Summer 2024 Issue

Editor’s Note
By Kate Jackson
Social Work Today
Vol. 24 No. 3 P. 4

The articles in this issue reflect the breadth of the scope of social work practice and the myriad needs social workers must address—including their own. In the cover story, Sue Coyle, MSW, looks at the challenges for social workers who do double duty—who provide care for clients and who must care for family members as well. “Social workers everywhere are providing our services to clients as therapists, school counselors, case managers, and more before going home to care for their children, parents, partner, siblings, or other loved ones. For them, finding the right balance between work and home is tricky,” she writes. “Add in selfcare, and it’s nearly impossible.” Often, their needs come last. Coyle spoke with four social workers about the challenges and their coping strategies.

In “Double Marginalization,” Savannah B. Higgins, DSW, LMSW, shines a light on a crucial social justice issue—police violence against Black individuals with autism, looking at the causes and attempts to address the problem. “While racial bias training initiatives are on the rise,” she writes, “very little is being done to address the lack of knowledge and awareness of the many expressions of autism”—behaviors, she says, that are often misinterpreted by law enforcement personnel.

Hospice social worker Scott Janssen, MA, MSW, LCSW, in “Time of Death,” discusses the lack of awareness among many health care providers about when patients are actively dying and the need for enhanced psychological and emotional care for patients and their families. He looks at what happens when death is imminent, “when there are no diagnostics to run, no treatments to schedule”—and the moments after death when loved ones wonder, “What do we do now?”

In addition to these features, department pieces address a range of clinical, practice, ethical, and social justice matters, including strategies that help social workers optimize their telehealth therapy sessions; the overlooked issue of labor protections for child influencers and children of social media influencers; adolescents whose feelings of grief produce feelings of loneliness that lead to isolation; the changes being made to improve social work licensing exams; ethical and clinical issues in adoption in the digital age; and the impact of poverty on families.

— Kate Jackson
kjackson@gvpub.com