October, 2022

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Why do social workers burnout?

Save the Social Worker

The aircon blew gently. Outside, the 33 degree celsius heat made me grateful to be seated in the room. I was seated in front of a client, listening to her talk about how difficult life was for her. As hard as I tried to get into it, I couldn’t. And as hard as it was for me to admit it at that time, I finally realised the truth. I didn’t care. As much as I wanted to, I did not care.

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Making Mental Health A Global Priority

My Brains Not Broken

While every day is a good opportunity to talk about mental health, awareness days are some of the best chances to have a conversation. Yesterday was World Mental Health Day, the latest opportunity to shrink the stigma and share our stories around mental health and mental health challenges. Every year brings a different theme that focuses on various aspects of mental health.

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Why Focusing on the Small Details Makes a BIG Difference In Nonprofit Case Management

Famcare

Some people say that the devil is in the details, but some say details can be a devil to deal with! According to Heather Lytle, Executive Director of F.A.C.T. (Family Advocacy and Community Training), an agency that mentors and empowers families to improve the quality of life and opportunities for children and adults with disabilities, “FAMCare was our first choice for case management because they understand that a small, family organization of 40 employees needs a software that focuses on the d

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How We May Inadvertently Disable Our Kids

Gary Direnfeld

Are you disabling your kids? It’s a serious question, however, it’s not meant to mean you are doing so intentionally. Unfortunately though, many patent do inadvertently disable their kids. They do so by coddling, carrying, and compensating. Coddling refers to smoothing the way for them. Removing any bumps. Being over protective. In so doing, the child is robbed the opportunity to grow and develop the result of mastering adversity.

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5 Must Haves for Case Management

Thousands of nonprofits rely on case management software to help collect data, manage programs, coordinate with agencies, and provide life-changing health and human services. Adopting a cloud-based case management platform is essential for nonprofits and government agencies to operate more efficiently and make better use of their funding and budget.

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Anxiety and the Vagus Nerve

Prosper Health Collective

November was meant to offer a series based on Psychology Week. Unfortunately as of late October, the Australian Psychological Society had still not published a theme, so Prosper Health Collective is going to offer a mixed bag of what clinicians would like to share with you. I will be talking about the role of the vagus nerve in modulating our anxiety response.

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Pre-mobile infant bruising should not automatically prompt section 47s, say government advisers

Community Care

Councils should stop automatically triggering child protection enquiries under section 47 of the Children Act 1989 in response to bruising in pre-mobile infants, government advisers have said. The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel made the call in a briefing published last week , as research found increasing numbers of authorities had policies that required a section 47 enquiry or a strategy discussion to decide whether such an enquiry should take place, in these cases.

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Everything Serves A Purpose

My Brains Not Broken

I’ve written about it before, but the way different aspects of our health connect is fascinating to me. I often think about the connection between my physical health and mental health. To be honest, the main reason I focus on my physical health is because of the way it helps me manage my mental health. But today, I want to talk about the unique purpose that certain activities have.

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Happy Halloween!

Stop Abuse Campaign

← Homelessness is a journey that starts in the family. Suicide prevention means child protection → Happy Halloween! What a wonderful time of year for our littles – fall festivals, pumpkin patches, trick-or-treating, and plenty of cooler weather activities to bring our children out and about! Unfortunately, when situations exist to draw children, they also draw predators.

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Parental Alienation – Make a Path to the Future

Gary Direnfeld

Parental alienation: The intentional undermining of a child’s relationship with one parent by the other parent in a context where those parents have separated and have an acrimonious relationship. Some situations are intractable. Beyond repair. The issue remains… what to do? The lectures don’t work. There is no breaking through with the child poisoned and brainwashed.

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New study finds folic acid treatment is associated with decreased risk of suicide attempts

MQ Mental Health

The study found a link between folic acid supplements and a 44% reduction in suicide attempts and self-harm. A new study by the University of Chicago has investigated the relationship between folic acid treatment and suicide attempts over two years. The researchers found that patients with prescriptions for folic acid, also known as vitamin B9, experienced a 44% reduction in suicidal events (suicide attempts and intentional self-harm).

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Get Connected: Using Social Media for Social Work Success

Speaker: Gary Direnfeld, MSW, RSW.

You may have the clinical skills to manage a private practice, but your success could actually hinge on marketing skills. For a thriving practice, you need to differentiate yourself from others and present yourself in a way that attracts referrals. These days, much of that happens online, including on social media. In this webinar, Gary Direnfeld will discuss how social media marketing can help you build your private practice and grow your client base.

