Sat.Aug 26, 2023 - Fri.Sep 01, 2023

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Seven lessons for practitioners from the review of children’s social care in Northern Ireland

Community Care

By Ray Jones The report of the Independent Review of Northern Ireland’s Children’s Social Care Services was published in June, following 16 months’ work. As the independent reviewer, I had the privilege of meeting many hundreds of children and young people, parents and other family carers, and those working within and alongside children’s social care during this time.

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‘Invisible, endless, relentless’: the reality of care work in England

The Guardian

Sarah, an adult social care worker, has seen lower wages, more insecure work and years of staff shortages • Exploitation and low pay causing poverty among care workers, says TUC “Unless you’ve actually experienced some sort of care in your life, it’s an invisible job,” says Sarah*, a senior adult social care worker who has more than two decades of experience.

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Can You Be Born with Anxiety? Unveiling The Symptoms Of Anxiety

Blurt It Out

Discovering the underlying factors that contribute to anxiety is crucial in understanding this complex condition. While genetics play a role, there are additional influences that significantly impact anxiety’s development and severity. But what about the genetic component? Can you be born with social anxiety and other types? Is anxiety treatable if it has a genetic basis?

Anxiety 52
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Children’s social care gets fifth minister in two years

Community Care

Children’s social care has its fifth minister in two years, following today’s cabinet reshuffle. David Johnston has succeeded Claire Coutinho as minister for children, families and wellbeing , after her elevation to the cabinet as energy secretary. Coutinho spent just 10 months in post , though this was longer than her two immediate predecessors with responsibility for the sector – Kelly Tolhurst and Brendan Clarke-Smith – each of whom lasted two months, amid the turbulen

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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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How To Relieve Chest Tightness From Anxiety? 4 Helpful Ways

Blurt It Out

Anxiety is a widespread mental health condition that affects roughly 3.1% of Americans , [1] mostly women. It can occur at any moment throughout a person’s life and is frequently made worse by particular stressful events or transitions. There’s a good probability that in addition to psychological and emotional symptoms, you’ve also had physical ones-especially if you’ve ever had an anxiety or panic attack.

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Educational Assistants in Ontario – Important Report of the OWSIAT

Gary Direnfeld

In July 2023, there was a decision by the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal. The case involves an Educational Assistant seeking leave for Traumatic Mental Stress owing to an incident with a six-year-old boy. The incident occurred in October 2018. The child’s behavior included physical outbursts requiring the other children to be cleared from the classroom.

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Inspectors to probe agencies’ response to serious youth violence

Community Care

Inspectors will probe agencies’ responses to serious youth violence in the latest series of joint targeted area inspections (JTAIs). They will visit a sample of areas, from September, to examine how well youth offending teams, children’s social care, the police and other partners are working to reduce risks and safeguard affected children, including those who have carried out offences.

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When injustice hides in plain sight

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

The New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is examining racism in the New York family policing system (a more accurate term than “child welfare” system). New York’s institutional providers of family defense prepared in-depth written testimony that is a report in itself. As I read it, I had to stop every few pages. Just reading the first-hand accounts of soul-crushing injustice visited upon overwhelmingly poor nonwhite families was tough.

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Divorcing? Invest in Learning with These Tips

Gary Direnfeld

Divorce always ranks as one of the most stressful life events, often only second to the death of a loved one. With divorce, life as you knew it is thrown up into the air. You don’t know the configuration life will take until those pieces land. To say it’s a wild ride is an understatement. The nature of the person whom your are divorcing plays into that stress.

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Social Work’s Critical Role in Prevention of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders

Social Work Blog

Article by Diana Ling, MA, Program Manager; and Anna Mangum, MSW, MPH, Senior Health Strategist; Health Behavior Research and Training Institute, Steve Hicks School of Social Work, The University of Texas at Austin. Drinking during pregnancy is more common than you might think. About one in 20 pregnant people report binge drinking in the past 30 days, and up to five percent of school children in the U.S. may have fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs), a range of lifelong behavioral, intellect

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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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Social Work England consults on best interests assessor training standards

Community Care

Social Work England is seeking views on proposed standards it will use to approve and monitor best interests assessor (BIA) training courses. It has launched the consultation in the wake of the government’s decision in April to delay introducing the Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS) – its planned replacement for the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) – beyond the next election, due in 2024.

