NASW News

Social worker Aaron Bishop has been appointed commissioner for the Administration for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, within the Administration for Community Living. ACL is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Bishop has been serving as acting commissioner since November 2013, ACL Administrator Kathy Greenlee said in a statement. “ … By making his appointment permanent, he will be able to continue to focus on directing the policy and day-to-day operations of AIDD with and on behalf of persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities across the country,” Greenlee said. “With...

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Frederic G. Reamer, a social work ethics expert and professsor at the Rhode Island College School of Social Work, gives an ethics presentation during the NASW national Hope Conference in 2012. Reamer will be a plenary speaker at this year’s NASW national conference, “Social Work: Courage, Hope & Leadership,” which takes place July 23-26 in Washington, D.C. — Photos by Kea Taylor/Imagine Photography The intersection of social work and technology has grown, and with it comes a host of ethical concerns, says Frederic G. Reamer. Reamer, a social work ethics expert and professor at the School of Social Work at Rhod...

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Having a bachelor’s or master’s degree in social work will now definitely pay off in Connecticut, thanks to efforts by the NASW Connecticut Chapter. The chapter convinced the Connecticut Department of Administrative Services to give hiring preference to social work degree job applicants for all state social work jobs, which took effect in March. DAS Deputy Commissioner Martin W. Anderson wrote a letter that said his department had been in talks with the NASW Connecticut Chapter, state legislators and other parties regarding the requirement for new social workers in the state to possess a BSW or MSW degree. “The Departm...

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The University of North Carolina School of Social Work and the Children’s Home Society of America sponsored the fourth in a series of symposia titled “Wicked Problems: Meeting the Grand Challenges of Child Welfare.” Representatives from private and public child-serving agencies, think tanks, national organizations and foundations, and schools of social work, as well as state and federal officials, attended the meeting, held March 27 and 28. The meeting promoted the value of creating agency-university research partnerships to test interventions and to gather, analyze and use data to improve child and family outcomes. The f...

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Social workers involved in advancing racial equity reinforced the need for the social work profession to be at the forefront of eradicating institutional racism, during a recent congressional briefing on Capitol Hill. NASW sponsored the briefing, titled “Achieving Racial Equity: Social Workers as Agents of Change,” in March in conjunction with the Congressional Social Work Caucus. Congressional staff, social work leaders, and civil rights, policy and racial equity experts attended the event. It built on a two-day think tank symposium on achieving racial equity hosted by the NASW Social Work Policy Institute in November. Social ...

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Children in Tacloban City in the Philippines get ready to attend a psycho-social art therapy program, provided by volunteer professors at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. It was part of the many relief efforts in the region following Typhoon Haiyan in November. Staff from the University of Southern California School of Social Work performed the first phase of a relief mission in the Philippines to aid the survivors of a devastating typhoon that struck the region in November. Typhoon Haiyan, known as Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines, caused numerous deaths in portions of Southeast Asia. It is the deadliest Philippine typhoon ...

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Most suicide victims are male, an often-ignored fact I just read the article on suicide in the April 2014 NASW News. I am both saddened and shocked that there was no mention of the fact that males comprise 80 percent of those who complete suicide — 80 percent. Imagine for a minute that some other malady had 80 percent of the victims be female or black or just about any other demographic. Under those circumstances the article would have likely featured entire sections on this or that group that face the bulk of the problem. The least they would have done would be to call attention to the group most impacted. Why not so with men? Sa...

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NASW and the NASW Ohio Chapter, through the NASW Legal Defense Fund, filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the court to review a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal’s decision in Campbell-Ponstingle, et al v. Kovacic. The case involves three Ohio child protective service workers — classified as social workers — who removed two children from their mother’s home because they believed the children were at risk of physical harm. The appeals court denied the social workers’ ability to use the qualified immunity defense in removing the children without a warrant, thus exposing them to personal liabil...

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Foster Care and the ACA An estimated 25,000 youths age out of the foster care system every year, and they face a variety of issues when they no longer have that support system. Social workers who specialize in this area say health care is among the main concerns. The Affordable Care Act is helping to alleviate this problem by extending the age that these young people have access to health care to 26. And social workers play a large role in making sure they are signed up for this benefit, said Shadi Houshyar, vice president of Child Welfare Policy at First Focus in Washington, D.C. As of January, the Affordable Care Act mandates Medicaid c...

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Josefina Ahumada, a member of the NASW Arizona Chapter’s board of directors, is part of a federal lawsuit filed recently in Arizona by Lambda Legal. The lawsuit, which challenges Arizona’s ban on same-sex marriage, was filed on behalf of seven same-sex couples and two surviving spouses who were part of a same-sex couple. Ahumada, one of the surviving spouses, joined the lawsuit after she was denied an application to be listed as spouse on the death certificate of her wife, Helen Batiste. Ahumada is currently the Tucson component field coordinator at the School of Social Work at Arizona State University. She and Batiste were ma...

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