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THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER® Social Work E-News
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Issue #25, December 13, 2002
EDITOR'S EYE
Dear Social Work Colleagues,
Welcome to Issue #25 of the Social Work E-News. This e-mail newsletter is brought to you by the publisher of THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER magazine and other social work publications.
In this issue, I have included two important news items. The first relates to recommendations made recently by NASW and CWLA to newly-elected governors. These two organizations are calling on state governors to make a commitment to hiring an adequate number of professionally trained social workers and to make other improvements in the child welfare system. Please read this and contact your state's governor to express your thoughts on these issues.
The other news item is about incarcerated youth. A recent federally-funded study reports on the large percentage of these youth who suffer from psychiatric illnesses, and points out racial and gender differences.
I hope everyone is staying warm as Winter is upon us here in the U.S. I know that many have been without heat as a result of ice storms. At the same time, I recently heard from subscriber Amanda Vos, the Australian social worker I wrote about a while back who traveled around the U.S. and Canada. She's back in Australia now, and reports that "Brisbane is sweltering and Sydney is going through horrific bush fires...people are losing their homes everyday
." So, whatever part of the world you're in, I hope you are comfortable and safe. Of course, in disasters such as these (massive fires, ice storms, and so forth), social workers are among the first to respond and help those in need.
Until next time,
Linda Grobman, ACSW, LSW
Publisher/Editor
THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER®
http://www.socialworker.com
linda.grobman@paonline.com
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IN THIS ISSUE
A Word From Our Sponsor
News
Calendar of Events
Gift Ideas
In Print
Job Corner
Newsletter Necessities
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A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
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"QuickPAD Technology Enables Health & Human Services"
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- Case narratives
- Forms/templates
- ASP applications
- SSIS system
- Homegrown system
- Email
QuickPAD is a logical, cost-effective alternative to laptops and PDAs that improves productivity and facilitates data entry at the point of origin. Because of its full size comfortable keyboard, infrared technology for easy data transfer, battery longevity using 4 AA batteries and durable, lightweight design, case workers will reduce paper work, improve information delivery and increase the amount of time workers are able to spend with families.
For more information or a 60-day FREE EVALUATION unit, contact QuickPAD at 800-373-8181, email: susan_law@quickpad.com or see www.quickpad.com.
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NEWS
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Governors Urged to Improve State Child Welfare Systems
Limited resources, high turnover, and an inadequately trained workforce put kids at risk.
WASHINGTON-The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) and the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) in a letter dated November 20 urged all governors, especially those who are newly elected, to address the struggles their state's child welfare system faces in caring for abused and neglected children and their families.
CWLA and NASW reminded U.S. governors that vulnerable children and families ultimately suffer the consequences of allocating limited resources to state child welfare systems. Governors have the responsibility and ability to combat child abuse and neglect, and to make sure that their state's most vulnerable children are cared for.
"Every day, public child welfare agencies make life and death decisions for children with complex needs, while striving to meet extensive legal mandates," says Shay Bilchik, president and CEO of the Child Welfare League of America.
In recent years, there have been a number of high profile reports of child fatalities and other tragedies for children and families involved with the child welfare system. The persistence of preventable child fatalities, reports that children have been lost while in custody of the state, and continuing difficulties finding permanent living arrangements for children and youth within reasonable timeframes, are all indicators that this nation has not yet made an adequate investment in protecting children and youth.
"The public has high expectations for frontline human service workers, but without a competent and stable workforce and appropriate supports it is near impossible to deliver uniformly high quality services. Gaps in care for our most vulnerable children are unacceptable, but unavoidable, if resources are not increased," says Elizabeth Clark PhD, ACSW, MPH, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers.
Child welfare positions are particularly demanding and stressful, often involving unreasonable workloads and low pay in comparison to jobs in other sectors that require comparable amounts of education and responsibility. Consequently, it is difficult to attract the most qualified employees-those with professional social work training and experience-and turnover and vacancy rates among child welfare agencies are often alarmingly high.
The letter noted an overall vacancy rate of 12.9%, with one state reporting a maximum vacancy rate of 91.3% and an average turnover rate of 11.5%, and another state reporting turnover as high as 28.6%.
Governors were asked to ensure that children in state child welfare systems are cared for by making a commitment to hiring an adequate number of professionally trained social workers and other child welfare professionals and to maintaining reasonable caseloads and workloads, with adequate compensation.
For additional information about suggested improvements in the child welfare system or to obtain a copy of the recent letter to governors, please visit www.cwla.org or see http://www.socialworkers.org/pressroom/2002/112202.asp for links to NASW's letters to governors.
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Psychiatric Disorders Common Among Detained Youth
Among teens in juvenile detention, nearly two thirds of boys and nearly three quarters of girls have at least one psychiatric disorder, a federally funded study has found. These rates dwarf the estimated 15 percent of youth in the general population thought to have psychiatric illness, placing detained teens on a par with those at highest risk, such as maltreated and runaway youth. Conducted in the Chicago area, the new study is the largest and most methodologically sophisticated of its kind. Linda A. Teplin, Ph.D., Northwestern University, and colleagues, report on their findings in the December, 2002 Archives of General Psychiatry.