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Blood clots during COVID-19 may be a cause of ‘brain fog’

MQ Mental Health

MQ researcher Dr Max Taquet and his team from the University of Oxford have found evidence that the ongoing cognitive problems that some people experience after contracting COVID could be caused by blood clots. Many people with long-COVID experience memory issues and slowed thinking, often referred to as brain fog. Now we are one step closer to understanding the exact cause.

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Educational Assistants’ Advice to Parents for the Start of School

Gary Direnfeld

Parents: On my Facebook page I asked Educational Assistants what they would like to know about your child and what they would like you to know. There were 175 comments. I read them all. Here is a very brief summary. I will place a link to the original post and comments in a comment to this post for those who would like to read them. It is informative.

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The Tipping Point

Parenthood Understood

How much involvement and supervision should parents have with their kids’ school work? My typical short answer to this very, very popular question is generally: “not too much.” My longer, more involved answer is that I like to think of this as a relationship physics equation. Help can be wanted, appreciated, and loving. It strengthens relationships.

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Free Mental Health Webinars, September 2023

Social Work.Career

This post is part of the monthly series, Free Webinars for Social Workers and Mental Health Professionals, featuring over 65 free webcasts that we could find for you this month in the field of social work and mental health. This month is National Recovery Month and National Suicide Prevention Month. To make it easier for […] The post Free Mental Health Webinars, September 2023 appeared first on SocialWork.Career.

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Exploitation and low pay causing poverty among care workers, TUC finds

The Guardian

TUC says urgent investment needed in ‘Cinderella sectors’ to head off demographic timebomb ‘Invisible, endless, relentless’: the reality of care work in England Chronic under-investment, exploitation and low pay is leading to widespread poverty among workers in the care sector, according to damning research from the Trades Union Congress. As it publishes its first workforce blueprint for the care economy, the TUC argues that the “Cinderella sectors” of social care and childcare need urgent inves

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Couple Counseling: Is It Safe?

Gary Direnfeld

It’s not uncommon for me to decline a request for couple counseling. The reasons typically have to do with safety and/or substance use and/or serious mental health issues. Safety is code for concerns of domestic violence. Risk indicators includes screaming, name calling, breaking of objects, hitting, pushing, shoving, choking, threatening harm, abuse of pets, limiting access to resources, police or child protection agency involvement.

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Contested Disability: Sickle Cell Disease

Social Work Blog

The world’s first “molecular disease,” sickle cell disease (SCD) has captivated the medical community’s attention as a multisystem blood disorder linked to abnormalities in one molecule: hemoglobin. While the molecular model of SCD has led to advances in medical management, its reductionism obfuscates the sociopolitical dimensions of the condition, affording little attention to the racialized, gendered, classed, and disabling disparities faced by people with SCD.

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IFSW hosts side-event during the 2023 UN High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development

International Federation of Social Workers

During the 2023 UN High Level Political Forum (UN HLPF) on Sustainable Development, IFSW hosted a side-event , “Co-building an Eco-Social World for Sustainable Development”.

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Not a single version - of truth or of the report

Learning Social Worker

Statement from Caroline Aldridge, Anne Humphrys and Emma Corlett regarding the BBC Newsnight Investigation in to the Grant Thornton report on Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust’s (NSFT) Mortality Reporting and Recording 29th August 2023 When the ‘independent’ review was commissioned in summer 2022, NSFT’s Deputy CEO, Cath Byford, assured Norfolk Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee that the report would give a “single version of the truth”.

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That First Job: Be a Mentor

Gary Direnfeld

My first part time job was selling shoes. I was about 16-years-old. I lasted 3 months. I didn’t know how to sell. I was let go. I crossed the mall and applied for a job at another shoe store. “Sure,” I said, “I have experience.” I was hired, but still couldn’t sell. This manager took me under his wing. He literally taught me how to sell and also how to upsell.

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Daily Doses of Self-Care for September, Self-Care Awareness Month—2023

The New Social Worker

In celebration of the 7-year anniversary of the Self-Care A-Z blog and of September Self-Care Awareness Month, we invite you to deepen awareness and activation of self-care. Please use our daily-dose-of-self-care calendar for 2023.

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Anxiety and depression in recovery (Guest Post)

Living Sober

"Many people in early recovery find they lack a “volume knob” for emotions and this can feel out of control. Things often feel like they get worse before they get better.

