NASW CEO Angelo McClain, PhD, LICSW. Photo courtesy of NASW.

Groups work to credential more social workers
Associations Now
To help relieve the workforce gap in the healthcare industry, the Commission for Case Manager Certification and the National Association of Social Workers partnered to encourage more social workers to obtain CCMC’s healthcare credential.… “Social workers play an integral role in the nation’s health care system, helping patients and their families get the best possible care, and case management has been a key function of social workers since the founding of the profession,” NASW CEO Dr. Angelo McClain said in the release. “NASW is proud to work with CCMC to give social workers credentials and certifications that will make them even more attractive to health care employers.”

Jack Register is a member:
[Video] Leaders Agree: Mental Health Funding Needed in North Carolina
Time Warner Cable News
“If we lived in a perfect world and there was enough funding for absolutely everything, we would see the kind of dream we all have for folks who are affected by mental illness,” said Jack Register, Executive Director of NAMI NC. “What we say at NAMI is that everyone who struggles with a mental illness wants everything everybody else does.”

Coming of age in a city coming apart
The Washington Post
[Nikkia] Rowe started the mentor program called “Seeds of Promise: Transforming Black Boys into Men” last year. She hired four African American men who understood her students’ lives and assigned each between 20 and 30 teenagers who could reach out to them anytime, including holidays and weekends. The mentors’ salaries, $25 an hour without benefits, are paid through a partnership between the high school and a University of Maryland program called Promise Heights. Run through the university’s School of Social Work, Promise Heights counts Renaissance among its community schools, where students and residents can find a wide range of help. The initiative also employs Atwater, a 29-year-old licensed clinical social worker whose school office is stacked with personal hygiene products, air mattresses, donated clothes and other emergency supplies.
Additional links: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/local/coming-of-age-in-a-city-coming-apart/2016/06/15/c1fb156a-3339-11e6-ab9d-1da2b0f24f93_video.html and
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/06/25/principal-the-truth-is-that-many-americans-do-not-see-value-in-investing-in-boys-of-color/ and
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/soar-khalil-soar-nearly-250-strangers-give-a-baltimore-teen-30000/2016/06/23/f8c0dd08-395d-11e6-a254-2b336e293a3c_story.html

Jane Fairchild, the writer, is a member:
Don’t judge parents on welfare benefits. Their choices are more difficult than you think.
Bangor Daily News
What will it take for all of us to value a loving parent’s care for his or her child over a stranger, a tired grandparent or another provider? Why are Temporary Assistance for Needy Families recipients admonished so harshly? When I was a social work graduate student at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work in 1969 and 1970, the concept of “worthy poor” was considered naive and insulting. Who determines “worthiness”?

Donna Dire is a member:
Local agencies, schools lead efforts to meet growing mental health needs for youth
Washington Observer-Reporter (PA)
Donna Dire, a licensed clinical social worker for Intermediate Unit 1, said when she started her career as a therapist, she was told she would encounter children with ADHD and, perhaps, some family issues. “Today, the severity of mental health issues is astounding. We’re no longer dealing with just ADHD,” said Dire.

Jaye Watts is a member:
R.I. to provide state workers with health coverage for sexual transition services
Providence Journal
Jayeson “Jaye” Watts, a licensed clinical social worker and manager of the Thundermist Trans* Health Program, said that he has known people in the transgender community who are on the state employees’ plan who have had problems accessing transition coverage. “There was a need to fill the gap,” he said.

Nancy Kaufman is a member:
When parents use egg donors, telling kids early may be best
Reuters
“Waiting for the ‘right’ time to disclose can inadvertently lead to prolonged/unintended delays and heightened parental anxiety as children get older and they are faced with disclosing to adolescents or even older children,” coauthor Nancy Kaufman, a licensed clinical social worker in private practice in New York City, told Reuters Health by email.

Caitlin Ryan is a member:
What Happens When Gay People Are Told That Homosexuality Is A Sin?
Think Progress
Dr. Caitlin Ryan knows all too well how important it is to interrupt this internalization. As director of the Family Acceptance Project, she has been on the forefront of research about the impact of how families respond to young people coming out as LGBT. What her research has unequivocally found is that family rejection — even if it doesn’t lead to kids being kicked out or sent to ex-gay therapy — has incredibly negative consequences for the kids’ mental health nevertheless. Conversely, family acceptance not only ameliorates those consequences, but helps create a buffer that protects them from being rejected by others, “like a vaccine that protects their LGBT children with love.” But Ryan has observed that the belief that homosexuality is a sin has manifested some rather insidious tactics for rejecting it as an identity, such as the term “same-sex attracted,” which was first devised by Mormon religious leaders in the 1970s to reject the notion that people could objectively be gay. “It taught generations of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people that they didn’t exist and that there was no such thing as being lesbian, gay, and bisexual,” she explained to ThinkProgress.