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School Social Work Now!
Supporting Innovative Practice, Effective
Leadership & Applied Research
August 2012 - Vol 2, Issue 39 |
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Summer Schedule | |
The next issue of School Social Work Now will be August 30th. |
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Dear (Contact First Name), | |
Mid-August. The summers go so swiftly and within weeks -- days!! -- the school bells will ring once again. Children and teens will flood school halls across the country and the excitement and challenges of helping students to reach their potential begins anew. As providers of essential services to aid in learning, school social workers are privileged to play a role in removing barriers and establishing positive learning environments.
As educational reforms continue to roll out, school social workers need to -- must -- shift some of their focus from individual services to macro services that are related to these educational reforms, ie, PBIS, RTI, P16/20, Transformational Schools, Charter Schools, and others. To remain locked in a potentially less effective or more limited service delivery model may result in others being brought in to provide macro services. Schools across the country are needing to make choices based on effectiveness of services and cost. Make the choice now to expand your role and provide at least some systemic services that will benefit the student population as a whole. Think about it.
SAVE THE DATES!!
The next ACSSW professional development opportunity will be Monday and Tuesday, February 18th-19th in wonderful New Orleans, once again on the campus of lovely Tulane University.
Calls for Proposals are now being accepted; deadline to submit is September 30th. Louisiana practitioners and academics are particularly encouraged to submit, but all are welcome.
Make plans to come early and enjoy the prior weekend in this exciting Southern city! It is a city full of history, intrigue, and cultural diversity. The cuisine can't be beat! And who wouldn't mind a break from the challenges of cold winter weather? Start thinking about it now as hotel reservations may go quickly due to Mardi Gras. Watch the website in future weeks for more details on the conference and hotel, but reserve those dates now. District team discounts will be available.
Judith Kullas Shine
President |
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Recommended Read for July & August | |
The School Practitioner's Concise Companion to Mental Health
by Cynthia Franklin, Mary Beth Harris and Paula Allen-Meares
Published by Oxford University Press
From OUP: The School Practitioner's Concise Companions gives busy social workers, psychologists, and counselors a quick guide to accessible, proven solutions for their students' most common problems. Built around the expert advice from the acclaimed School Services Sourcebook, each volume is a rapid reference to a key school issue.
Here, readers will find an overview of adolescent mental health disorders and step-by-step guidelines for intervening effectively. This Concise Companion covers ten major mental health issues-from depression to ADHD to autism-as well as strategies for working with co-occurring disorders and managing psychopharmacological treatments.
Each chapter is filled with charts, checklists, and cases and is conveniently organized around What We Know, What We Can Do, Tools and Practice Examples, and Key Points to Remember. A portable catalog of best practices, it brings evidence-based practice within easy reach of school professionals. Features:
- Brings out one focused section from the acclaimed School Services Sourcebook
- An affordable resource for cash- and time-strapped school-based professionals
- Features the best of the Sourcebook but in a smaller size so people who only need a little of the information don't have to buy the whole thing
Product Details 272 pages; 5 1/2 X 8 1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-537058-4ISBN10: 0-19-537058-9
OUP-Franklin, Harris... Alibris-Franklin, Harris... |
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Practice Points | |
Why We Need Emotional First Aid
Hurricanes, tornados, floods, mud slides, forest fires, mine collapses, oil spills, earthquakes, shootings, bombings-so many people in recent years have been caught up in the most horrific, traumatizing events. There is no shortage of tragedy in our world and trauma is one of the most debilitating and quite possibly long-lasting ailments that can affect a human being. The scars of emotional trauma, without proper care and attention, could last a lifetime, long after the physical scars have healed.
While body awareness techniques help people work through long-buried traumatic memories, what can we do when faced with the very real potential for trauma in the immediate wake of a catastrophe? Well, we can utilize those same techniques: we need emotional first aid as much as we need the paramedics and ER teams when disaster strikes or a tragedy unfolds. Continue.
Asian Immigrants to U.S. Surpass Hispanics for First Time
Asians have surpassed Hispanics as the largest group of new immigrants to the United States, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.
The study, called "The Rise of Asian Americans" and released...reveals that Asian-Americans also have the highest income, are the best educated and are the fastest-growing racial group in America.
About 430,000 Asians-or 36 percent of all new immigrants-arrived in the United States in 2010, according to U.S. census data. About 370,000, or 31 percent, were Hispanic. Continue here.
