NASW News

Kurt Heisler, a research analyst at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, speaks to members of the Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities, during the commission’s first meeting in February. NASW nominated several people to serve on the Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities, which was created by the bipartisan Protect Our Kids Act. NASW was involved in getting the act passed into law last year. Two of the commissioners NASW nominated are social worker Michael Petit, an NASW member and president of the Every Child Matters Education Fund; and Theresa Covington, director of the Natio...

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January 2014   Board's Action Context Finances Received financial statements as of Dec. 31, 2013 Treasurer Mary McCarthy reported that as of Dec. 31, 2013, NASW’s total asset position was $16.4 million. Total expenses as of Dec. 31, 2013, were $7.7 million, $284,000 below budget. Accepted the consolidated financial audit and...

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NASW Social Work Pioneer® Alfred Kadushin was a giant in social work, said NASW-Wisconsin Executive Director Marc Herstand. Kadushin was soft-spoken and gentle, Herstand said, but his impact on the social work profession was — and continues to be — enormous. Kadushin died on Feb. 5 at the age of 97. He was a Julia C. Lathrop Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Social Work, where he worked from 1950 to 1990. The university called him one of the nation’s leading scholars in child welfare services and social work. He wrote six books on the subject: Child Welfare Services; The Social Wo...

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Sister Simone Campbell (photo right), executive director of Network, a national Catholic social services lobby and the leader of the “Nuns on the Bus” social welfare effort, holds a picture of Margaret Kessler, who died in 2012. Kessler lacked health insurance after she lost her job, Campbell said. The sister joined a rally supporting the Affordable Care Act outside the U.S. Supreme Court last month. University of Alabama MSW student Justin Vest was among hundreds of people outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., in March, urging continued support of the Affordable Care Act. NASW joined the Center for American Prog...

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NASW members and staff vote on the suggestions for improving social work teaching, research and advocacy related to health care reform during a recent social work and ACA summit in Chicago. From left: Heidi Allen, assistant professor of social work at Columbia University, N.Y.; Stacy Collins, NASW senior practice associate; June Simmons, CEO of Partners in Care Foundation in Los Angeles; and Barbara Jones, associate professor and co-director of the Institute for Grief, Loss, and Family Survival in the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. NASW members made up more than half of the attendees at the Social Work and Affo...

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Social workers play a vital role in helping women with a history of prostitution or involvement in sex trafficking to get their lives back on track, and Florida social worker Tricia Collins is one of them. According to an article in Take Part, a publication by the University of Southern California School of Social Work, Collins says that the way prostitution is perceived — and the way the women who are involved in prostitution are perceived — is backward. “They’re nothing like people think that they are,” she says. Women who have become entangled in the sex trade can battle back from it, Collins says, and s...

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Social worker Chris Gilchrist is passionate about raising awareness and lifting the stigma surrounding depression and suicide. She organizes the Out of the Darkness Community Walk in her hometown in Hampton Roads, Va. The annual event, which offers awareness, support, remembrance and education for those affected by depression and suicide, has grown to be one of the largest in the U.S., she said. There are about 300 walks across the nation each year. While suicide can be a confusing and heart-wrenching topic for those affected by it, there are facts that need greater understanding, said Gilchrist, who is a member of the American Associatio...

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I recently attended a special event at New York University that featured former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and philanthropist Melinda Gates talking about their “No Ceilings” initiative, co-sponsored by the Clinton and Gates foundations. The project will better document the status of women and girls worldwide, including in the United States, so that both progress and problems can be more reliably identified. As a framework for the range of issues to be addressed, Clinton referred to the Platform for Action, adopted at the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, an event I w...

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January marked the 50th anniversary of the “War on Poverty,” declared by President Lyndon Johnson. The late Mark Battle, who led NASW as executive director from 1984 to 1992, played a pivotal role when federal initiatives to address the needs of the underprivileged were enacted. Battle was working as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Labor when the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 was passed into law. In his retirement, Battle taught at the University of Maryland. In an undated interview published online by the University of Maryland at Baltimore County School of Social Work, Battle said, “I would say that the Econom...

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Lorraine Miller (standing), interim president and CEO of the NAACP, speaks at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights meeting, called “Moving Voting Rights Forward: A Conference on Strategy for 2014 and Beyond,” held last month in Washington, D.C. Seated from left are, Sophia Zaman, president of the United States Student Association; Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; and Ellen Buchman, vice president of Field Operations for The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. NASW is continuing the fight to support voter rights as a member of the Leadership Con...

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