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Liberty Protection Safeguards due for implementation in October 2023

Community Care

The Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS) is due to be implemented in October 2023. The planned date was revealed in a report to today’s Social Work England board meeting and represents a six-month delay to the government’s previous internal target for bringing in the replacement for the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. Publicly, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Ministry of Justice (MoJ) have not specified when they plan to implement the LPS, which was originally d

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Three key failures undermine a New York Times exposé of the “troubled teen industry”

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

It’s part editorial, part documentary exposé: A brilliantly presented New York Times Opinion section column on the enormous harm done to children institutionalized in “residential treatment.” The commentary begins this way: It’s known as the troubled teen industry. Spread across the country, this array of boot camps, wilderness therapy programs, therapeutic boarding schools and residential treatment centers is supposed to help children with mental health and behavioral issues, through a mix of t

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Breaking Down Mental Health Terms: What Are Automatic Negative Thoughts?

My Brains Not Broken

I’d been in therapy for a few years when I first heard the phrase automatic negative thoughts for the first time. It wasn’t hard to deduce the meaning of the phrase, but I found it interesting nonetheless. Like everyone else, I deal with negative thoughts every single day. They might be about myself or other things, but one thing is certain: they’re negative.

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A National Coming Out Day Message from NASW Missouri Chapter Executive Director Cassie Brown

Social Work Blog

By Cassie Brown, MSW, LCSW. For all of you who are on the Rainbow Spectrum, all of you who have known the inside of a closet, all of you who have had to tell your story and your truth again (and again, and again, and again) because of the oppressive world in which we live and the assumptions that we all live in, Happy National Coming Out Day! And if you’re IN THAT CLOSET, I respect you.

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The Angry Child

Gary Direnfeld

The child was about ten. He was angry. With his parents in the room, I asked about the relationship between his parents. Having already met with the parents, I already knew the answer to the question. The parents were well informed where I would go with their child. The child said his parents sometimes fight. I asked how and he described the yelling and screaming, more by one than the other.

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Self-Care A-Z: Be a Self-Care Winner and Quit!

The New Social Worker

Our culture’s implicit and explicit curricula socialize and reward learning how to “not quit.” With this cultural saturation, we internalize that quitting is bad. We aren’t taught the knowledge, skills, nor value of how to quit.

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Hunt U-turns on IR35 reform for agency social workers

Community Care

Jeremy Hunt has scrapped plans to abolish the IR35 rules for agency social workers and other public sector staff working off payroll. His predecessor as chancellor of the exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, had announced the abolition of the 2017 rules in his “mini-budget” on 23 September. However, Hunt reversed this – and most of the other taxation measures Kwarteng unveiled last month – in a statement to the media this morning.

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World Mental Health Day - reassurance in trying times

Social Work With Adults

World Mental Health Day is our annual reminder to protect our psychological and emotional wellbeing and help others do the same. Just when you thought it was safe. I’m sure it’s not just me who is struggling to keep up with pace of national and international developments in the world at the moment. I know I would feel a little more at ease if some of the news items appearing in my social media feed were foreseeable although, unfortunately, much of what I read or hear is thoroughly unpredictable

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Five Reminders for Building Mentally Healthy Habits

My Brains Not Broken

A lot of my focus for the past few weeks has been on habits. I’ve written about habits before on My Brain’s Not Broken, but every time I revisit the topic I learn something new. Building healthy habits is an essential aspect of my mental health toolkit, but it doesn’t stop there. Maintaining healthy habits is just as important as building them; however, that’s easier said than done.

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Let the NYC family police teach you how to dissemble like a pro!

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

Last month, the New York Law Journal published an excellent article about the Family Justice Law Center. The article aptly describes the Center as a first-of-its-kind organization that intends to engage in affirmative litigation with the [Administration for Children’s Services] —hitting it with lawsuits to potentially hold it accountable for allegedly violating families’ constitutional rights via heavy-handed investigatory and removal tactics.

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Accessing Service the Creative Way

Gary Direnfeld

It was many years ago. With nowhere to discharge the teen, then 16, the plan was to simply drop him off at a downtown men’s shelter. This after a several month stay in the children’s mental health centre to get his schizophrenia under control. I couldn’t live with that. I asked his parents to see me for a private meeting. While they couldn’t take him home, they certainly didn’t want this for him either.

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Self-Care A-Z: Pause for Re-ing Self-Care

The New Social Worker

Sometimes, we need to pause for a period of time to reflect, recharge, revise, re-vision, rest, re-set, re-re whatever needs to be “re”ed. Dr. Erlene Grise-Owens is taking a pause. Will you?

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Children’s social care gets fifth cabinet minister of 2022 while facing significant policy shake-up

Community Care

By Mithran Samuel and Anastasia Koutsounia. Children’s social care has been handed its fifth secretary of state of 2022, while the minister with direct responsibility for the sector has quit after a month, despite it facing one of its biggest policy shake-ups in many years. Prime minister Rishi Sunak appointed Gillian Keegan to the education secretary post this week, succeeding Kit Malthouse, James Cleverley, Michelle Donelan and Nadhim Zahawi, all of whom have held the role – which

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Organizing to End the School-to-Prison Pipeline - Jewel Patterson, MS; Edgar Ibarria; Nicole Bates, JD

Doin' The Work

Episode 58 Guests: Jewel Patterson, MS; Edgar Ibarria; Nicole Bates, JD Host: Shimon Cohen, LCSW. www.dointhework.com. Listen/Subscribe on: Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , Stitcher , Spotify. Follow on Twitter & Instagram , Like on Facebook. Join the mailing list Support the podcast Download transcript. We are now offering our Racial Justice & Liberatory Practice Continuing Education Series at Columbia University , Michigan State University , and the University of Houston.