Louisiana Taxpayer Dollars to Pay for Teaching Creationism
Taxpayer dollars in Louisiana's new voucher program will be paying to send children to schools that teach creationism and reject evolution, promoting a religious doctrine that challenges the lessons central to public school science classrooms.
Several religious schools that will be educating taxpayer-subsidized students tout their creationist views. Some schools question whether the universe is more than a few thousand years old, openly defying reams of scientific evidence to the contrary.
Critics say it's inappropriate to spend public money on such religious teaching, arguing such programs undercut a strong science education and threaten the adequate preparation of students for college science courses. Complete article. |
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Leadership News | |
Most contemporary leadership studies are still based on a small number of models developed by researchers active some time ago. Throughout history, and into the early 1900s, these focused on identifying 'traits' of leadership. As a result of field observations in the First World War, and subsequent research in the psychiatric treatment of returning combatants, Lewin, Lippitt and White {i} published one of the first behavioural-based models of leadership in 1939. Behavioural models remain popular, but were particularly prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s, when work by US psychologists with combatants from the Vietnam War, were popularised in the management media. This genre of model tends to promote a situational context - that a leader in one situation will display different behaviours to a leader in a different situation (for example, Hersey and Blanchard (1972){ii}).
A typical definition of leadership, in this case taken from Chemmers (1997){iii}, is a "process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task". Such definitions, and the theories that seek to explain them, generally share a number of common assumptions - that there is a singular leader, who holds power over other people, and draws on this to influence their behaviour. Almost inevitably, the assumption is that leadership involves some form of hierarchy and contexts where there is not one are rare exceptions. Complete article.
. . . Leadership is changing. Thanks to the internet and other media, leaders are no longer the exclusive source of vital information about their companies or fields; therefore they can no longer expect to be followed blindly by their now well-informed, more skeptical ranks...leadership is now something that is given, not taken. It is increasingly something that only empowered followers can bestow (Brown, 68).
According to a review of the current leadership literature by Yukl and Van Fleet, "Most of the prevailing leadership theories have been simple, unidirectional models of what a leader does to subordinates" (186). "The follower remains an under-explored source of variance in understanding leadership processes" (Lord, Brown, and Freiberg, 167). Despite the fact that the current theories of charismatic leadership focus on leaders and the positive and negative consequences of their personality or behavior, new attention is being given to the role of followers in leadership processes (Howell and Shamir, 96). Robert Kelley makes the point that "most of us are more often followers than leaders. Even when we have subordinates, we still have bosses...so followership dominates our lives and organizations, but not our thinking, because our preoccupation with leadership keeps us from considering the nature and the importance of the follower" (143). Learn more. |
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Research Highlights | |
Understanding Child Abuse in Rural and Urban America Risk Factors and Maltreatment Substantiation
Across America, Child Protective Services (CPS) agencies investigate allegations of child maltreatment. Only about one-fourth of the allegations are ultimately substantiated by CPS. Substantiation means that there is sufficient evidence to believe an act of abuse took place. Case substantiation often impacts subsequent decisions, such as whether a child or family receives counseling or other types of services, and whether the child will be removed from his or her home. While many studies have considered other factors associated with substantiation, few examine the practice of rural child welfare because data are often collected and distributed in ways that do not allow this level of geographic analysis. Understanding substantiation differences by place is important, as we know there are different challenges in rural America including access to services and transportation. Using a large national sample of child maltreatment reports, this brief compares the outcomes of child maltreatment cases in rural versus urban places and identifies the characteristics associated with substantiation. Read more.
Advocates Raise Concerns on Looming "Sequester" Cuts
courtesy Education Week
Education advocates and the Obama administration are anxiously eyeing a series of across-the-board cuts set to hit a broad swath of federal domestic and military spending programs early next year, unless a sharply divided Congress can agree on a long-term plan to put the nation's fiscal house in order.
Most education lobbyists expect such a deal will prove elusive in the months leading up to the November elections, making the prospect of looming cuts in education and other programs a potentially volatile issue in the congressional and presidential campaigns...For now, the administration is making the case that lawmakers should spare education from cuts that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated at up to 7.8 percent of the U.S. Department of Education's budget, which is $68.1 billion in fiscal 2012. The proposed cuts would "put at risk all that we've accomplished in education and weaken programs that help children," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told lawmakers at a recent hearing of the Senate panel that oversees education spending.
