NASW staff participated in two events at the White House on June 13 in honor of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month. Evelyn Tomaszewski, senior policy adviser for the NASW HIV/AIDS Spectrum Project, said in a blog posting that NASW staff from the Office of Social Justice and Human Rights, the Legal Defense Fund, and the Office of Ethics and Professional Review participated in the LGBT Pride Month Briefing at the White House. They heard from Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, who spoke about the impact of the HIV epidemic, with particular emphasis on gay youth of color. Colfax discu...

Read More

Adobe Systems is a California software company known for popular software products like Photoshop and Illustrator, but it also has a hand in helping social workers and caseworkers simplify their job duties. Adobe recently teamed up with NASW’s Specialty Practice Sections to host a webinar to seek social workers’ input on the next generation of mobile productivity tools. In return, participants were offered a peek into the ways Adobe is working on products that aid human service workers and their clients. Michael Jackson, director of Adobe’s public sector and health care strategy, said the company has a history of working...

Read More

NASW’s Louisiana Chapter has launched a training initiative to help lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth across the state. The program — which is funded by the Tides Foundation — is part of a “train the trainer” initiative that NASW developed after the NASW Foundation and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund teamed up in 2008 to improve the care and treatment of LGBTQ youth in the foster care system. The training helps social workers dissolve any prior stigma or preconceived notions surrounding LGBTQ youth, so that the population can receive the help they need without judgment or m...

Read More

Helping military goes beyond service members This is written in response to Douglas Braun’s letter “Not all social workers bound to help military.” It may seem reasonable to expect the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to address the health needs of military members and veterans through the military health care system and VA medical centers, community based clinics and Vet centers. But “helping the military” goes well beyond meeting the needs of those who have volunteered to serve their country in this way. When you add to those numbers, the immediate and extended family members, those who leave the...

Read More

Caring for an older adult can be a source of high stress, misunderstandings and conflict within families. The Association for Conflict Resolution has created a task force to help families deal with these issues instead of looking to the legal system to help resolve them. NASW has been invited to be a part of the ACR Task Force on Eldercaring Coordination. NASW Senior Practice Associate Chris Herman will represent NASW and provide a social work perspective to the task force as it defines and develops its concept. “Eldercaring coordination is important because it will provide a dispute resolution option for adults and families dealing...

Read More

Martin Luther King III, the oldest son of Martin Luther King Jr., speaks at a rally for the Voting Rights Act in February at the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is one of five in which NASW took an active role leading up to Supreme Court rulings in June. NASW was active in five high-profile cases that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on this summer. The cases covered the issues of same-sex marriage, voting rights, affirmative action and adoption — all areas of special concern to social workers. Through the work of NASW’s Legal Defense Fund, the association joined in filing amicus briefs in all five cases, and NASW members and staff ...

Read More

June 2013 Board's Action Context Finances Received financial statements as of April 30, 2013. Treasurer Mary McCarthy reported that as of April 30, 2013, NASW’s total asset position was $17.8 million. Total expenses as of April 30, 2013, were $14.0 million, $644,000 below budget due to cost containment efforts across divisions. Pr...

Read More

NASW members urged to educate clients and communities about new health insurance options. The major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, which aims to ensure that all Americans have health insurance, will go into effect Jan. 1. The next significant step in implementing the law is the open enrollment process for health care coverage, which begins Oct. 1. Open enrollment is an opportunity for people without insurance to explore different options and determine which is right for them. Coverage begins on Jan. 1 for new enrollees. “Consumers will have many avenues for exploring coverage options,” NASW Senior Practice Associate S...

Read More

Stephen Gorin, executive director of NASW’s New Hampshire Chapter, wrote a column for the Concord Monitor criticizing the New Hampshire Senate for deciding it needed another 18 months to study Medicaid expansion in the state, even though the New Hampshire House of Representative’s had included expansion of Medicaid eligibility in its proposed state budget. Gorin wrote that further study is not needed, and the delay in expansion will put the health of low-income residents at risk. It will also continue to cost more for businesses and families with private health insurance, he said, because they will be picking up the tab for those...

Read More

More than 200 million Chinese workers migrated from rural plantations to urban labor markets between 2000 and 2010, and the surge in economic growth has resulted in hardships for millions of people in the country. The Chinese government is depending on the social work profession to address these increasing social challenges by bolstering the country’s number of social workers from 200,000 to between 2 million and 3 million by 2020. Many U.S. schools of social work, through their global education efforts, are collaborating with Chinese leaders and educators to strengthen the country’s social work education and practice capacity. ...

Read More