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Forming Healthy Habits Amidst Setbacks

My Brains Not Broken

Living with mental illness can make people feel like they’re failing all the time. Moments of progress can feel impossible to recapture after a misstep. We can be very harsh on our failures, and our reactions can exacerbate those failures. Mental health setbacks happen to everyone, but they can be hard to deal with. Despite our failures, we should still strive to build healthy habits and goals to work toward.

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Autumn vaccinations and the role of social work

Social Work With Adults

"At its best, social work supports people to cope with difficult circumstances, drawing on their own strengths and assets." [Image created by freepik.com ]. Our support continues and always will. Social workers are frequently misrepresented, in some areas of the media, as removers of liberty, curtailers of freedoms and, like bailiffs, only there to take something away.

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The Most Tragic Loss of All, That of a Child

Gary Direnfeld

I want to speak to those who have lost a child. That child could be of any age. The child could be pre-born. The loss could even be of fertility. These are losses without resolution. A grief without end. Despite the when, why or age, the loss is not just of the child when it happened. The loss includes the recognition of all developmental milestones, that loss of celebrating life events because in one’s mind, that child can continue to grow.

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Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: The Doubting Disease

The New Social Worker

OCD is often misdiagnosed and misunderstood. People with OCD cannot tolerate doubt. A thought just like any other thought comes into our head. The difference between a person with OCD and one without is in the reaction to the thought content.

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Child protection enquiries reach record levels, reveal official figures

Community Care

The number of child protection enquiries reached record levels in 2021-22, as referrals to children’s social care surged in the wake of the removal of Covid restrictions. Social workers carried out 10% more enquiries (217,800) under section 47 of the Children Act 1989 than in 2020-21, the first rise after three years of falling numbers and the highest total ever recorded.

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GuestPost: Surviving a Major Bipolar Depressive Episode and Finding a Purpose in my Life by Becky Rowland

Bipolar Bandit

Biography I had my first mental illness episode with psychosis symptoms when I was 20 years old in 1982. I had mental illness episodes of extreme anxiety, depression, mania, and psychosis at different times from 1983-1992. I also worked in the mental health field for three years during this time, helping mentally ill patients in hospital settings. I was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1992 after I faced disciplinary action while a graduate counseling student because I had disabling sy

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The Impact of Anxiety on Our Physical Health

My Brains Not Broken

Living with Generalized Anxiety Disorder has taught me so many things about myself. I’ve learned what some of my tendencies are, as well as what habits I fall into when it comes to coping mechanisms. I’ve learned about my triggers, what overstimulates me and what makes me anxious. But over the past few years, I’ve started focusing on other things connected to my anxiety.

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NHS yet to see ‘a single penny’ of promised £500m emergency fund

The Guardian

Exclusive: discharge funding to relieve hospital delays promised by Thérèse Coffey in September has not materialised Hospitals and care homes have not received a single penny of a £500m emergency fund promised by the government to prevent the NHS becoming overwhelmed this winter, the Guardian has learned. Ministers announced they were injecting the cash into the health and social care system last month , to help get thousands of medically fit patients out of hospital into either their own home o

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Difficult Ex – Your Response Matters.

Gary Direnfeld

I can’t stress enough that how you handle yourself and respond to the provocation of another plays big in the outcome. I speak with many persons dealing with difficult and truly intimidating and outrageously demanding former partners but where coparenting continues. Like a shark in the water, if they smell blood they circle and attack. It is such a challenge to not feel fear, to exude confidence and to manage limits and boundaries in these challenging of situations.

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NASW Works With Voting Coalitions for Important 2022 Midterm Elections

Social Work Blog

By Paul R. Pace. While every election matters, the November 2022 midterms are imperative because human rights like voting, reproductive health and LGBTQIA+—issues central to social work’s mission and values—are in deep jeopardy. In some states, these rights are explicitly on the ballot, says Tanya Rhodes Smith, instructor in residence and director of the Nancy A.

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Professionals must face duty to report child sexual abuse, says inquiry

Community Care

Professionals must be under a legal duty to report child sexual abuse, and face criminal sanctions for not doing so, to tackle the systemic under-acknowledgement of CSA. That was one of the key recommendations by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in its final report, issued today , seven years after it was set up in the wake of institutional failings revealed by the Jimmy Savile and other abuse scandals.