This article examines an ongoing university-community relationship that fuses innovative technology delivery, university-outreach research, and social work practice/research education into a unique, collaborative intervention to reduce homelessness. In doing so, we apply a social justice framework to homelessness, arguing that housing is a right…

Advancement of human rights is a core competency in the social work curriculum. Presented is a model to teach policy practice from a human rights perspective based on a violence-against-women delegation visit to Guatemala. Postdelegation policy advocacy responses included White House and State Department briefings on the problems, including…

Social work educators are uniquely tasked with balancing content while helping students evaluate personal biases and develop ethical conduct necessary for social work professionalism. Social work education may benefit from technology like Student Response Systems (SRS) that allow educators to pose questions on sensitive topics in real time while…

This article examines political ideology and its implications as a newer diversity variable within social work education. Responding to internal assessments and external critiques of social work education, the dynamics of how diverse political ideologies might manifest in 5 core course concentrations--human behavior in the social environment,…

As a profession, social work has encouraged its members to run for public office to translate the values and ethics of social work into public policy. This study of 416 elected social workers around the country provides insight into the experiences of these elected social workers in their social work education. The classes, skills, activities,…

Deliberation that upholds the social work values of justice and inclusion is an essential component of the policy-making process; yet most social welfare policy curricula focus instead on the goals of distributive justice. This article presents a model that demonstrates how deliberative justice can be easily incorporated into beginning level…

Although the importance of metaphors is described in the social work literature, few articles or books in the profession have considered the role of metaphors in social policy, especially in providing a negative frame within which marginalized groups can be considered. This negative framing naturally supports aversive social policies designed to…

Substance abuse has been identified as a significant social problem. Social work is uniquely positioned to affect this problem. Kennesaw State University has established a substance abuse concentration as part of its master's of social work program. The purpose of this article is to describe the development of this curriculum. The curriculum is…

The growing interest in social work education in Israel over the past 5 years, despite its current social and political context, was the impetus for this study, which attempted to identify the practice orientations of 119 incoming BSW students in an antisocial era. Two distinct, equal-size clusters were found. Half of the students were…

In this article, the author presents a historical overview of four decades of scholarship and changing public policy on family and informal caregiving for older adults. Families are changing at a dizzying pace. Changes in family composition, cultural diversity, geographic mobility, and societal norms, coupled with increasing numbers of older…

This article describes the challenges faced by providers in integrating and effectively using caregivers and suggests longer-range public policy approaches to address these challenges and spur system changes that respond to caregivers' needs and help them manage the demands placed upon them. A policy agenda for incorporating and supporting…

This is a tale of caregiving in two cities--and it was the best of times and the worst of times. In this article, the author describes the differences in the care given by nurses and social workers to her 90-year-old mother who died from metastatic colon cancer and to her husband who had traumatic brain injury in an automobile accident and was…

Each of the presenters of the invitational symposium, State of the Science: Nurses and Social Workers Supporting Family Caregivers, identified the saliency of family caregiving issues for practice, research, and the education of professional social workers, caregivers, the business community, and the public to enhance support of family caregivers.…

Compared with other segments of the population, adolescents and, in particular, African Americans are disproportionately exposed to family and community violence. Research has consistently documented that exposure to such violence is often associated with psychological difficulties, poor educational and behavioral outcomes, and juvenile justice…

This paper identifies a number of significant contemporary trends in the Latino population, including the striking growth of the community, new points of entry and settlement for recent immigrants, the mixed-status nature of families, and the increase in the proportion of U.S. households that speak Spanish. The implications of these trends for…