Randi Barlow is a member:
‘We learned we were not alone’: Monroe couple forms Transgender Family Alliance for Support and Teaching (TFAST) group
The Photo News
MONROE, NY — The Transgender Family Alliance for Support and Teaching (TFAST) is a new Monroe support group geared toward helping parents, families, and friends of individuals who are transgender or gender non-conforming to accept what’s going on with their loved ones or friends, be positive, and integrate their knowledge and feelings so they can come to peace with what they see happening. Randi and Bob Barlow, TFAST facilitators, were inspired to start this group as a result of their personal experience with their son. “We have two children, both of whom we originally thought were girls,” Barlow said. “As it turns out, one was a boy who had been born into the wrong body. Fortunately, he was able to transition to the gender he was always meant to be.”

Daynen Lalicker is a member:
Student hotline: Butte Central offers counseling following apparent suicide
The Montana Standard [Butte, MT]
As the Butte Central Catholic High School family tries to make sense of an apparent student suicide in Granite County early Thursday, a hotline is available for anyone to call for urgent counseling.… [Superintendent Don Peoples Jr.] said the school district contracts with Daynen Lalicker, a licensed clinical social worker and a self-employed private provider who has grief counseling experience.

William Evans is a member:
Learn from the past to beat post-holiday blues
The Independent Record [Helena, MT]
William Evans, a licensed clinical social worker who’s also skilled in marriage and family therapy, understands this well. “I think we see people struggling a little bit more with that particular time for a variety of reasons,” Evans said. “Loneliness. Bills are coming in. Worries. So we encounter that a little more at that particular time of year.” With the arrival of the new year can come a bit of a let-down, he said, explaining that family members who came for the holidays have left and it’s back to work and back to school.

Nancy Graves Wahler is a member:
Ooltewah High rape: “Conversations need to happen”
wrcbtv.com [Ooltewah, TN]
“Whenever we hear something like this as a community, it traumatizes us all. The idea that people can do this to other people, it’s scary, especially if you have children,” says Nancy Graves Wahler. Nancy Graves Wahler is a licensed clinical social worker who grew up in Ooltewah and went to Ooltewah High. She says the news of teammates sexually assaulting a freshman student hits close to home. “I have a 10 year old and I have a 14 year old. And I didn’t go into detail, obviously about the assault, but I did talk about, you know, a kid on a team who probably just wanted to play basketball,” she says. “Hopefully no one would ever turn an (blind) eye to something this serious.”

Why Seattle is scoring victories against labor traffickers
The Christian Science Monitor
It may have helped that some players on the team bring extra layers of experience to their posts. [Assistant US Attorney Ye-Ting] Woo, who helped launch the Seattle task force, had a degree in social work. Seattle Police Detective Megan Bruneau, similarly, is the daughter of a county prosecutor and worked as a victim advocate before joining the police, initially as a beat cop.

Risa Garon is a member:
Howard County Model for Interdisciplinary Effort to Support Families in Transition
The Business Monthly
Risa Garon, co-founder and executive director of [National Family Resiliency Center Inc.], said, “We are fortunate to be in a community where we work with the courts as well as the legal, faith, educational, medical and mental health systems to build a circle of support, help each other and develop programs that are based on family needs.” She said, “Howard County is a model of a caring community that considers the mental wellness of families.”

Henry Lauer, the author, is a member:
The historical roots of Oregon’s affordable housing crisis
Blue Oregon
[By Henry Lauer of Portland, Oregon. Henry is a masters in social work student and the co-chair of the National Association of Social Workers Oregon Chapter’s Legislative Committee.] Oregon’s housing crisis is front and center in our collective consciousness right now. Skyrocketing rents, spiraling property prices, and an intensifying homelessness disaster are all major themes of public conversation. Yet in the flurry of activity, of outcry, of policy proposals, of determined words from courageous advocates – all of which are as admirable as they are crucial – it is important that we not lose sight of the historical context of the present situation.

Janice Heikes is a member:
Decorah’s Jan Heikes announces Senate candidacy
Decorah Newspapers [IA]
Decorah’s Jan Heikes has announced her candidacy for the Iowa State Senate District 28 seat. “I have started laying the groundwork for a campaign for the Iowa State Senate in District 28 in 2016,” said Heikes, a Democrat.