Social Work in the Public Eye
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| Laurel Healy |
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune highlighted the important work
being done by the Cancer Support Community Florida Suncoast. Social worker
Laurel Healy was interviewed for the article.
The organization’s mission is “to help people affected by
cancer enhance their health and well-being through participation in a
professional program of support, education and hope,” the story stated.
The center recently moved to a new facility in Sarasota. The
5-acre campus has more than 2 acres of gardens bordering a 600-acre nature
preserve, the story explained. More than 60,000 visits have been made to the
center and its satellite locations throughout the area.
The article stated there are no doctors at the Cancer Support
Community. Instead, it has a staff of about two dozen professionals who help
people heal before, during and after a cancer diagnosis and treatment.
The story noted that everyone who comes into the Cancer
Support Community meets with Healy, a licensed social worker and clinical
specialist.
“I assess their needs as an individual and talk with them
about what programs are available,” she was quoted as saying. “For the most
part, people feel their lives have gotten out of control when they get a
diagnosis of cancer. So we work with them to recognize what they can control
and give them hope. We are looking to empower them, to give them courage and
strength. We educate them about what questions to ask.”
Healy went on to say that the center offers monthly and weekly
support groups that offer attendees a chance to express the emotional aspects
of a cancer diagnosis and treatment.
“Some women have their whole sense of femininity tied to their
physical experience,” Healy said, “but I think the devastation they feel really
comes from the diagnoses. Everyone is devastated by that.”
One of the most troubling issues cancer patients experience
arises when they are well again, the article explained.
“A lot of times, after people are finished with treatment and
have a good prognosis, everyone around them expects them to bounce back and be
exactly as they were before the diagnosis,” Healy said in the story. “And that
very often does not happen, and so we provide a place for people to talk about
that and for their caregivers to do so as well.”
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| Catherine Pearlman |
A CNN ongoing series called “Stop Bullying, Speak Up” featured
a CNN.com opinion article written by Catherine Pearlman, a social worker who
also works as an adjunct professor at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at
Yeshiva University in New York City, where she is a doctoral candidate.
The article explained that Pearlman is also founder of The
Family Coach, a business that specializes in helping families resolve everyday
problems.
Pearlman stated that most parents believe their child would never
be a bully.
In her work, she said, she sees parents teaching their kids
how to be respectful of others. However, “It’s not as simple as that. We live
in a time where it’s easy to isolate ourselves from all sorts of people in
society we might otherwise regularly rub shoulders with. Increasingly kids
don’t need to go out in the world to work out social interactions — they can do
that in silent text and instant messages, their online behavior invisible to
busy parents who might normally be helping to guide them.”
Pearlman emphasized that it is not enough to teach children
manners.
“Parents need to make a direct effort to teach empathy,” she
stated in the article. “Empathy, in simple terms, is the ability to place
oneself in another’s shoes, to feel another’s suffering vicariously. When
children do not develop empathy, they act solely in pursuit of their own
desires. While this may be pleasurable to the child, the lack of consciousness
of others’ feelings is not good for society and may make kids more inclined to
bully.”
Pearlman cited a University of Cambridge study on an empathy
rating scale that found the development of empathy is closely related to
parental supervision.
“Furthermore, adolescents who report that they would help
victims of bullying exhibited high empathy,” she said. “Another study on
cyberbullying and parental perception of their children’s experiences by
researchers in the Netherlands shows that parents often underestimate their
children’s involvement in bullying.”
Pearlman said parents need to actively teach empathy to their
children.
“For starters, parents should take the time to talk to their
children about what they — as a family, in their community — can do to help
make the world better,” she stated. Helping those less fortunate is a good
start, she explained.
“As parents we don’t get a do-over,” she wrote. “It does no
good to look back and wish you had done something different. Before you get the
call from school or the police that your child was involved in bullying, teach
your child about empathy.”
The University of Texas at Austin announced in a news release
that Roberta Greene, a professor at the university’s School of Social Work, has
been named to the Barbara Jordan 2010 Charitable Trust Board of Trustees.
According to the school, the trust was established in June as
the legal and financial vehicle for organizing the Barbara Jordan Freedom
Foundation as a 501(c)3 organization.
Greene holds the Louis and Ann Wolens Centennial Chair in
Gerontology and Social Welfare.
According to the foundation, Barbara Jordan accomplished many
firsts as an elected official. She was the first African American to serve in
the Texas Senate (1966-72) since Reconstruction, the first African American
woman elected to the U.S. Congress (1972-78) from the South, and the first to
deliver the keynote address at a national party convention.
After leaving Congress, she taught at the Lyndon B. Johnson
School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. She was awarded
the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest honor to a civilian, by
President Bill Clinton in 1994.
Jordan died in 1996.
Sheryl Brissett-Chapman was quoted by Petula Dvorak, columnist
for The Washington Post, in a story about the challenges of growing up in
poverty.
Dvorak referenced an earlier Post story that highlighted
recent U.S. Census data. It revealed that three out of 10 children in the
nation’s capital were living in poverty last year.
“Thousands more were on the edge of poverty, which is defined
as an income of $22,000 for a family of four, according to Census figures,”
Dvorak stated. “And the ranks of the desperate and near-desperate were growing
in the suburbs as well.”
She said that in the District of Columbia, there were about
7,000 more black children living in poverty last year than there were two years
prior.
Brissett-Chapman, executive director of the National Center
for Children and Families in Bethesda, Md., noted in the article that being
extremely poor grinds down a child and that poverty gets into the brain and
literally under the skin.
The story said studies show that increased levels of cortisol,
a chemical produced in the body as a result of stress, can seriously affect a
child’s brain development, stunting memory and disrupting learning patterns.
It goes on to point out that poor children in one study were
found to have elevated levels of cortisol in the morning. When the children
attended a high-quality, small-group day care center, the cortisol levels
dropped. By afternoon, they were similar to the morning levels of their
middle-class counterparts, the article stated.
“So, essentially, being poor costs a kid at least half a day
in the classroom just to get the brain back to normal,” Dvorak wrote.
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| Kathleen Manygoats |
The Albuquerque Journal reported that social worker Kathleen
Manygoats was one of 12 New Mexicans honored with a 2010 Distinguished Public
Service Award in the state.
The article noted that Manygoats is a member of the Navajo
Nation and is the director of behavioral health for the Albuquerque Indian
Health Center. It highlighted the fact that Manygoats was a recipient of the
2010 Annie Dodge Wauneka Award recognizing American Indians in public health
service. “She works with tribes and community programs and serves on local,
state and national committees,” the article stated. “She co-founded the first
Native American Task Force on behalf of Native American social workers.”
Manygoats has served the New Mexico NASW Chapter as president
and has received the chapter’s Social Worker of the Year honor as well as a
lifetime achievement award. She currently serves on the chapter’s Conference
Planning Committee.
From January 2011 NASW News. © 2011 National
Association of Social Workers. All Rights Reserved. NASW News
articles may be copied for personal use, but proper notice of
copyright and credit to the NASW News must appear on all copies
made. This permission does not apply to reproduction for advertising,
promotion, resale, or other commercial purposes.
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