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‘It’s almost magical’: how robotic pets are helping UK care home residents

The Guardian

Animatronic cats and dogs have helped staff at a Bedfordshire care home to avoid medicating some residents with dementia “You’re bloody lovely ain’t you,” said Frances Barrett, as the robotic cat she was stroking flicked its ears and whiskers one lunchtime this week at the Oak Manor care home in Bedfordshire. The resident was one of several who live with dementia playing with the home’s small menagerie of animatronic animals that were originally designed to entertain American girls aged four to

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NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending August 28, 2023

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

● Law schools at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University released a joint report on the state’s “central registry” of those whom a caseworker decided were slightly more likely than not to be child abusers. Their conclusion: Do what Georgia did with its registry: Get rid of it. The report highlights how the Registry system provides ample opportunities for racism, denies procedural fairness to the accused, and ultimately traps children and families in a cycle of poverty.

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I Was Harmed by Truehope, EMPowerplus – My Story

Nnatasha Tracy

In February 2022, I decided I wanted to go off my antidepressants. This is what led me to find the company Truehope and their supplement EMPowerplus. I wish I never had. The direction from the staff at Truehope has damaged my health more than I ever thought possible. I have depression and have been greatly injured by Truehope. This is my story.

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Social Work’s Critical Role in Prevention of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders

NASW Foundation

Drinking during pregnancy is more common than you might think. About one in 20 pregnant people report binge drinking in the past 30 days, and up to five percent of school children in the U.S. may.

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Katie Lopez Has Received the 2023 U-M President's Award for Distinguished Service in International Education

Michigan Social Work

Office of Global Activities Director Katie Lopez has received the 2023 U-M President’s Award for Distinguished Service in International Education. “This recognition is an amazing honor and particularly meaningful to me because I was nominated by former social work students and colleagues whom I highly respect. I feel incredibly lucky to have this job at the School of Social Work where I get to work at the intersection of my passions for social justice and international education.

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Whole Person Care: What It Means, How To Use It, and Why It’s Important

Relias

Western medicine has traditionally segmented the body into different parts. This has been especially true for psychology, where mental health has traditionally been seen as something wholly separate from physical health. Recently, however, research has uncovered just how connected every aspect of health truly is. This has led to increased attention to whole person care.

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Four ways MQ is helping to prevent suicide

MQ Mental Health

Trigger warning: This post references suicide. World Suicide Prevention day is approaching. While treatment, resources and support are critical for preventing these tragedies, mental health research also plays an immensely important role in suicide prevention. That’s why MQ uses donations from people like you to fund mental health research. Here is how your support is helping to save lives.

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8 Ways To Overcome Overwhelmed From Anxiety 2023

Blurt It Out

In our fast-paced world, anxiety is a common struggle experienced by many. The relentless pressure to be productive and lack of time to process our emotions can leave us feeling overwhelmed. Whether work, finances, or personal relationships trigger your anxiety, it is very important to discover coping mechanisms that work for you. Below are eight strategies to help you conquer overwhelming anxiety and regain control of your life.

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So’Phelia Morrow Writes in the Chicago Tribune on Emotional Abuse

Michigan Social Work

PhD student So’Phelia Morrow recently published an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune on the underrecognized dangers of emotional abuse. “I can’t say that I was ever hit, slapped or punched, but I know that a prison of abuse can be built without the abuser ever laying a hand on the victim.” Morrow is a Public Voices Fellow on Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls.

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Midwives and Doulas Offer Personalized Care — and New Opportunities

Relias

Midwives and doulas are making strides in very different populations. Parents-to-be who intentionally seek a birth experience outside of a hospital might choose the services of a midwife and/or doula. In other — and very different — circumstances, birthing persons who do not have access to a hospital or physician could benefit greatly from alternative forms of care.

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Wh?nau Ora versus animal agriculture in the age of climate change

Reimagining Social Work

An open letter appeal to social workers of Aotearoa New Zealand – A guest post by Luis Arevalo.

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Vitamin D And Anxiety: Does Vitamin D Deficiency Cause Anxiety?

Blurt It Out

Anxiety disorders are becoming prevalent. For example, an epidemiological survey by NCBI [1] states that one-third of the population experience anxiety at least once in their lifetime. There’s been increasing research into practical means of therapy to improve an individual’s emotional and mental health. Studies into the relationship between vitamin D and anxiety are also on the rise, with experts finding more means of therapy.

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