NASW offers several new Tools and Techniques and Practice Perspectives for winter 2013:

Tools and Techniques

• Making Interdisciplinary Collaboration Work. Interdisciplinary collaboration can be one of the most rewarding, yet challenging, aspects of social work practice. This resource offers ways for NASW members to work more effectively with other disciplines.
• Quick Guide for Front Line Social Workers to the Upcoming Changes. This Tools and Techniques gives members a look at what to expect as a result of changes made by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. The guide lists the key changes that social workers should expect to see.
• Managing Clients Who Present with Anger. As social workers can be on the receiving end of complex emotions from their clients, this Tools and Techniques offers members tips on how to handle a client who may display strong feelings of anger, hostility and violence.

Practice Perspectives

• Navigating a Multigenerational Workforce in Child Welfare. This Practice Perspective explores the generational diversity at work together for the first time — Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y. Each generation varies in its ideals and lifestyles, and this Perspective gives members a look at what to expect in workforce challenges, implications for child welfare and the future direction of the workplace in regard to a generational mix.
• 2013 Medicare Changes for Clinical Social Workers. The final rule for the 2013 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule was announced Nov. 1, 2012, by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This Practice Perspective lists highlights of the final rule as it applies to the practice of clinical social work.
• The Evolving Context of Social Work Case Management: NASW Releases Revised Standards of Practice. This Perspective lists the revised NASW Standards for Social Work Case Management, as this area of practice has evolved and changed over the past century. The standards equip social work case managers to respond effectively to clients in a variety of practice settings.

The Institute of Medicine hosted a workshop in January called “Evidence for Violence Prevention Across the Lifespan and Around the World: A Workshop of the Forum on Global Violence Prevention.”

Evelyn Tomaszewski, NASW senior policy adviser of the HIV/AIDS Spectrum Project, moderated the four breakout groups in the workshop, which collectively looked at community needs, engaging stakeholders, evidence-based programs, and the evaluation and sustainability needed to ensure effective programs.

“Social workers are key stakeholders themselves,” Tomaszewski said. “We’re constantly engaging people and it’s ongoing.”

The common points of discussions in the breakout sessions, she said, included the sustainability of community programs and the multiple approaches taken in regard to the research and planning of current and future programs.

“Not all challenges are barriers,” Tomaszewski said. “We can look at the barriers as opportunities to help identify research needs and pinpoint the areas that need programs, or changes in current programs.”

A $476,000 federal grant will help support efforts to expand mental health treatment for three groups considered at-risk in West Virginia — children, active-duty service members and military veterans.

The grant is from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration. It funds implementation of the Integrated Mental and Behavioral Health Training Program within the West Virginia University School of Social Work’s MSW program.

NASW West Virginia Chapter Executive Director Samuel Hickman wrote an endorsement letter when the school submitted its application for the grant in 2012.

Hickman noted the school program is soundly designed to recruit, retain and adequately train clinical social workers to practice integrated behavioral health in primary care.

“In addition, candidates will have unique opportunities to engage directly with experienced professionals engaged in continuing competency training,” the letter says.

An article published in The Charleston Gazette notes that the grant is aimed at tackling the state’s shortage of mental and behavioral health providers. It will support training for 25 WVU graduate students over three years, with a focus on rural delivery of services, the article states.

Hickman said part of the grant will be used to bring relevant speakers and students to the chapter’s annual conference beginning in 2014.