Social workers are mourning the loss of NASW Social Work Pioneer® David M. Austin, a former faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin who specialized in social work education. Austin died May 29, 2008, in Berea, Ky., following a battle with cancer, according to the university. He was 84. From 1988 to 1991, Austin was chair of the National Institute of Mental Health-funded Task Force on Social Work Research, which produced an extensive report with far-reaching recommendations for changes in the attention to and organization of research within the social work profession. The report remains one of the most important and long-l...

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NASW Assurance Services Inc. recently announced the newest members of its board of directors. New NASW President James Kelly (upper right), provost and executive vice president of Menlo College in Atherton, Ca.; and Betsy Cauble (lower right), head of the Department of Social Work and associate professor at Kansas State University (KSU), began their new roles as members of the Assurance Services Board of Directors in July. The two join Jean Parr, program director of the American Chemical Society’s Member Insurance program; and Deborah Reyes, president of Capital American Mortgage Co., in being the most recent members selected for the ...

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From the President Just when we thought things couldn’t get worse for our clients, they do. A recent survey and series published by The Washington Post, in partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University, chronicles the increasing struggles of our country’s many low wage workers. The stories of working families on the brink of economic disaster—who lack health care, are in danger of foreclosure or eviction, can’t afford gas to get to work and need food assistance—are, unfortunately, not new to social workers. What’s new is the growing number of policy groups and media people ...

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NASW representatives attended a training workshop held in New Orleans in May that had the goal of strengthening the role of communities in disaster preparedness and emergency response. The Project Reconnect Disaster Preparedness Training Workshop was sponsored by the Baylor College of Medicine and the Intercultural Cancer Council and funded through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health. It was presented in New Orleans by the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine's Department of Environmental Health Sciences. Rebecca Myers, NASW special assistant to the executive director, repres...

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Results of voting are in for this spring's election of members of NASW's national Board of Directors and Committee on Nominations and Leadership Identification. Nearly 19,000 members cast ballots. Results of the voting follow. Winners took office on July 1. Board of Directors Member-at-Large (2008-2011) Esther Langston, 9,984 Judy Lewis, 8,419 MSW Student (2008-2010) Kai Zwierstra, 8,422 Diane Belinsky, 9,646 Region I (2008-2011) Paula Mattis, 538 Robin Russel, 773 Region II (2008-2011) Nelly Rojas Schwan, 912 Michie Hesselbrock, 608 Region X (2008-2011) Becky Fast, 687 ...

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The May Lunchtime Specialty Practice Sections Teleconference, highlighting documentation in private practice, proved to be a popular topic with social workers. Nearly 1,000 people registered to listen to the live teleconference hosted by NASW Senior Policy Associate Mirean Coleman. The teleconference was one of several launched earlier this year exclusively for NASW members to give them an opportunity to earn 1.0 continuing education units (CEUs) upon successful completion of an online test following each event. Participants can also listen to or read a transcript of each topic in the series at any time. Regarding the teleconference on doc...

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NASW recently teamed up with Physicians for Peace in a fact-finding, needs- and resources-assessment trip to Rwanda and Uganda. NASW's Division for Practice, Human Rights and International Affairs sent staff member Evelyn Tomaszewski, senior policy associate, to represent the association's HIV/AIDS Spectrum Project on the trip sponsored by Physicians for Peace. The organization is seeking outside funding for a technical proposal to scale up pediatric HIV/AIDS services in Rwanda and Uganda through partnerships that will train local health care providers. Physicians for Peace asked NASW to provide social work HIV/AIDS expertise for the trip. ...

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NASW's Social Work Reinvestment Initiative continued to make gains in the spring with more members of the U.S. House and Senate backing the Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young, Jr., Social Work Reinvestment Act (SWRA) in their respective chambers. NASW's Jennifer Watt, Gail Woods Waller and Elizabeth J. Clark (seated) meet with CSWA's Kevin Host and Laura Groshong. At the end of May, 70 cosponsors in the House pledged support for the legislation (H.R. 5447), which proposes to establish a Social Work Reinvestment Commission to study policy issues associated with recruitment, retention, research and reinvestment in the social work prof...

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LeslieBeth Wish was quoted in USA Today in article about the emotional toll foreclosures can have on people. "The problem affects the whole spectrum, not just people losing their homes," Wish, a psychologist and social worker in Sarasota, Fla., was quoted as saying. "The stress exacerbates what is already there," Wish told USA Today. "It brings to the surface problems that were often already there, like marital problems. There is so much blaming people for the situations they're in, and that adds to it." The article pointed out that one of Wish's patients was semiretired when she bought a home in 2005 in southwest Florida as an investment t...

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— Lyn Stoesen, News Staff   NASW representatives recently met with Ihab Moustafa of the United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office to discuss the work of the U.N.'s Peacebuilding Commission and how social workers can support and become involved with its efforts. NASW Acting Director of the Division for Practice, Human Rights and International Affairs Luisa Lopez and Senior Policy Adviser Leticia Diaz met with Moustafa in late March. The Peacebuilding Commission is an intergovernmental advisory body of the United Nations established in 2006. It supports peace efforts in countries emerging from conflict and is currently working...

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