Hello —
Welcome to Issue #251 of the Social Work E-News! Thank you for subscribing to receive this email newsletter, which is brought to you by the publisher of The New Social Worker magazine, SocialWorker.com, SocialWorkJobBank.com, and other social work publications.
Changes for The New Social Worker! In our Fall issue, I announced that The New Social Worker is moving to a web-only format. Instead of publishing an issue every 3-4 months, we are now publishing articles on an ongoing basis on our website. This will allow for more flexibility and more timely publication of articles. There may be some changes to the format and schedule of the E-News, and we are revising our Writers' Guidelines. Read the announcement.
Here’s a quick link for immediate download of the PDF edition for Fall 2021:
Highlights of this issue include: social work ethics and money, questions to ask in your social work job
interview, equity-minded practice, being anti-racist, facing oneself in a
racist nation, the DSW degree, book reviews, technology, and more. See listing below (after the "Featured Excerpt").
Until next time,
Linda Grobman, ACSW, LSW
Publisher/Editor
THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER®
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October marks several observances, including but not limited to:
- National Health Literacy Month
- National Bullying Prevention Month
- LGBT History Month
- National Domestic Violence Awareness Month
- Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month
- World Food Day (October 16)
...and more.
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Job Corner/Current Job Openings |
Bilingual Case Manager - Helping Immigrants Thrive
We are looking for a full-time bilingual (Spanish- English) employee with an entrepreneurial and problem-solving mindset, previous case management experience with immigrants or marginalized families, and a passion to serve those with multiple roadblocks to self-sufficiency. This person will be the first hire of HImT and will work closely alongside the Nido de Esperanza team.
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Conduct comprehensive intakes and provide case management to a caseload of ~ 10-15 families with a focus on long-term goal of financial and employment stability, and legal status when possible.
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Work collaboratively with families to set short- and long-term goals.
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Assess eligibility for gaining legal status, referring to immigration lawyers as appropriate.
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Work with families to assess eligibility and apply for the recently passed NY states.
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Oversee development of financial literacy, job-readiness, and ESL classes.
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Organize Know Your Rights workshops.
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Explore and connect families to job training and placement opportunities.
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Help to build network of resources and local partners.
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Maintain case records.
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Track data and metrics.
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Track referrals and provide advocacy.
Helping Immigrants Thrive (HimT) is a new nonprofit organization striving to support the undocumented immigrant community in their journey to financial self-sufficiency, independence, and a brighter future with dignity. As a pilot project, HImT is collaborating with El Nido de Esperanza. Both serve undocumented immigrant families in Washington Heights. Ten undocumented families have been identified for you to work with to determine specific needs for legal, health, job, housing, and/or other assistance.
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BSW or MSW Bilingual Spanish/English
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Case management experience working with immigrant communities using a client-centered, strength-based approach
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Excellent writing skills
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Highly organized and detail-oriented
Find more jobs for new grads and experienced social work practitioners at https://www.socialworkjobbank.com, THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER’s online job board and career center.
If you or your agency are hiring social workers, post your jobs on SocialWorkJobBank.com. Please check the SocialWorkJobBank job posting page for options and SPECIAL offers.
Job seeker services are FREE—including searching current job openings, posting your confidential résumé/profile, and receiving email job alerts. Please let employers know that you saw their listings in the SOCIAL WORK E-NEWS and at SocialWorkJobBank.com.
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On Being Anti-Racist as a White Social Worker
Editor’s Note: This excerpt is from THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER website at SocialWorker.com. Read the complete article at:
by Elspeth Slayter, MSW, PhD
Many social workers are talking about anti-racism for the first time.
So, let’s define our terms: an anti-racist is someone who supports an
antiracist policy through their actions or ideas. I believe that to
become anti-racists, social workers have to start by embracing the truth
that we have all been raised in a racist society. Dr. Ibram Kendi talks
about how racism has rained down on all of us—and therefore, how can
any of us not be racist? We have to start where we are with the system
we have, and take a good, hard, deep look inside ourselves first. We
must consider how our racist society affects our work with clients and
colleagues—and act on it.
And that is the core of what I want to talk with you about today.
I want you to sit with that for a minute. Did you get that I am asking
you to look at your own racism? I am asking you to consider how you
benefit from—and even uphold—conscious and unconscious biases, as well
as structural racism. That’s something I have had to do myself—and
something I admit to freely. I am a white social worker and I have
racist biases. I was mostly without being conscious of them, until I
began the process of doing anti-racism work.
