said Emily Perez, a licensed social worker in Newark. “That is their family system, that is who they know, that is their identity.”
Social Work Month:
The Quiet Warriors Saving the World
The Advocate
Like many of you, I don’t become aware that any particular period is National Whatever Day/Week/Month unless we have one of those desk calendars or see it trending on social media, so I wasn’t even aware that March was Social Work Month until it was almost over. This is funny, because I often don’t know it’s any particular day on Twitter to tweet about it till it’s too late to get any likes or faves out of it, and we mostly don’t notice or care about social work or workers until they get shoved right in our face. Let’s face it, for most of us, the only time we think about social workers is when we watch reruns of “Very Special Episodes” of sitcoms from the ’80s, ironically laugh at bad after-school specials for fun, or see them involved in the crime of the week on Law and Order: SVU. Man, they’re on that show a lot, aren’t they?
Stand up for others; it’s Social Workers Month
Cape Gazette (DE)
Every year March is set aside as the time to recognize the hard work and contributions of social workers to the fabric of our country. Social workers help the most vulnerable and at-risk members of our society – whether it be children, older adults, families, victims of crime, or persons with mental illness and/or those differently abled. This year – the theme of Stand Up For Others – as announced by the National Association of Social Workers is particularly pertinent.
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