JOIN OUR CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING: Bringing the Power of Social Work to Schools
Hello SSWN readers–on behalf of my Society for Social Work Research (SSWR) Special Interest Group (SIG) co-chair Dr. Ron Astor from UCLA, we wanted to make sure you all had the details on the Congressional Briefing that Dr. Charles Lewis of CRISP and the Congressional Social Work Caucus have organized for next Wed. 9/23 from 3-4:30 p.m. eastern time. The Briefing will be moderated by Dr. Lewis and will feature Dr. Astor as a panelist, sharing some of the findings from our recent “SSW Practice in a Pandemic” national survey. From a news release for the Briefing:
“Washington, DC – School districts across the country are grappling with the choice of reducing funding used to maintain police in schools or using some or all of that funding to hire social workers and other service providers. A virtual Congressional Briefing will be held on Wednesday, September 23, 2020 from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. (Eastern Time) to discuss the issue sponsored by several social work organizations including the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) in conjunction with Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA-13), chair of the Congressional Social Work Caucus. There have been calls to remove police from public schools in the wake of demonstrations about police brutality.
The briefing titled, Bringing the Power of Social Work to Schools, will examine the merits of the bill, H.R. 7848—Counseling Not Criminalization Act, recently introduced by Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA-7) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN-5) in the House of Representatives. A companion bill—S. 4360—was introduced in the Senate by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Chris Murphy. The bills seek to eliminate federal funding for school-based law enforcement and ‘establish a continuum of care and positive schoolwide systems of services that are evidence-based, inclusive, racially and gender responsive, and trauma informed.'”
It is also one of the first (only?) national advocacy events that has brought together all of the major national SSW organizations in solidarity to press the case for how school social work can respond to this critical time for our schools and our nation. Please register for this event here and help us get the word out to your networks and share the pdf of the briefing details and bios of panelists below. Finally, a big thank you to all of you who participated in our survey project this past Spring–your first-hand experience of trying to figure out how to do school social work during the first phase of this pandemic was a key driver of how this event has come together next week.
Briefing-Overview