We must disempower the word racist, normalizing that we are going
to do and say racist things as white people. It is like the water
around a fish in a fishbowl that goes unnoticed. And that’s the analogy
that’s often used to describe how Americans live in a culture of white
supremacy. And by that I am not talking about the KKK and racist
macroaggressions (see https://ywcacentralcarolinas.org/defining-racial-justice-terms-microaggression-vs-macroaggression/), I am talking about the dominant and unquestioned cultural norms and standards of behavior in a majority of the U.S.
Many feel strongly that white supremacy will continue to shape
social work unless a critical mass of white social workers step up and
confront their racist biases and behaviors to shift the system. So, back
to my proposition to you, the idea of asking you to consider that you
may have racist bits inside you. This may not sit well with many of you
who doubt you are racist and think you are good people. I am sure you
are good people. I have no doubt of that. But, before you stop reading
this essay, I am going to ask you to suspend judgment and hear me out.
The famous Black scholar Angela Davis once famously guided us,
saying that it is not enough to be non-racist—we must be anti-racist.
That means you need to take an active vs. passive stance on racial
justice. I want us to think about how her argument applies to social
work as I share with you about my ongoing journey toward becoming an
anti-racist social worker. The very first thing I want to say is that I,
for sure, don’t have all the answers on how to be white and how to do
anti-racism work, so I’m modeling that imperfection on purpose. We have
to be okay with being imperfect, but we have to act.
Thirty years ago, I attended an intensive anti-racism retreat.
That difficult but wonderful experience was followed with a variety of
continued work in interracial groups, partnerships, and collaborations.
Much of this work led to moments that were personally challenging and
uncomfortable, like when I realized that I held biased beliefs about
Black and African American clients and the ways they parented their
children that I wasn’t even conscious of. I was raised in a church,
raised not to treat people differently based on race, but I still had
some unearthed biases. I went into that anti-racism retreat assuming
that I was not racist, assuming that I had a good heart. And I did have a
good heart. But what I found out is that if we are raised in a society
that is characterized by white supremacy, racism is in us whether we are
conscious of it or not. We have to get used to that. If we recognize
these bits of bias, we can course correct them. We need to get good at
stepping outside of ourselves in supervision, looking at our caseloads,
and thinking about how race impacts work with clients and colleagues. We
have to name it. We have to go there. We have to talk about it. We have
to act.
Read the rest of this article at:
Selected Articles from the Fall 2021 issue:
Recent Articles on Our Website
For the Table of Contents and full text of all articles in our current issue, please download the PDF.
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NASW Foundation, University of Texas Austin Partner on COVID-19 Vaccination Grant
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The National Association
of Social Workers (NASW) Foundation and the Health Behavior Research and
Training Institute (HBRT) at The University of Texas at Austin Steve
Hicks School of Social Work have been awarded a $3.3 million, one-year
grant by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to engage
the nation’s more than 700,000 social workers in boosting COVID-19
vaccine confidence, uptake, and access, particularly among populations
with low vaccination rates and higher vulnerability to severe forms of
infection. “As an essential health care workforce, social workers are well
positioned to help people in their decision making around their
vaccination status and address any impediments to getting vaccinated,
for themselves and for their family members,” said NASW President and
NASW Foundation board member Mildred (Mit) Joyner, DPS, MSW, LCSW.
“Whether they work in health care settings, schools, mental health
clinics, child welfare agencies or out in the community, social workers
are trusted professionals who are able to meet people where they are in
their COVID-19 vaccination journey and help them navigate any personal,
systemic, or logical barriers to becoming fully vaccinated." Vaccine confidence is a complex construct that involves a variety of
personal factors, such as religious beliefs, political beliefs,
perceptions of the government, perceptions of science, individual and/or
community experiences with health providers and/or systems, language
and/or literacy, and/or immigration/refugee status. As is seen in
health and public health initiatives generally, there are also systemic
and logistical factors, such as transportation, childcare, and
mis/disinformation. With their distinctive “person in the environment”
framework, social workers possess highly relevant expertise in helping
facilitate health decision making in this context. The one-year project will include a comprehensive education campaign for
social workers on COVID-19 vaccine safety and effectiveness, barriers
to vaccination (e.g., mis/disinformation, logistical challenges,
psychological, etc.), and the role of social workers in promoting
vaccination. The initiative will also include trainings for social
workers on facts and myths about the vaccines, as well as training in
Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT);
Motivational Interviewing (MI); and other evidence-based, culturally
competent, public health- and social work-informed methods for helping
clients to process health-related decisions and choices. Through
reflective listening and other strategies, versus traditional
advice-giving approaches, these methods support and honor clients’
capacity and right to make choices about their health, while centering
science-based and accurate information. HBRT will collaborate with Michigan State University to develop a
smartphone mobile application for social workers. The mobile app, which
will supplement training, will support social workers by providing them
readily accessible vaccine information, motivational interviewing
strategies, screening questions and brief interventions, and effective
vaccine messaging for real-time support. HBRT will also collaborate with
NORC at the University of Chicago to assist in developing messaging and
in evaluation efforts.
