NASW News

In a ruling last month on the constitutionality of life imprisonment for juveniles, the U.S. Supreme Court cited an amicus brief filed by NASW and others arguing that “condemning an immature, vulnerable, and not-yet-fully-formed adolescent to die in prison is a constitutionally disproportionate punishment.” The court ruled that it is unconstitutional to sentence juvenile offenders to life in prison without parole for crimes that don’t involve homicide. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, said the categorical practice of sentencing offenders under age 18 to life without parole violates the ban on cruel a...

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Ruth Knee’s niece, Elizabeth Rasmussen (left) accepted the award on behalf of the family. Beatrice Harper (right) nominated Knee for the honor. The University of Oklahoma posthumously honored Ruth Knee, who was an NASW Social Work Pioneer®, with its Regents Alumni Award for her dedication and service to the school. The university says the Regents’ Alumni Award “is a testament to the important roles OU alumni and supporters play” at the school. Bernice Harper, an NASW Social Work Pioneer® who is chair of the program’s planning committee, submitted Knee’s nomination letter and was invited to att...

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Simmons College School of Social Work Associate Professor and former NASW President Gary Bailey recently brought students from his social policy class to the nation’s capital to see firsthand where and how national policy is made. The trip ended with a tour of the NASW national office near Capitol Hill, where students got to meet Federal Labor Relations Authority Chairperson Carol Waller Pope (left), a trustee of Simmons College and an alumnus of its School of Social Work in Boston. Pope explained how her skills as a social worker are assets in her current work. Students also heard from Simmons alumnus Kathy Lopes (right), the one-tim...

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NASW submitted public comments for the interim final rules, or IFR, implementing the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. The association offered praise for the IFR’s “groundbreaking measures to improve patient access to mental health and substance use disorders coverage.” The IFR aims to align health plan benefits in mental health and substance use disorders with health plan coverage for medical/surgical benefits. At press time, the IFR was expected to be effective for insurance plans that begin on or after July 1 of this year. The IFR provides specific examples of acceptable an...

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NASW was among a coalition of organizations represented at a March 17 meeting to discuss federal priorities for improving access to health care for individuals with limited English proficiency (LEP). Ahead of the meeting with Howard Koh, assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, and Amy Hall, director of the Office of Legislation at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the coalition provided Koh and Hall a list of actions the administration and Congress should take. The list included translating all Medicare and Medicaid beneficiary-related notices and information into the 15 most commonly spoken non-E...

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“Child welfare is at the heart of the social work profession,” said Joan Levy Zlotnik of the Social Work Policy Institute. NASW was among the presenters at a Capitol Hill briefing that called for greater attention to the rise in child abuse fatalities. Michael Petit, president of Every Child Matters Education Fund and an NASW member, said that despite the best efforts to stop child maltreatment, the U.S. continues to fall short of protecting its youngest citizens. Citing federal data, he said 10,440 children are known to have died from abuse and neglect between 2000 and 2007. The 2009 National Incidence Study of Child Abuse an...

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KASW’s Soojung Kim is spending time at NASW’s national office in Washington. Kim’s visit as a SWAN exchange professional realizes the associations’ memorandum of understanding to foster cooperation and advance the social work profession internationally. Through its Social Workers Across Nations professional exchange program, NASW’s National Office has hosted Soojung Kim, manager of the international relations department of the Korea Association of Social Workers, since April. Kim’s time here is meant as a way for her to experience NASW’s efforts to support and sustain the professional social work...

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NASW members have elected Jeane W. Anastas, a professor at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work, as the association’s president-elect. A past president of the Massachusetts Chapter, Anastas has been that chapter’s Social Worker of the Year (1995), a Council on Social Work Education visiting scholar (2006-2007) and recipient of CSWE’s Greatest Recent Contribution to Social Work Education award (2007). She was elected to the National Academies of Practice in Health Care in 2007. Anastas is the convener of the ANSWER Coalition, whose mission is to increase legislative and executive branch advocacy on behal...

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NASW Vice President Darrell Wheeler presented “HIV Testing: Issues for Black & African American Men Who Have Sex with Men” at an Institute of Medicine workshop to identify facilitators and barriers to HIV testing. The two-day workshop in April in Washington was the first of three that will shape a series of reports for the White House’s Office of National AIDS Policy, which has been tasked with developing a national HIV/AIDS strategy this year. President Barack Obama instructed that the strategy reduce the incidence of HIV, increase access to care, optimize health outcomes and reduce HIV-related health disparities. W...

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On Jan. 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade, guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion. Within weeks, Congress enacted the first ever so-called “conscience clause.” Such clauses protect health care providers from liability for refusing to perform services that, though legal, they consider repugnant to their religious or moral values. This March, Idaho’s legislature approved the Freedom of Conscience for Health Care Professionals Act, expanding that state’s conscience clause to preclude all licensed health care professionals — including clinical social workers &mdash...

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