NASW News

Photo: Patricia McDougal-Matthews NASW Social Work Pioneer® Katherine Kendall was honored at a celebration for her 100th birthday at an event near Washington, D.C., in September. Attendees included NASW President James J. Kelly, NASW Foundation Director Robert Carter Arnold and a host of other NASW Social Work Pioneers®. Kendall has been involved with social work education for more than 40 years with leadership roles in the Council on Social Work Education as well as the International Association of Schools of Social Work.

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The 2011 National Professional Social Work Month theme promotes the role of social workers as positive agents of change. Celebrated each March, the theme for next year is “Social Workers Change Futures.” “There are 640,000 professional social workers in the United States who have dedicated their careers to either helping people transform their lives or improving environments that make such change possible,” said NASW Executive Director Elizabeth J. Clark. NASW and its chapters will use this theme as a cornerstone to promote the message that social workers improve the fabric of society by serving as advocates for pe...

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Sam Hickman (no photo), executive director of NASW’s West Virginia Chapter, is profiled on a White House website that explains how the 50 states will benefit from the Affordable Health Care Act, which was passed into law earlier this year. The website [deactivated] includes an interactive map of the United States. Each state features a person or a fact about how the new law will benefit the states’ residents. Selecting West Virginia will show a picture of Hickman with text explaining how his family will benefit from health care reform. It states: “Sam Hickman’s son is 23, married and uninsured. Sam is happy that he wi...

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From the Director November is a short month. Its claim to fame is its fourth Thursday, when we celebrate Thanksgiving. For many years Thanksgiving, also known as”turkey day,” has been mainly a secular holiday that includes a big meal, Black Friday, football games and parades. Almost 80 percent of business and government workers are given both Thursday and Friday as paid holidays. It has become a long weekend to spend with family and friends. As with other customs, there are historical explanations for the holiday. In grade school we learned that Thanksgiving began with a meal between Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians in 1621. ...

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Evelyn Tomaszewski, a senior policy associate at NASW, has been appointed to serve on the Institute of Medicine’s Forum on Global Violence Prevention, launched over the summer. According to the IOM, the forum will work to reduce violence worldwide by promoting research and encouraging evidence-based prevention efforts. In 1996, the World Health Organization declared violence — including child abuse, intimate partner violence, elder abuse, sexual violence, gang violence and suicide — to be a leading worldwide public health problem, especially in developing countries. “It’s such a great honor for me to be able...

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A new NASW Action Alert asks members to urge their congressional representatives to support the Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act, HR 5628, recently introduced by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who chairs the House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Healthy Families and Communities. The National Alliance of Pupil Services Organizations, of which NASW is a member, helped draft the legislation that would strip federal funding from academic institutions that allow personnel to punish students by hitting, often with a paddle. Corporal punishment can also mean pinching, shaking, shoving, choking, and excessive exercise drills, among othe...

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Gary McDaniel has a special reason for helping social workers learn skills that can protect them from harm. He was a friend and professional colleague of Brenda Lee Yeager, a West Virginia social worker who was brutally killed by a young couple during a home visit in 2008. McDaniel, a West Virginia licensed clinical social worker for Morgan County Schools, said Yeager’s tragic death inspired him to help other social workers in dealing with conflict resolution through safety workshops he hosts for the NASW West Virginia Chapter and other groups. “Losing Brenda was one too many,” McDaniel said. “She was a sweet, lov...

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With the 111th Congress quickly coming to a close, sponsors of the Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young Social Work Reinvestment Act, HR 795/S 686, turned to President Barack Obama in the hopes that he would issue an executive order to establish a key provision of the legislation — a social work reinvestment commission. “In the wake of Dr. Dorothy Height’s death and as the embodiment of everything she stood for, we respectfully request you to establish by executive fiat, or other mechanisms, the Social Work Reinvestment Commission,” members of Congress said in a letter to the president that was dated Aug. 20. Heig...

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Melvin Wilson, right, manager of NASW’s Office of Workforce Development and Training, tells viewers about the many career options available to social workers in one segment of the recruitment videos. NASW continues to utilize Web-based videos as an effective medium for recruitment and public education of the social work profession. Association staff recently participated in the production of four professional video segments that are available for anyone interested in learning about a social work career. They are available at MonkeySee.com*, a consumer video website that features experts discussing a variety of topics. MonkeySee...

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Starting Oct. 1, NASW members will receive a 10 percent discount on all NASW Press publications and 30 percent off select industry directories by Dorland Health. To receive the discount on NASW Press publications, members will have to provide the following promotional code: [out of date]. Some new and recent NASW Press publications include: A Guide to Essential Human Services; Interactional Supervision; Empowering Social Workers for Practice with Vulnerable Older Adults; Child Custody ...

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