NASW’s 55 state/territorial chapters and specialty social work associations will also be engaged in the initiative.
Write for The New Social Worker
Considering submitting an article to The New Social Worker? We are updating our submission guidelines. Please check our Writers' Guidelines for open calls for submissions.
Thank you!
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LOOKING FOR READING MATERIAL THAT'S NOT "TOO ACADEMIC"? GIFTS FOR SOCIAL WORKERS?
Days in the Lives of Social Workers: 62 Professionals Tell "Real-Life" Stories From Social Work Practice (5th Edition)
LOVE TO READ ABOUT WHAT SOCIAL WORKERS ARE DOING?
Spend a day with social workers in 62 different settings, and learn about the many career paths available to you. Did you ever wish you could tag along with a professional in your chosen field, just for a day? DAYS IN THE LIVES OF SOCIAL WORKERS allows you to take a firsthand, close-up look at the real-life days of 62 professional social workers as they share their stories. Join them on their journeys, and learn about the rewards and challenges they face.
"While
the broadness of social work is what brings many people into the
profession, at times it can be overwhelming.
Fortunately, we have Linda
May Grobman to help social workers navigate their careers through the
eyes of those with real life experience.
The 5th edition of Days in
the
Lives of Social Workers includes traditional and non-traditional
career
paths that offer a practical and realistic snapshot of the
diverse
fields of social work.
An added bonus is the updated list of
professional organizations, web resources, and social media, blogs and
podcasts.
This is a must have for social workers at any stage in their
career!" Jennifer Luna, MSSW Director, Dinitto Career Center The University of Texas at Austin, Steve Hicks School of Social Work
The A-to-Z Self-Care Handbook for Social Workers and Other Helping Professionals
STAY ON TRACK WITH A SELF-CARE PLAN!
The
A-to-Z format in this book provides 26 practical strategies for your
personal self-care plan. Learn how to make a SMART plan and keep
yourself accountable. Easy to read and essential for any social worker
or helping professional.
ISBN: 978-1-929109-53-1
BEDTIME READING/GIFTS
BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES, & ENDS: SIDEWAYS STORIES ON THE ART & SOUL OF SOCIAL WORK
A DELIGHTFUL GIFT FOR SOCIAL WORKERS AT ANY STAGE IN THEIR CAREERS
With just the right blend of humor and candor, each of these stories contains nuggets of wisdom that you will not find in a traditional textbook. They capture the essence and the art and soul of social work.
Available in Paperback and Hardcover: ON CLINICAL SOCIAL WORK: MEDITATIONS AND TRUTHS FROM THE FIELD is Dr. Danna Bodenheimer's NEWEST book.
A MEANINGFUL AND BEAUTIFUL GIFT
The beautiful, full-color book - now in paperback and hardcover - makes a meaningful gift for you, a student, or a colleague.
Jonathan Singer of the Social Work Podcast wrote the foreword to this book, and he said, "Danna pays attention to life’s details with a psychotherapist’s insight and writes about them with the passion of a slam poet. She speaks to the soul of social work and inspires us to think about more than just social work."
Jonathan B. Singer, Ph.D., LCSW, Associate Professor, Loyola University Chicago, Founder and host, Social Work Podcast
The publisher of THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER and the Social Work E-News has published several books about social work. These books make great gifts (for graduation, holidays, or other occasions) for yourself, or for your friends, students, and colleagues in social work!
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Find more information on our secure online catalog at:
Most of our publications are available at Amazon.com and other bookstores. (Some are available in Kindle format, as well as print.)
Most of our books are also available as ebooks at VitalSource.
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IN THIS ISSUE
Editor's Eye This Month
Job Corner/Current Job Openings
Featured Excerpt News & Announcements
In Print
Reminders
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ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER® SOCIAL WORK E-NEWS is published by:
White Hat Communications (publisher of THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER® magazine and THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER® ONLINE)
P.O. Box 5390
Harrisburg, PA 17110-0390
Linda Grobman, Editor
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