With the capable Lead Organizer, Amani Desamours, and her Student Leadership Team handling Thursday’s virtual Student Advocacy Day, I had the privilege of attending the pivotal Children’s Bureau’s National Convening on Kinship Care. This gathering, which drew child welfare administrators and practitioners from across the nation, was a crucial platform for discussing the opportunities and challenges presented by the new, flexible licensing standards issued by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in September 2023. The event was organized in collaboration with Think of Us, a self-d ..read more

Former Congressman Edolphus “Ed” Towns, a distinguished figure in the U.S. House of Representatives, will return to the Hill on Wednesday, March 13, to celebrate another Social Work Day on the Hill, an event he created shortly after retiring from Congress in 2013 after 15 terms and 30 years of service. In recognition of his outstanding contributions, he will be honored with CRISP’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award during the 4:00 p.m. ceremony in Room 2168 in the Rayburn House Office Building, 45 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20515. Michigan U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, a respe ..read more

CRISP will resume in-person events on Wednesday, March 13, to celebrate March as Social Work Month after a four-hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s theme is Lifting Every Voice: The Power of Storytelling in Social Work. Our Social Work Day on the Hill day begins with our 10:00 a.m. Policy and Politics Forum at New York University DC’s Abramson Family Auditorium, 1307 L Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005, featuring a presentation by Dr. Stephanie Boddie, Associate Professor of Church and Community Ministries at the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work at Baylor University. Dr. Bodd ..read more

Tuesday was a bad day for the Republican Party, both in substance and appearance. The catastrophes were led by House Republicans’ failure to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. This was not surprising because the Republicans’ slim majority of 219 to 212 seats meant they could afford to lose just three votes, which they did. With Steve Scalise unable to join them due to cancer treatment, the final vote resulted in a 215-215 tie, and the impeachment attempt died an ignominious death. GOP conference vice chair Blake Moore of Utah changed his vote to no, resulting in a 214-216 ..read more

With so much madness in the world, vulnerable populations are being left further behind. Children with incarcerated parents are of those forgotten groups. My dissertation completed in 2002 focused on fathers as part of the Fragile Families study. The prison population had exploded from roughly 300,000 in 1980 to nearly two million in 2000. With many parents behind bars, naturally, there were concerns about the well-being of the children they had left behind. Concerns grew exponentially as women’s incarceration doubled that of men—ballooning 700 percent between 1980 and 2016, according to the S ..read more

The title of this post is taken from a song popularized by the late Gwen Guthrie that made it to the top of the R&B charts in 1986. In the song, Guthrie sings about the reality of paying the rent and that money talks. “No romance without finance,” she croons. “You’ve got to have a j-o-b if you want to be with me.” Such is the reality for too many low-income Americans whose lives are shaped by their ability to pay their rent. Longtime New York Times poverty reporter Jason Deparle reports in Monday’s news that, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, nearly two-thirds of h ..read more

Mary McKay, the outgoing President of the Board of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW), announced the results of the society’s recent elections, which selected Michael A. Lindsey as the new President of the Board and welcomed eight new AASWSW Fellows. Dr. Lindsey is Dean and Paulette Goddard Professor of Social Work at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University. Dr. McKay, Vice Provost of Interdisciplinary Initiatives at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, will remain on the AASWSW Board for an additional year. The board will also we ..read more

The power of storytelling in social work is the theme of our 2024 Social Work Day on the Hill and Student Advocacy Day events on March 13, 14, and 15. The very nature of social work requires lifting the voices of poor and vulnerable people so their stories are heard. We include an affected person in our congressional briefings because it is important to hear them tell of their lived experiences, and their stories are often the most persuasive advocacy for policy change. Research and data are critical in developing and promoting evidence-based solutions, but understanding what people are experi ..read more

Chaos can and has been an effective strategy to disrupt the status quo. However, more often than not, it results in worsening the situation. Our government has come to a grinding halt because Republicans have chosen confrontation and retribution over governing. The Civil Rights Movement that disrupted the status quo in southern states brought chaos and then changed an order that severely marginalized African Americans. We are still enthralled in that struggle. It gets ugly when chaotic leaders resort to violence to accomplish their ambitions. All hell has broken loose in Israel with Hamas’s ca ..read more

It is always sad to bid farewell to great humanitarians who end their Earthly journey. It is also a time to celebrate the life and legacy of Douglas Graham Glasgow, a kind, gentle, and wise human being who devoted his life to improving the condition of black Americans. Dr. Glasgow, born in New York City on January 19, 1929, to Matthew and Angelin Glasgow of the British West Indies and Jamaica, four days after the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., passed away on August 9 at the age of 94. He was married to Frieda Flax, and they had two children. I met Dr. Glasgow when I accepted an appointm ..read more