Gary McDaniel has a special reason for helping social workers learn skills that can protect them from harm. He was a friend and professional colleague of Brenda Lee Yeager, a West Virginia social worker who was brutally killed by a young couple during a home visit in 2008. McDaniel, a West Virginia licensed clinical social worker for Morgan County Schools, said Yeager’s tragic death inspired him to help other social workers in dealing with conflict resolution through safety workshops he hosts for the NASW West Virginia Chapter and other groups. “Losing Brenda was one too many,” McDaniel said. “She was a sweet, lov...

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With the 111th Congress quickly coming to a close, sponsors of the Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young Social Work Reinvestment Act, HR 795/S 686, turned to President Barack Obama in the hopes that he would issue an executive order to establish a key provision of the legislation — a social work reinvestment commission. “In the wake of Dr. Dorothy Height’s death and as the embodiment of everything she stood for, we respectfully request you to establish by executive fiat, or other mechanisms, the Social Work Reinvestment Commission,” members of Congress said in a letter to the president that was dated Aug. 20. Heig...

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Melvin Wilson, right, manager of NASW’s Office of Workforce Development and Training, tells viewers about the many career options available to social workers in one segment of the recruitment videos. NASW continues to utilize Web-based videos as an effective medium for recruitment and public education of the social work profession. Association staff recently participated in the production of four professional video segments that are available for anyone interested in learning about a social work career. They are available at MonkeySee.com*, a consumer video website that features experts discussing a variety of topics. MonkeySee...

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Starting Oct. 1, NASW members will receive a 10 percent discount on all NASW Press publications and 30 percent off select industry directories by Dorland Health. To receive the discount on NASW Press publications, members will have to provide the following promotional code: [out of date]. Some new and recent NASW Press publications include: A Guide to Essential Human Services; Interactional Supervision; Empowering Social Workers for Practice with Vulnerable Older Adults; Child Custody ...

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Eric Thompson should be able to sue his former employer North American Stainless for being fired in 2003 in retaliation for his then-fiancée and co-worker Miriam Relagado filing a workplace discrimination claim, NASW asserted in an amicus brief filed in September with the U.S. Supreme Court. In the matter of Thompson v. North American Stainless, lower courts ruled that anti-retaliation protections afforded by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans workplace discrimination, apply only to employees personally engaged in a protected activity — in this case, the filing of the workplace discrimination claim with the feder...

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NASW emphasizes the critical role of professional nursing home social work in a new practice update concerning the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ rollout of its revised assessment instrument, the Minimum Data Set version 3.0, or MDS 3.0. The update is one of four recently released by NASW. Of the other three, one is related to prescription assistance programs and two others are specific to social workers involved in child welfare. CMS-certified nursing facilities, skilled nursing facilities (SNF), swing bed hospitals (small, rural hospitals approved by CMS to provide post-acute SNF care) and nursing homes operated by th...

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The NASW Press announced it will market the NASW General Counsel Law Note series in a new and convenient paperback format. The books will benefit social workers interested in legal resources, particularly at the state level, as they relate to specific areas of practice. The first title in the series, Legal Rights of Children, is available at the NASW Press website. This particular Law Note focuses on children’s legal rights within the family context. It addresses how the legal status and age of a child affect the right to sue, the age at which children may consent to treatment, contract rights, the right to educational services and ...

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NASW member Jan Ligon has never met Lindsay Lohan, the Hollywood actress whose personal struggle with drug and alcohol addiction fills the pages of supermarket tabloids. However, the associate professor of social work at Georgia State University in Atlanta, whose research interests include mental health and substance abuse, knows a thing or two about what Lohan and her family are going through. So when CNN producers were looking for experts to contribute to a story on how to recognize drug and alcohol addiction among youth — prompted by Lohan’s recent stint in jail for violating court-ordered alcohol counseling sessions — ...

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Isabel Castillo’s residency status limits her professional opportunities in social work. Photo: Jon Styer/Eastern Mennonite University Isabel Castillo would like nothing more than to become a social worker, having graduated with a BSW from Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va., in 2007. But because she was brought to America at age 6 with her undocumented parents from Mexico, Castillo’s residency status blocks her opportunities to work in the social work profession. She is among tens of thousands of young undocumented immigrants who grew up in the U.S. and want to obtain lawful employment after receiving their edu...

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NASW’s political action committee, Political Action for Candidate Election, has endorsed 39 more candidates for the next Congress, bringing the number of incumbent endorsements for the U.S. House of Representatives to 151. The 39 additional endorsements also include five incumbent senators. In addition, PACE endorsed two House and one Senate primary challengers as well as one candidate running for an open seat in each chamber. PACE announced its final candidate endorsements Sept. 27, after this story’s deadline. This year, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 36 of the 100 Senate seats are up for grabs on Nov. 2. ...

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