From January 2001 NASW NEWS
Copyright ©2001, National Association of Social Workers, Inc.

Social Work in the Public Eye

NASW was listed as one of several organizations that oppose corporal punishment of children in an op-ed piece in the Chicago Tribune. Salim Muwakkil, senior editor at In These Times magazine, wrote that NASW joins the national PTA, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in issuing position papers opposing spanking.

Muwakkil said the Federal Trade Commission's recent report on the marketing of violence to children by the entertainment industry would have done well to look at violence in the home instead. In Europe, he notes, corporal punishment of children is banned in nine countries.

Charlotte Sere, an NASW Illinois Chapter member, was awarded the Douglas Turner Ward/Alice Childress script-writing award for her play Gumbo! at the 10th Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Writers' Conference in Chicago.

The play is about the relationship among three people in an addictions rehabilitation home.

Nancy Boyd Webb

Nancy Boyd Webb, who teaches social work at Fordham University, was one of four panelists in a teleconference sponsored by the Hospice Foundation of America. Hosted by Cokie Roberts, the teleconference was beamed to 2,100 sites in the U.S. and Canada. The topic of the conference was "living with grief: children, adolescents and loss."

Leila Carlson, executive director of NASW's Iowa Chapter, wrote in a letter to the editor of the Des Moines Sunday Register regarding Iowa's child protective services system, "If legislators truly want to protect Iowa's children, they will cease the political posturing and stop looking for a scapegoat." Carlson was responding to the flagging budgets and staff of the Department of Human Services.

"A significant number of changes were recommended [in a 1988 study by The Kemp Center], including development of multidisciplinary child abuse teams and comprehensive training for those teams, and hiring more and better-trained child protective staff supervisors," Carlson wrote. "However, staffing and training budgets have not withstood the buffeting of legislative cuts and administrative restrictions imposed for the economy's sake."

NASW Alabama Chapter member and Commissioner of Mental Health and Mental Retardation Kathy Sawyer received the 2000 Lilly Reintegration Award for government. According to the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, the award was given in recognition of "admirable efforts to destigmatize mental illness, which have paved the way to help reintegrate persons with schizophrenia and related disorders into their communities."

Sawyer was nominated by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill Alabama, a family and consumer advocacy group.

"I hope that this award will add impetus to our education efforts and that all Alabamians will take note and take pride in the respect and dignity this brings to our state, to mental health consumers and their families," said Sawyer.

One of her first acts as commissioner of the Alabama Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation was to establish a Community Education Advisory Committee, which includes media, consumers, family members, service providers and community leaders from around the state.

Julio Morales

Julio Morales, NASW's first vice president, was named Latino of the Year by the Connecticut Latino/Puerto Rican Affairs Commission. Born in Vieques, Puerto Rico, Morales received a master's degree in social work from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from the Florence Heller Graduate School for Advanced Studies in Social Welfare at Brandeis University.

For the past 22 years, Morales has been a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work, where he developed the Puerto Rican/Latino Studies Project to recruit, retain and graduate Puerto Rican and other Latino students.

Morales has chaired NASW's National Committee on Racial and Ethnic Diversity and has represented the New York City and Connecticut chapters on NASW's Board of Directors. He has also been named Connecticut's Social Worker of the Year.

Anne Howell, MSW student intern at NASW's Georgia Chapter, appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show's Angel Network with social worker and My House director Donna Carson, to be recognized for their work at the Atlanta-based transitional home for medically fragile children, many of whom are "crack babies."

The children at My House range in age from 0 to 4, but usually find permanent homes by their first birthday. Drug-exposed babies from Atlanta hospitals, they were abandoned or have mothers who are in rehab. The ultimate goal of My House, Howell said, is to reunite the children with their families.

During the 24 hours after the broadcast, the agency received over 100 phone calls and 300 e-mails from across the country.

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