The North Carolina Supreme Court in October held that school officials’ decisions to deny disciplined students access to alternative education programs were subject to “intermediate scrutiny.” In so doing, it reversed a lower court decision granting, as NASW put in an amicus brief, “largely unfettered discretion” to exclude students from the classroom. The case, King v. Beaufort County Board of Education, stems from an incident in which students who participated in a January 2008 fight at Southside High School in Chocowinity, N.C., were suspended for the remainder of the school year without access to alternativ...

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Technology will help promote and expand the message of this year’s National Professional Social Work Month theme, “Social Workers Change Futures.” The March event is expected to include a social media campaign that will encourage social workers to send short messages via Twitter, blogs and other websites about the positive ways they have influenced someone’s future that day. National Professional Social Work Month encourages social workers from across the country to join in celebrating and educating their communities about the many ways social workers are positive agents of change. Gail Woods Waller, director of com...

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The Sarasota Herald-Tribune highlighted the important work being done by the Cancer Support Community Florida Suncoast. Social worker Laurel Healy was interviewed for the article. The organization’s mission is “to help people affected by cancer enhance their health and well-being through participation in a professional program of support, education and hope,” the story stated. The center recently moved to a new facility in Sarasota. The 5-acre campus has more than 2 acres of gardens bordering a 600-acre nature preserve, the story explained. More than 60,000 visits have been made to the center and its satellite locations th...

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When I entered social work in the 1970s, the “War on Poverty” was almost a decade old, and it seemed to be working. It had been introduced in a State of the Union address by President Lyndon B. Johnson on Jan. 8, 1964. Historians claim he introduced it to expand his Great Society and to persuade Congress to authorize social welfare programs. Critics define it as the beginning of a new era for American liberalism, and they point out that Johnson introduced it when the poverty rate was already in decline, from a high of 22.4 percent in 1959 to 19 percent in 1964. In the decade following the implementation of the Equal Opportunit...

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