Editor's Eye

 

 

 

 

The New Social Worker invites you to submit your writing, art, photography, music, poetry, dance, or other talent. We will feature talent by social workers and about social work on our website throughout the month of March, in celebration of National Social Work Month. The theme for Social Work Month this year, as designated by the National Association of Social Workers, is “Social Work Paves the Way for Change.” Your talent entry may relate to this theme or to other social work-related topics.

 

Please submit your talent to me by February 15. You can submit by sending a file to Linda, or by sending a link to your talent entry on YouTube, SoundCloud, or similar platforms.

 

We can’t wait to see and share all your talent! Watch our Facebook page and website for more details.

 

 

What does a life in social work look like? You might look at it as a series of “sideways” stories! “If life were black and white, we’d have no need for social work.” Read Ogden Rogers’ collection, Beginnings, Middles, & Ends: Sideways Stories on the Art & Soul of Social Work. Listen to a recent episode of the Social Work Podcast that includes author Ogden Rogers reading from 6 of the 99 stories in the book. Now available on Amazon.com (print and Kindle), Google Play (e-book), directly from the publisher, and other bookstores. Do you know a social worker or social work student who loves to read? This book is a welcome retreat from academic textbooks. For info, see http://www.beginningsmiddlesandends.com.

 

 

 

THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER Magazine’s Back-to-School Guide for Social Work Students, edited by Linda May Grobman and Karen Zgoda, is available now! Get this e-book at:  http://www.amazon.com/WORKER%C2%AE-Magazines--School-Students-ebook/dp/B00EZAXVJ8 (Kindle format) or http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/355823 (ePub and other formats).

 

Check out all of our social work and nonprofit books, social work greeting cards, social work buttons, and more. All of our books and products are available through our secure online store at: http://shop.whitehatcommunications.com.

 

 

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The 4^th edition of our nonprofit textbook, An Introduction to the Nonprofit Sector: A Practical Approach for the 21^st Century, has just been published! For more information, contact Gary Grobman.

 

 

 

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**Get your textbooks!** Support The New Social Worker while you shop. Follow this link to Amazon.com for all your textbook and other supply needs.

 

 

Job Corner

 

Clinical Director

 

Spring Lake Ranch (Cuttingsville and Rutland, VT) is a residential recovery community and 650 acre farm offering a uniquely relational therapeutic setting, which supports and empowers people with mental health and addiction challenges to grow, thrive, and gain independence.

 

The Clinical Director oversees the continuum of client therapeutic experience, supervises the clinical staff, oversees the crisis team, and supports family relations.  Master’s degree in psychology, social work, or counseling. Clinical licensure is strongly preferred. 

 

More information at www.springlakeranch.org  Send resume to tom@springlakeranch.org  

 

 

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Physicians, Family Practice  

 

Tri-Area Community Health with locations at Laurel Fork, Ferrum. and Floyd, VA, has immediate full time and part time employment opportunities available for board certified, Primary Care Physicians, Clinical Psychologist, LCSW, Psychiatric NP, and Case Managers for behavioral health, outreach, and enrollment. 

 

Competitive salary and benefits package. Set in the beautiful mountains of Southwest Virginia near the Blue Ridge Parkway with lakes, rivers, and multitudes of outdoor activities.   

 

Please send CV to hr@triarea.org or call (276) 398-2292(276) 398-2292  for more information.  E/O/E   

 

 

 

 

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Social Worker - Dodge City, Kansas  

 

Work with children/families in the DCF Reintegration contract to develop permanency options for the children through reintegration with originating-family or other permanency alternatives.  

 

Requires:   Bachelor’s degree in Social work or Master’s degree in Social Work, Psychology, Marriage and Family Therapy or Counseling from an accredited college or University   Licensed or Ability to license in the state of Kansas  

 

Contact: Kerri Kemp

Phone: 620-757-3280620-757-3280 

E-mail: kerri.kemp@st-francis.org

Web: http://www.st-francis.org 

 

Featured Excerpt

 

     "I hate doing family therapy!” a colleague of mine once said during group supervision. She was sitting across from me, and even though her comment was harsh, I could see in her eyes and expression that it wasn’t anger coming through, but frustration and despair. “I’d rather meet with the kid individually than to deal with the chaos that is going on at the kid’s home.” She finished her statement, and everyone else in the group nodded in agreement. This, my fellow social workers, is how some of us have come to view family therapy and treatment—as a burden!