Since previous studies of such youth had yielded inconsistent results, they sought to gauge the true extent of the problem by employing a large, stratified sample, randomized design and standardized diagnostic measures. They assessed psychiatric disorders in 1829 African American, non-Hispanic white and Hispanic teens, ages 10-18, randomly selected at admission to the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, over four years. About 8500 enter the facility each year for pre-trial detention and brief sentences. About 90 percent are males, 88 percent African American, 17 percent Hispanic and 5.6 percent non-Hispanic white. Masters-level psychologists conducted a structured diagnostic interview with the selected teens during a 2-3 hour session following intake, documenting the six-month prevalence rates of various disorders.
About half of the detained teens abused or were addicted to drugs, and more than 40 percent had disruptive behavior disorders: oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder. Even when conduct disorder (common in this population) was excluded, nearly 60 percent of males and more than two-thirds of females met diagnostic criteria for, and also were functionally impaired by, one or more mental or substance use disorders. Overall, disorders were more prevalent among older youth and females, more than 20 percent of whom had a major depressive disorder.
Among boys, non-Hispanic whites showed the highest rates of most disorders and African Americans the lowest. The exception was separation anxiety disorder, which was more prevalent among African Americans and Hispanics than among whites. Hispanics had higher rates than African Americans of panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and substance use other than alcohol or marijuana disorders. The only categories for which boys showed higher rates than girls were a manic episode, psychotic disorders, any substance abuse disorder, and marijuana use disorder. In a departure from the overall pattern, older girls had lower rates of oppositional defiant disorder than younger girls.
"We are especially concerned about the high rates of depression and dysthymia among detained youth - 17.2 percent of males, 26.3 percent of females," noted Teplin and colleagues.
More than 106,000 teens are currently in custody in U.S. juvenile facilities. As welfare reform, managed care and a shrinking public healthcare system limit access to services, many poor and minority youth with psychiatric disorders may "increasingly fall through the cracks into the juvenile justice system," which is poorly equipped to help them, say the researchers.
The other authors of the study are: Drs. Karen Abram, Gary McClelland and Mina Dulcan, Northwestern University; Dr. Amy Mericle, University of Chicago.
The research was supported by grants from the following agencies:
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH)
National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD)
Office of Rare Diseases (ORD)
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA)
Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)
Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP)
Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHSTP)
National Center on Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC)
US Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
The William T. Grant Foundation
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Open Society Institute
The Chicago Community Trust
NIH, SAMHSA, and CDC are agencies of the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).
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CALENDAR OF EVENTS
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Stop by THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER's chat room on Sunday evenings at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. Rich Bott, BSW, is doing a great job of hosting the lively discussion of social work issues. Rich has been a regular on our Web site's message board since his BSW student days, and he is a dedicated volunteer chat host! To chat, go to our home page at http://www.socialworker.com and click on the "Chat Now" button.
We have scheduled author chats on our Social Work Grad School site. January 22, 2003, we will feature Manfred J. Melcher, the author of BECOMING A SOCIAL WORKER: REFLECTIONS ON A CLINICIAN'S PROFESSIONAL JOURNEY. Then, on February 3, we will have another chat with Jesús Reyes, author of THE SOCIAL WORK GRADUATE SCHOOL APPLICANT'S HANDBOOK. Watch our www.socialworkgradschool.com site for details about these and other upcoming chats. The chats can be accessed from the main page of the site at http://www.socialworkgradschool.com
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GIFT IDEAS
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SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER MAGAZINE
Subscriptions make great gifts! THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER is our print magazine, published since 1994 (going into our 10th year with the next issue!), which is published quarterly. It includes articles on social work ethics, field placement, practice specialties, and a lot more.
If you are not a subscriber yet and would like to be, go to http://www.socialworker.com for more information. For a listing of articles in the Fall issue, go to http://www.socialworker.com/current.htm
Put a subscription to THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER on your "wish list" or order directly from our online store at http://www.whitehatcommunications.com/store -- where you will also find the social work and nonprofit management books we publish.
NOVELTY GIFTS FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER WHO HAS EVERYTHING
At the request of some of our readers, we have made a few novelty items available. They include mugs, tote bags, tile coasters, even cute little teddy bears (for a limited time) and calendars (also for a limited time)-all with the slogan "I AM A SOCIAL WORKER!" Order these items from our "Mugs and More Store" at http://www.cafepress.com/socialworker
We also still have buttons with this same slogan, available from our online store at http://www.whitehatcommunications.com/store
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IN PRINT
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COMING IN THE WINTER ISSUE OF THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER:
* Identifying and Assessing Battered Women in Emergency Room and Trauma Settings
* Social Work Salaries: Keeping Up With the Times?
* Combatting Vicarious Trauma
* Feedback in Practicum: Givin' It and Takin' It
* Working with Deaf Colleagues and Clients
*
and more
The Winter issue has gone to press and will be available in print in early January 2003.
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JOB CORNER
Please visit our specialty job site at http://www.socialworkjobbank.com to search current job listings, or to post a job opening for your agency. Please let employers know that you saw their listings in the SOCIAL WORK E-NEWS and at SocialWorkJobBank.com.
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NEWSLETTER NECESSITIES
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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
linda.grobman@paonline.com
http://www.socialworker.com
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Advertising:
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News:
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Copyright 2002 White Hat Communications. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to forward this entire newsletter, with all information intact, by e-mail to social work colleagues, students, and others interested in social work, for personal use only. You may also print out this newsletter for personal use. All other uses of this material require permission from the publisher at linda.grobman@paonline.com
THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER is a registered trademark of White Hat Communications.
Linda Grobman, ACSW, LSW
Editor/Publisher
THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER
http://www.socialworker.com 