NASW News

Stressing Equal Rights In "Survey Finds Women Under Stress" [April News], I find no mention of how we can help women who are under the stress of being in the "sandwich generation" by advocating for equal rights among the genders! Instead, we as social workers are encouraged to help women better manage their stress and depression? There is an entire gender out here who are not being called into question. As we as a society grow, develop and hopefully mature I pray that I will see more of those responsible, caring and feminist men doing their parts to help raise their children, take care of their parents and manage their households. As if it...

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NASW Senior Government Relations Associate James Finley represented the association at a Capitol Hill briefing in June entitled “Senior Suicide: Understanding the Risk, Preventing the Tragedy.” The briefing was hosted by the Suicide Prevention Action Network (SPAN) USA in cooperation with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Reps. Darlene Hooley (D-Ore.) and Tim Murphy (R-Pa.). SPAN USA is the nation’s only suicide prevention organization dedicated to leveraging grassroots support among suicide survivors and others to advance public policies that prevent suicide. Finley’s presentation was titled “Pub...

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NASW has produced a revised and expanded reference booklet specifically designed for clinical social workers who deal with third-party reimbursement issues. Mirean Coleman, NASW senior policy associate, said the booklet, Third-Party Reimbursement for Clinical Social Work Services, is the most comprehensive NASW guide yet on the subject. Available through NASW Press, the booklet covers areas involving clinical social work and third-party reimbursement. “We’ve addressed the important questions that people most commonly have about reimbursement,” Coleman said. “Among the topics, it discusses types of third-party payers ...

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— Lyn Stoesen, News Staff   The NASW Legal Defense Fund’s Amicus Brief Database has made more than 200 briefs available to members through the association’s Web site. The database was launched in 2006 to provide members with a resource for accessing friend-of-the-court briefs which NASW has filed or joined in legal cases. The briefs in the database span more than three decades. The database includes the text of the briefs filed, summaries of cases, the courts in which the cases were filed, legal citations, outcomes and links to U.S. Supreme Court decisions. “This kind of legal information is primarily availab...

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June 2008 Board's Action Context Governance Agreed to alter the format of the 2008 Delegate Assembly In light of financial challenges facing chapters, the national office, and society, and also out of concern for the environment, the Board agreed to alter the format of the 2008 Delegate Assembly from a face-to-face to an electronic meeting. ...

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NASW’s Website has expanded its social work blogs, giving members and non-members alike an opportunity to post their comments on a variety of issues related to the social work profession. The site, Social Work Blog, allows visitors the opportunity to share comments from time to time related to different issues, said Brandon Maddox, manager of Web services at NASW. “Any and all feedback is welcome, whether you’re a social worker, a social work student, social work supporter, or your life has been affected by social work,” he said. “This is part of our goal to encourage discussion and provide an avenue for social...

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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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