Education groups have warned that cuts of that magnitude could translate into tens of thousands of job losses for the field. Estimates on the depth of the cuts vary, and the administration hasn't yet specified an exact percentage. Read more.
Research Highlights Dangers of Texting While Driving
A study showed that teens who were texting while driving were four times more likely to commit driving mistakes. Another study found that young drivers who even anticipate a call or text were more prone to car accidents. The studies were presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting. Click to continue. |
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In the News | |
DSM Panel Backs Down on Diagnoses
In a rare step, doctors on a panel revising psychiatry's influential diagnostic manual have backed away from two controversial proposals that would have expanded the number of people identified as having psychotic or depressive disorders.
The doctors dropped two diagnoses that they ultimately concluded were not supported by the evidence: "attenuated psychosis syndrome," proposed to identify people at risk of developing psychosis, and "mixed anxiety depressive disorder," a hybrid of the two mood problems.
They also tweaked their proposed definition of depression to allay fears that the normal sadness people experience after the loss of a loved one, a job or a marriage would be mistaken for a mental disorder. More. |
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Webinars | |
The Institute of Education Sciences will host a series of funding opportunities webinars in April - August, 2012. These webinars will focus on a wide range of topics for applicants to the FY 2013 grant programs, including the application process, grant writing, and overviews of specific funding opportunities. Full descriptions of the webinars are available and registration is now open. For further information and to register, click here.
ARCHIVED & AVAILABLE
Rural and LGBTQ Youth Suicide The Children's Safety Network released an archived webinar on: Youth Suicide Prevention Community of Practice, Special Populations in Youth Suicide Prevention, and Rural and LGBTQ Youth. Presenters addressed two populations at increased risk for youth suicide and shared strategies to reduce these risks. Speakers also discussed obstacles and barriers unique to rural populations. To download the archived webinar click here. This Teen Screen Webinar has been archived and is now available for your viewing. Listen to a discussion on the signs and symptoms of eating disorders, the latest treatment strategies, and co-managing these disorders with the clinical team to avoid relapse and achieve a successful outcome. Access archive. |
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SSW Job Links | |
New this week: Bronx, NY (bilingual) Evanston, IL Highland Park, MI Waukegan, IL
Continued this week: Berwyn, IL Burr Ridge, IL Danville, CA Dolton, IL
Eau Claire, WI Johnston, IA (PT) Lake Forest, IL Lewiston, ME
Pittsburg, KS Rush City, MN Schenectady, NY Topeka, KS
Tucson, AZ White Bear Lake, MN Woodridge, IL
Connecticut (Various Locations) |
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Calls for Proposals |
Special Issue on School Social Work and Military-connected Schools: New Directions in Practice, Research, Policy and National Leadership
Deadline: February 28, 2012
Guest Editors: Ron Avi Astor, University of Southern California Schools of Social Work and Education & Rami Benbenishty, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Children & Schools will publish a special issue on the needs of public schools serving military-connected students. These students experience multiple deployments, family separations, and other stressful life events that their non-military-connected peers do not undergo. Recent studies have shown that supportive schools can shield students from intense depression, conduct problems, feelings of alienation, anxiety, and school failure; however, for schools to serve as protective settings for military-connected students, school personnel need to be aware of both this population's presence and its particular needs. . .
School social workers can take a national leadership role developing and implementing practices and policies that address the needs of military-connected students. . .
The overarching goal of this special issue will be to present articles that describe the current state of
school social work knowledge and best practices in military-connected schools and provide insights
and implications that will help teachers, principals, school social workers, and other staff better serve military-connected students in the future. Manuscripts examining the perspectives of school staff, studewnts, and parents in military-connected schools and outlining best practices for such schools are encouraged. More information and to submit.
