Author: Editorial Office
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Discharge Is Not the End of Responsibility: Social Work and the Transition Home
A hospital discharge is an administrative event with consequences that extend well beyond the hospital. A person may leave with an appropriate treatment plan and still lack the transportation, housing, food, or practical assistance necessary to carry it out. For social work, the transition home therefore raises a fundamental professional question: has the institution merely…
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Professional or Personal Identity Cannot Exempt a Social Worker from Accountability
The authority entrusted to a social worker exists for the benefit of the client. Neither clinical expertise, institutional standing, nor membership in a marginalized community can justify using that authority for sexual access. The profession must be capable of stating this principle without qualification and applying it when allegations concern someone whose identity or public…
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Benefits Advocacy Is Social Work: Reclaiming Expertise in Material Conditions
A social worker who helps a household preserve food assistance is practicing at the intersection of individual need and public policy. That work requires assessment, interpretation, communication, and advocacy. Treating it as a peripheral administrative task understates both its intellectual demands and its importance to the profession’s public purpose. The current changes to SNAP make…
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When Social Work Loses Sociology: Clinical Silos and the Opening for Community Safety
Social work risks making itself smaller when it allows therapy to become the dominant explanation of what the profession is for. The concern is not that clinical practice lacks value. It is that a profession organized increasingly around individual treatment can lose the theoretical tools needed to understand the institutions, social relationships, and distributions of…
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When Agencies Count Cases Instead of Capacity: The Case for Responsible Social Work Caseloads
An agency can report a growing number of people served while giving each person less meaningful attention. A social worker can carry a caseload that looks manageable on a spreadsheet while spending the week arranging transportation, locating treatment, responding to emergencies, documenting decisions, and covering a vacant position. Counting assigned cases reveals only part of…
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Supervision Is Part of the Service: Social Work Agencies Must Budget for Professional Judgment
An agency can schedule every hour of a social worker’s day and still leave out one of the activities that makes the work responsible. When supervision is repeatedly postponed because appointments, documentation, and immediate demands take priority, the organization is making a decision about service quality. It is asking workers to carry professional responsibility without…
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When a Referral Goes Nowhere: Social Work’s Responsibility Beyond Giving Someone a Phone Number
Consider a person who leaves an agency with the name of a housing organization and a telephone number. The case note records a referral, but the organization has no available appointments, the number goes to an unattended mailbox, or the person does not meet the organization’s eligibility rules. The paperwork may describe an intervention, even…
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Social Work Cannot Defend Its Social Mission While Sociology Is Dismantled
A profession concerned with poverty, public institutions, and the conditions of everyday life should condemn the suggestion that sociology be eliminated. The question appears in Pamela Paul’s Wall Street Journal essay (Paul, 2026). For social work, accepting its premise would mean helping to weaken an intellectual partner precisely where the profession needs a deeper understanding…
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Library Social Work Deserves a Public Service Budget and a Clear Professional Role
A person who enters a public library with an unopened benefits letter may need more than a computer. Someone searching for housing may need help understanding an application, identifying a credible agency, or deciding which problem to address first. These encounters belong within social work’s understanding of human need, even when they occur far from…
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Medicaid Parity Failures Show Why Social Workers Must Audit the Door to Behavioral Health Care
Three new federal audits have exposed a familiar contradiction in Medicaid managed care: a benefit may exist on paper, yet an authorization system makes it difficult to access. Reviews by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General found that South Carolina, Arizona, and New York did not adequately ensure that…