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LITE Shows Social Work Education How Tutoring Can Become Community Safety Work
Social work education often speaks about prevention, community engagement, and interdisciplinary practice. Lehman College’s LITE program offers a concrete example of what those ideas can look like when a public college works with a justice agency to support young people before their challenges become crises. Lehman identifies LITE as Lehman’s Initiative for Tutoring and Empowerment.…
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North Carolina Declared Child Welfare Workforce Development Month. Now Fund the Workforce.
North Carolina has paired a September workforce proclamation with a revived social work student stipend program. That is meaningful progress, but a pipeline cannot compensate for weak retention, unmanageable caseloads, or inadequate supervision. North Carolina opened September by declaring Child Welfare Workforce Development Month. Proclamations are easy to dismiss as ceremonial, especially in a field…
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NYC Probation Is a Community-Safety Hub: Its First Deputy Commissioner Is a Social Worker
New York City’s Neighborhood Opportunity Network shows what public safety looks like when supervision, education, food access, art, employment, and neighborhood participation occupy the same civic space. First Deputy Commissioner Robert Eusebio’s career as a master’s-level social worker also highlights a professional path that social work education rarely treats with sufficient seriousness. When social workers…
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The Education Department Is Appealing the PSLF Ruling. Social Workers Should Not Plan on Legal Stability
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness dispute moved back into active litigation on August 27, 2026, when the U.S. Department of Education filed notice that it would appeal a federal decision vacating its new employer-eligibility rule. The appeal, reported by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators on August 28, will go to the U.S.…
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Pennsylvania’s 41-Point Behavioral Health Plan Will Fail Without Workforce Reform
Pennsylvania released a statewide behavioral-health action plan on August 5, 2026, after nearly three years of work by a 33-member council, a 25-member advisory committee, and more than 100 consulted residents and stakeholders across all 67 counties. The plan contains 41 recommendations and roughly 200 implementation steps organized around integration, access, workforce, accountability, equity, and…
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The New BLS Outlook Projects 69,100 Social-Work Openings a Year. That Is Also a Turnover Warning
On August 27, 2026, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics updated its Occupational Outlook Handbook profile for social workers using 2025 employment and wage data and projections through 2035. The headline appears encouraging: social work employment is expected to grow faster than the average occupation. The details should unsettle the profession. BLS counted approximately 816,100…
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Fifteen Percent Lost Medicaid for Procedural Reasons in May. Social Work Must Treat Administration as Policy
The Medicaid and CHIP snapshot released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on August 28, 2026 should be required reading for social-work leaders. It shows not only who is covered, but how administrative systems produce coverage loss. In May 2026, 73.5 million people were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP: 66.4 million in Medicaid…
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New York’s Missing BSW License: A Degree Without a Professional Home
August 2026 New York tells bachelor’s-level social-work graduates something unusually revealing about the profession. A BSW graduate may perform many social-work functions under supervision, but the state will not issue that graduate a social-work license. New York’s Office of the Professions recognizes only the Licensed Master Social Worker and the Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Its…
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Rhode Island’s New Chatbot Safeguards Expose Social Work’s AI Governance Gap
August 23, 2026 Rhode Island enacted two laws on June 23 that regulate artificial-intelligence chatbots and their use in mental health care. One requires developers to build protocols for users who express suicidal ideation, self-harm, or threats of harm. The other addresses AI use in mental health treatment and reflects concern that automated systems can…
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The $20,500 MSW Financing Cliff Is Here—and Private Credit Is Becoming an Admissions Requirement
August 24, 2026 For students beginning graduate social work education this fall, July 1 changed the meaning of admission. The federal government eliminated new Grad PLUS borrowing and placed most graduate programs under an annual Direct Loan limit of $20,500 and an aggregate graduate limit of $100,000. Programs classified as “professional” receive much higher limits—$50,000…