Provides information on all things social work, including direct practice (both clinical and community organizing), research, policy, education... and everything in between.
[Episode 92] Today's episode of the Social Work Podcast looks at an innovative approach to developing strengths and resilience in youth experiencing homelessness - a music studio housed within an agency.
In today’s interview, I speak with Brian Kelly, Ph.D., assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago. Brian briefly describes factors that put youth at risk for homelessness and the three levels of services provided to homeless youth. We end with Brian playing some clips from the audio documentary, and discussing how the music provides insight into the youths' lives.
[Episode 91] Today's episode of the Social Work Podcast is about shared trauma, one in which the provider and client experienced the same traumatic event simultaneously. If you're not familiar with the concept of shared trauma, no worries. It is a relatively new concept, but one that has been experienced as long as there have been helpers and... helpees.
In order to better understand shared trauma, I spoke with Dr. Carol Tosone, one of a handful of scholars whose writings and research have defined shared trauma. Dr. Tosone is Associate Professor at New York University Silver School of Social Work. She is a Distinguished Scholar in Social Work in the National Academies of Practice in Washington, D.C.
In today's episode, Dr. Tosone unpacks the concept of shared trauma. She uses her personal experience of being in a therapy session on September 11, 2001, when the first plane flew over her building, and how sharing the trauma of 9/11 with her client affected her professional and personal life. During our conversation she answered many questions: How does a concurrent experience of the same traumatic event as your client affect the treatment relationship? In what ways is it beneficial to the treatment relationship? How do you know when it is detrimental? We end our conversation with recommendations for practitioners.
[Episode 90] Today's episode is about adolescence. I spoke with Laurence Steinberg, who wrote the book Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence.He is the author of approximately 350 articles and essays on growth and development during the teenage years, and the author, co-author, or editor of 17 books. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Psychological Association’s Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society and its Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy, as well as the National Academy of Sciences Henry and Bryna David Lectureship. In 2009, Steinberg was named the first winner of the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize for Productive Youth Development. In 2013, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In today's interview Dr. Steinberg and I spoke about the growing gap between onset of puberty and the end of adolescence; challenges facing parents, providers, and policy makers to provide adolescents with experiences and skills needed to be successful; and how reconceptualizing adolescence as an age of opportunity rather than an age risk is an essential reframe to address the needs of this youth in this developmental stage. We ended our conversation with recommendations for practitioners, educators, and policy makers.
One note, even though Dr. Steinberg and I work in adjacent buildings at Temple University, I interviewed him over Skype because he was out of the state.
[Episode 89] Today’s episode of the social work podcast about Cystic Fibrosis, or CF. We’re looking at CF in two parts. In Part I we learn about this chronic, terminal illness. In Part II we learn about what social workers can do when working with people with CF.
There are about 30K people in the USA with CF, 75% of whom were diagnosed as babies, and half of whom are over the age of 18. CF is a genetic progressive chronic disease. People are born with it. The disease causes the body to produce thick and sticky mucous in the lungs and wreaks havoc on the digestive system, pancreas, bone density and other things. Because of this thick mucous in the lungs, people often describe having CF like breathing through a straw. This mucous leads to chronic lung infection, loss of lung functioning, and disability and death. In the 1980s children born with CF could expect to live until they were about 12 years old. The life expectancy for someone born with CF in 2014 is 38 years old. Treatment for CF includes daily medications, breathing treatments and chest physical therapy in the form of a mechanized vest that helps break up the mucus. In some cases people with CF need lung transplants.
So, those are the stats. But what does it mean to live with CF, and what should social workers know about working with people with CF? I’m delighted to say that for today’s episode of the Social Work Podcast I found the ideal guest. Elizabeth Shuman is a licensed clinical social worker who works as at the Grove School in Madison, CT. She also has CF.