Special Edition of Social Work and Christianity: Towards A Christian Critique of Evidence-based Practice in Social Work
Deadline: September 1, 2012
Guest Editors: Michael S. Kelly, Loyola University Chicago School of Social Work & Cynthia Franklin, University of Texas-Austin Evidence-based Practice (EBP) is now entering its second decade in social work scholarship and practice. This special issue seeks to add a Christian perspective to the literature on the implementation of EBP in social work practice, policy, and education. Many scholars and practitioners hail EBP's impact on client outcomes and argue that it represents a deepening of our ethical commitment to empowering practitioners with a process and tools that lead to the best possible client care, while other scholars point out the limitations of the EBP approach. This special issue of Social Work & Christianity seeks to expand the epistemological and practical discussions about EBP to add a further (and we believe, necessary) complication to the debate over EBP in social work: namely, how can EBP be practiced in the multitude of Christian social work contexts we see around the world? This special issue seeks to further debate the pros and cons of using EBP in social work by asking simply, "How can Christian social workers incorporate EBP into their work?" Papers for this special issue are encouraged to look at EBP as a process that integrates clinical expertise, client circumstances, research evidence, and client values and to formulate a paper discussing one or all of those dimension from a Christian perspective. Papers can employ a variety of methodologies, though special emphasis will be given to papers that use a conceptual lens to build a foundation to either critique or defend EBP from a Christian social work perspective. Papers can be up to 20 pages, double-spaced and in APA style (6th Ed.). Contact Michael Kelly at Loyola with any questions and to submit papers as email attachments. |
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Grants & Funding | |
Search Tool Helps Users Find Grants to Fund Youth Programs
The Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs has created an online Web Tool that allows users to search for federal grant opportunities by youth topic or federal agency. The tool uses a filter to search for grants that are likely to fund youth programs. To learn more and determine if you are eligible, click here.
Learning & Leadership Grants
The National Education Association Foundation will fund the Learning & Leadership grant to support public school teachers, public education support professionals, and/or faculty and staff in public institutions of higher education to improve practice, curriculum, and studentachievement. Grants will be provided to individuals (to fund participation in high-quality professional development experiences, such as summer institutes or action research) or groups (to fund collegial study, including study groups, action research, lesson study, or mentoring experiences for faculty or staff new to an assignment) in the amounts of $2,000 or $5,000 respectively. The deadline to submit applications is October 15, 2012. Click here for more.
Lowe's Toolbox for Education
Lowe's Toolbox for Education funds school improvement projects initiated by parents in recognition of the importance of parent involvement in education. Maximum award: $5,000. Eligibility: K-12 schools (including charter, parochial, private, etc.) or parent groups (associated with a nonprofit K-12 school). Deadline: October 12, 2012. Learn more.
Social Work Education, Research, and Practice Grant Program
The New York Community Trust will provide funding to academic institutions and nonprofits that partner with academic institutions both nationwide and in New York City that build an evidence base for social work intervention. Grants may be used to support projects that are innovative in both the classroom and field and connect training and research to communities, make macro practice a priority and improve training in policy, management, and leadership, and support research that helps social workers improve practice and addresses larger social issues. The deadline is September 28, 2012, although applications are accepted year round. Awards in December. For more information and to apply click here.
Good News for SSWs: Race to the Top Grant Applications
NAPSO co-chair, Myrna Mandlawitz, shared information on the new RTTT grant applications. The "eligible applicants" are school districts, consortia of school districts, and education service agencies. Applicants can focus in on a few schools within a district, specific grades, or even specific subject areas. The only caveat is that a school district can only be part of one application. The other important feature is the heavy emphasis on "personalizing" and "individualizing" education. In fact, "personalized learning environment" is an absolute priority all applicants must meet.
Applications are expected out in early July and will be due in October, with the hope of awarding of 15-20 grants in December. It is important to check if your school/district is applying for the grant. If so, it is an opportunity to "get to the table" and help the district to address the social and emotional needs of students and recognize that school social workers provide many services in these arenas. More information.
CVS/Caremark Community Grants
CVS/Caremark Community Grants are currently accepting proposals for programs, targeting children under age 21 with disabilities, which address health and rehabilitation services or enabling physical movement and play. Maximum award: $5,000. Eligibility: non-profits located in states that also have CVS stores. Deadline: October 31, 2012. More info. |
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ACSSW Activities | |
ACSSW's present activities include:
- increasing research projects and their application within the school environment;
- developing a national school social work role framework paper;
- establishing a National Center for School Social Work Practice, Leadership and Research, a long-term goal,
- hosting the 2nd Louisiana State-wide School Social Work Conference, February 18-19, 2013, in New Orleans, LA, at the Tulane University Lavin-Bernick Center.
- presenting the 4th National School Social Work Research Summit. Watch for details to come.
If you have interest in participating in any of these activities, contact Judie Shine. ACSSW strives to be inclusive and transparent in all of its activities and welcomes, whether lengthy or short, the participation of its members. |
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