Abbie Hausermann is a member:
New course of treatment brings therapy to the great outdoors
Boston Globe
When Abbie Hausermann tells clients to take a hike, she means it. A licensed clinical social worker, she makes her office in the great outdoors: Wilson Mountain, or the Blue Hills Reservation in Milton, or Francis William Bird Park in Walpole, or some other trail or forest or park. Her fledgling practice, which she opened in May, is named High Peaks Therapeutic Mentoring. She offers walk-and-talk therapy and daylong or overnight “wilderness quests” for students, and will also do traditional psychotherapy.

Cathy Stephens is a member:
A true hero to victims of domestic violence is honored by state
Mount Olive Chronicle (NJ)
To the many victims of domestic violence in Mount Olive, the Mendhams, Chesters, Long Valley, Harding and elsewhere around the county, Cathy Stephens is a real hero. And now, First Lady Mary Pat Christie has named Stephens as a ”N.J. Hero” for the month of October for her work with the Jersey Battered Women’s Service (JBWS). For winning the acclaim, JBWS, led by Executive Director Patricia Sly of Chester, was given a $7,500 award.

“Little comfort, little humanity”—social work expert explains “toxic stress”
phys.org
Definitions may change how we understand – and ultimately try to improve – our world. The nascent definition of “toxic stress” did both these things for David Pate, UWM associate professor of social work. These two words helped explain what some 500 disadvantaged black men had told him for nearly 20 years about their day-to-day wishes and challenges of being a black father in Milwaukee and elsewhere. “A person with toxic stress is never in a place in which their stress is reduced. Day to day, they experience little comfort, little humanity,” Pate said of the men he met with.

The author, Reeta Wolfsohn, is a member:
Research, Evaluation, and Results of Financial Social Work
Social Justice Solutions
United Way, of Erie Pennsylvania (highest poverty rate of any major PA city) conducted an extensive three-year research pilot project of the Financial Social Work (FSW) model for its efficacy among four social service providers serving low-income families and offering financial literacy training. United Way employed KeyStone Research Corporation (KSRC) to conduct the evaluation of the Financial Social Work model for effectiveness using a pre-post evaluation design.

Rebecca McCloskey is a member:
[Video] Homeless man given new start with tiny house in New Jersey
ABC7
Advocates like Dill’s friend Minister Steve Brigham, who ran the old Tent City, see tiny houses like this as a way to offer low cost housing to the poor and homeless. “We just create small houses that people can afford at a minimum wage job. It seems like the answer,” Brigham said. “It’s working in other cities successfully and so I think it’s a model that we’re hoping will take off in other areas,” social work specialist Rebecca McCloskey said.

City schools begin mobilizing, meeting to fight upcoming closure recommendations
The Baltimore Sun
A West Baltimore school that was highlighted locally and nationally for rallying around its student body amid the April unrest in the city is now rallying to save its school from closing. The Renaissance Academy High School, the only high school in the Upton/Druid Heights neighborhood, will hold an emergency community meeting Thursday night after it was informed that it was on the list of city schools recommended to close its doors at the end of the school year. “This would be a devastating loss to our students, families, and community,” wrote Hallie Atwater, who serves as community schools coordinator for the school through the University of Maryland School of Social Work, Promise Heights.

St. Luke’s changes psych procedures in ER
Utica Observer-Dispatch
Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare is back in the good graces of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services following a Jan. 12 report that found multiple violations in the hospital’s emergency department. Changes that helped the hospital pass a subsequent inspection included:
* Training and monitoring to make sure that treatment for possible psychiatric patients is properly documented and includes complete suicide risk assessments.
* A change in the way doctors order mental health evaluations.
* Reassignment of a licensed clinical social worker outside the emergency room.
* And a few measures to get around doctors’ illegible handwriting.

[Video] No Kids Behind Bars: For-Profit Texas Immigration Jails Challenged over Child Detention
Democracy Now
AMY GOODMAN: What does the American Academy of Pediatrics say about this?
BOB LIBAL: Well, they’ve been very firm that family detention is not appropriate for children. And another thing that I would note is the social worker—the head social worker at the Karnes family detention center actually resigned her position and said that she could no longer continue being a social worker at this facility, that she thought that what she was doing there actually endangered her licensure. And so, this was a very experienced social worker, former professor, former social work teacher.