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Background

Social work members of Congress, Reps. Barbara Lee, Susan Davis, Ed Towns and Luis Gutierrez are original co-sponsors of the Department of Peace Act H.R. 808. The act would establish a Department of Peace headed by a Secretary of Peace. The mission of the department is to (1) cultivate peace as a national policy objective; and (2) develop policies that promote national and international conflict prevention, nonviolent intervention, mediation, peaceful conflict resolution, and structured conflict mediation.

While previous iterations of the act ran into trouble citing duplication with the State Department responsibilities, the current version was revised to have an emphasis on domestic rather than international conflict.

Action Requested

Contact your member of Congress and ask them to become a cosponsor of H.R. 808 and work towards its passage. If your member of Congress is already a cosponsor we have a letter thanking them for their cosponsorship.

For Immediate Release

U.S. Congress Recognizes Contributions of Professional Social Workers

Washington, DC - On March 17, the Social Work Month and World Social Work Day Resolution, H. RES. 240, passed the House of Representatives with a vote of 421 – 0.  The resolution was introduced by Rep. Carol Shea-Porter from New Hampshire.  Representative Shea-Porter is one of nine social workers in Congress.

The resolution recognizes with gratitude the contributions of the 600,000 social workers who have chosen to serve millions of people each day through their work, and encourages young people to seek out educational and professional opportunities to become social workers.

The focus of this year’s national Social Work Month observance is the future of social work and the need to recruit more students into the profession.  The Social Work Month 2009 theme—Social Work: Purpose and Possibility—highlights the infinite possibilities and connections that social workers make in the lives of individuals, families and communities. It also showcases the range of career opportunities available to those who choose the profession.

Socially conscious students, who may have limited knowledge of social work, are encouraged to review profiles of more than 50 dedicated professionals on a new interactive web site: http://50ways.helpstartshere.org. While on the site, they may also take a social work career quiz, link to schools of social work, and learn more about diverse social work career paths.

“Social workers’ service makes our communities stronger,” says Rep. Shea-Porter. “As the need for social workers is expected to grow at a rate much faster than average, we must attract new people to the profession and retain the dedicated professionals we already have.  Through this resolution we honor our nation’s social workers, and thank them for caring for us each day.”

Contact:
Contact:
Gail Woods Waller
202-336-8236
gwaller@naswdc.org

On March 5, the White House held a summit on health care reform. Representatives from industry, health care workers and consumers met at the White House. NASW did not attend, but many of our coalition partners did including Families USA, the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, Health Care for America Now!, and the National Partnership for Women and Families. Social work members of Congress Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, and Rep. Allyson Schwartz were also in attendance. Click here to read about health care reform.

The Administration is hosting regional health care reform forums. Forums have been scheduled in California, Michigan, Iowa, Vermont, and North Carolina for March and April. Each event will be hosted by the state’s governor and will involve a combination of doctors, policy experts, and patients. To get on the list for the event e-mail public@who.eop.gov. If you participate in a forum, please let us know about it by leaving a comment on this blog posting.

In January and February, NASW held house meetings with the social work staff to develop our list of wants for a health care reform package. The results of these meetings were sent to the Administration. The new policy statement on health care will be available in the upcoming publication of Social Work Speaks from NASW Press.

• Explicitly recognizes in federal law the Jaffee decision, a Supreme Court case in which NASW was instrumental in securing. The Act explicitly recognizes and protects the psychotherapist-patient privilege currently recognized in federal rules and administrative procedures and state law.

• Creates an on-going federal agency process for establishing standards to ensure that privacy and security are protected in the electronic health care network.

• Assures the protection of psychotherapy notes and other sensitive consumer information and incorporates HIPAA Privacy and Security Rule standards into the new system of privacy protections.

• Significantly broadens the scope of HIPAA protections to define a “covered entity” as inclusive of “business associates,” thereby requiring business associates to comply directly with HIPAA’s privacy and security requirements. The provisions will require vendors that provide data transmission of protected health information will operate under the same privacy restrictions as covered entities, thus expanding the protections of personal health information.

• Adds several new HIPAA requirements to limit the unnecessary release of personal health information. These include clarification of the HIPAA “minimum necessary” standard to ensure that only the minimum amount of consumer information can be disclosed depending upon specific circumstances. The Act also scales back the release and use of consumer records for administrative “health care operations” purposes.

• Creates a new allowance for consumers who pay privately for health care to not have their records included in an electronic record.

• Requires the federal government to study the segmentation of highly sensitive consumer information (such as mental health and reproductive records). (more…)