 

    I started out wanting to save the world—not unlike many other social workers who make the arduous journey through rigorous undergraduate and graduate work. And, like others, I thought that if I could just impart my clinical understanding and cultural experience with people, I could cure mental illness and save individuals one session at a time. But, as I settled into my first position out of graduate school—a community mental health agency providing services to children and families—I began to realize how ill-prepared I was to begin working with the populations we all had our hearts set on saving!

 

    For many new social workers, working with families has become an uphill struggle fraught with missed appointments, hard-to-reach parents, children who can only be seen during school hours, and family members who sometimes undermine the clinician’s treatment with their own views about mental health. Still, families need help and new social workers are trained to help—so how do we mix the two?

 

    Family therapy is a type of group psychotherapy that involves the treatment of two or more family members during the same session. Sounds pretty easy, right? Just provide the same type of treatment you would give an individual to multiple people, right? Well, not quite.

 

    Families have their own culture that includes not only gender, sexual orientation, race, and socioeconomic status, but also themes, roles, myths, and a developed family concept that permeates all treatment. They have a resiliency that allows them to “absorb the shock of problems and discover strategies to solve them while finding ways” to meet the whole family’s needs (Van Hook, 2008, p. 11). But it can be tough and challenging to engage families, and it requires a clinician to have “a willingness to approach your anxiety” (Taibbi, 2007, p. 4).

 

    One of the main things that you must do when you begin family work is to look at how families identify themselves. A common mistake of most new social workers is to look at the family through the lens of services the family has or their current living situation. The best way to learn how a family identifies itself is to simply ask: “Would you say that your family is close or distant?” “Can you detail everyone you consider ‘family’?” You’d be surprised by the answers you receive that can help inform treatment and give you a chance to use informal supports to help the family.

 

Read the rest of this article at:

 

Articles from the Winter 2015 issue of The New Social Worker include:

 

...and much more!

News & Resources

September 16-18, 2015 

The University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work

 

 

The intent of the conference will be to offer the following: 

 

The presentation formats are:

 

Skill-building Presentations provide a forum for presenters to deliver a 175-minute or 90-minute presentation with other presenters or individually. Researchers, clinicians and educators will have an opportunity to teach evidence-informed practice skills for working with military personnel, veterans, and their families. Topics should focus on clinical intervention, family therapy training, mental health treatments, community work, social policy, and/or social justice. A smaller number of presentations that share effective teaching practices with social work students will also be accepted.

Poster Presentations: Educators, clinicians, researchers, and students are invited to present their work in poster format. A poster reception will be held Thursday evening (September 17) and will offer opportunities for networking and refreshments.

Please note: the submission deadline is February 1, 2015. To submit to the conference, please use the Abstract Submission Form provided at http://www.utexas.edu/ssw/ceu/third-annual-military-social-work-conference/, and submit to ssw-profdevinfo@utlists.utexas.edu.

If you have any questions about the proposal process or about the conference, please contact Liz Nowicki, LCSW, ACSW, Director, Professional Development, at Lnowicki@austin.utexas.edu or call 512-471-2886512-471-2886 .

 

 

 

The Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics (JSWVE) is sponsoring a term paper contest. The term papers will be collected by the JSWVE editorial board and judged by a board of professionals not associated with JSWVE. Winning papers will be published in the Fall 2015 issue of the Journal.

 

Details for the contest are listed below.

• Must have a central theme of social work values or social work ethics
• Must be written as an MSW or BSW student (student may have graduated)
• Must be nominated by a faculty member (the nominating professor’s name will be published)
• Must follow the general manuscript submission guidelines found at http://www.jswve.org/images/PDFs/jswvemanuscriptformat1207.pdf
• Must be in APA citation style (except NO headers, NO footers, and NO page numbers)
• Deadline for submission: May 15, 2015
• Paper must be submitted by e-mail to smarson@nc.rr.com with a copy sent to donnadanddennisv@gmail.com
• Winning term papers will be published in The Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics in the fall issues of 2015.
• Judges will be professionals who are NOT associated with the JSWVE editorial board

Judging criteria will include:

 

 

I am seeking articles for upcoming issues of THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER magazine and/or our website. I am especially interested in articles in the following categories:

 

 

Our style is conversational and educational, and articles typically run 1,500-2,000 words for feature articles (considerably shorter for news items). We want positive articles that social workers can use to help them advance in their careers.

 

I also welcome submissions of poetry, photographs, illustrations, artwork, videos, audio, and other creative work depicting social work and related topics.

 

Please contact Linda Grobman, editor/publisher of THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER, at: lindagrobman@socialworker.com

 

 

 

In Print

 

Briefly, those currently in print are:

 

 

 

 

All of our books are available through our secure online store at:

 

 

 

Reminders

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