By Alison Laurio During a field placement at a hospital, a social work student became concerned after a mother with a young girl gave birth to a premature baby and had to remain in the hospital. The hospital would not let the girl on the floor, and the mother had no one to care for her. Keri Neblett, clinical assistant ... Read More »

By Paul R. Pace, News staff Many NASW chapters have been opposing recent efforts by governors and legislatures around the country to restructure state social work licensing boards. The goal of state policymakers is to consolidate these boards with a variety of others state professional regulatory boards and subject them to centralized state oversight. Chapter leaders say this is a ... Read More »

By Alison Laurio, News contributor Damon Smith had been suspended from school more than 15 times. “You start thinking it’s cool,” he said. “You think you’re going to come back to school and catch up, but unless you’re a genius you won’t. It made me want to mess up even more.” After Ralph J. Bunche High School in Oakland, Calif., ... Read More »

By Alison Laurio, News contributor Humans understood the power of words to heal long before they could write them. The holy men of primitive peoples chanted poetry for the good of their tribes and its members. Later in human history, in the fourth millennium B.C. in Ancient Greece, words were used as medicine when they were written on papyrus. The ... Read More »

By Alison Laurio, News contributor “Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love. Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer that has taken so much from me … but would have taken so much more.” “The world is a beautiful place, ... Read More »

By Paul R. Pace, News staff A key step in implementing solutions for the opioid overdose epidemic was reached in San Diego in October where days later the opioid crisis was officially declared a national public health emergency. Seventy representatives from more than 50 organizations, including NASW, gathered in California for the first ever Integrative Pain Care Policy Congress during ... Read More »

By Paul R. Pace, News staff  The world needs an interdisciplinary approach more than ever to address the social, political, technological and climate challenges of today and the future, says Ambassador Wendy Sherman, a newly appointed NASW Social Work Pioneer ®  Political solutions can’t keep up with the rapid pace of change, said Sherman in her keynote speech at the NASW Social Work Pioneers  13 annual program and luncheon held in Washington, D.C., in October.  Sherman, was among the 17 2017 Pioneer inductees. She is the former undersecretary ... Read More »

By Alison Laurio, News contributor When J. David Hawkins was a probation officer in the 1980s, he thought, “Isn’t there something we should have done to prevent these kids from getting to this place?” Programs from that period like “Just Say No” and “Scared Straight” just didn’t work, he said, for one reason: There was no evidence behind them. Now ... Read More »

By Paul R. Pace, News staff Grameen Bank provides credit without collateral to those who are poor in rural Bangladesh. Aimed primarily at women, these microcredit loans of often no more than $100 are meant to help those who are poor launch small businesses. The bank says it has 8.92 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women, and it ... Read More »

By Paul R. Pace, News staff Social workers are the among the behavioral health professionals greatly needed to meet a growing demand for services, says the new leader of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA. Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz is the assistant secretary for mental health and substance use. In the newly created position, she advises the ... Read More »