Cyber-bullying Program Bumped Up
from The Chicago Tribune
Oak Park River Forest High School officials in Illinois are speeding up plans to offer workshops on cyber-bullying and other technological misbehavior after a student recently created a list of insults about 45 female classmates and e-mailed it to friends. When school officials learned of the list they called each of the girls' parents and made social workers available to the girls on the list. More

State Pay Lag Hits Charities
from Crain's Chicago Business
Local charities, already facing soaring demand, are cutting services and firing workers as the state delays almost $50 million in payments to programs for children, seniors and others. The state payments account for more than half the budget of some organizations and are as much as six months late. That, coupled with the recession, has groups like Chicago-based Metropolitan Family Services and Des Plaines-based Lutheran Social Services of Illinois reducing staff and services. More

Springfield Once, Springfield Twice...
from NASW IL
Call me old fashioned. But I still get a kick out of the pomp and circumstance of a Governor addressing a joint session of the Illinois General Assembly. That was the case this Wednesday, when Governor Pat Quinn, presented his first state of the state of the state/budget address. More

NASW IL Chapter International Activities SIG Announce the 2009 Tri-City Professional Exchange
from NASW IL
The 13th Annual Tri-City Exchange will be held in Hamburg, Germany from June 19, 2009 through June 26, 2009 and an Illinois delegation of eight social workers is being recruited. The 2009 Exchange’s theme is "Promoting Healthy Youth" and will examine both physical and mental health issues of youth and young adults. The Exchange Program will include site visits to key private and governmental institutions. The State Youth Authority of Hamburg covers all land costs of the delegates including meals, lodging and local transportation. The only cost to NASW members is the air fare. For an application packet please call or e-mail the Chapter office. Applications are to be returned no later than 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 1, 2009. More

Can This Kid Be Saved?
from The Chicago Sun-Times
The cracks are everywhere. Our troubled children waver over them like beam-walkers, with spaces on each side that grow wider, with a bottom so deep and dark it might swallow all. ... Mario Miller, 18, does not want to fall. Not now. Not ever again. More

Child Abuse Up; Advocates Urge More Preventive Programs
from the Chicago Daily Herald
Child advocates are blaming a tanking economy for a recent rise in child abuse, and nowhere is the rise more pronounced than in the suburbs. Kendall Marlowe, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, recently joined Tim Carpenter, whose group Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Illinois held a news conference with Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez to advocate for more funding for programs that send social workers or nurses to high-risk pregnant women and mothers of children ages newborn to 2. More

Emotions Can Help Predict Future Eating Disorders
from CNN
The poet Sylvia Plath, who made a name for herself through prose and poetry that conveyed a sense of depression and suicidal tendencies, famously died by asphyxiating herself in an oven in 1963. The recent reported suicide of her son, marine biologist Nicholas Hughes, brings to light a known psychiatric phenomenon: the heredity of suicidal behavior. More

Keeping Homeless Kids in School
from Time magazine
Right now, nearly 1 in 10 children attending public school in Minneapolis is homeless. Read that sentence again. As Wall Street tries to right itself, the global economic crisis is punishing many of the youngest Americans. When a second-grader at Longfellow Elementary School in Minneapolis couldn't stay awake during reading time, his teacher gently asked him why. "He told her that the rats and roaches were keeping him up," says one of the school's social workers, Cheryl Flugaur-Levitt. More

Oversaving, a Burden for Our Times
from The New York Times
We interrupt this recession to bring you news of another crisis that is much more pleasant to deal with. Now that shoppers have sworn off credit cards, we’re risking an epidemic of a hitherto neglected affliction: saver’s remorse. The victims won’t evoke much sympathy — don’t expect any telethons — but their condition is real enough to merit a new label. More

The Mind Starts to Decline After Age ... 27?!
from USA Today
The mind decline starts sooner than you think. Try age 27. A new University of Virginia study in the current issue of the journal Neurobiology of Aging suggests that age-related cognitive decline begins in healthy, educated adults in their late 20s. Things like the ability to make rapid comparisons or recall unrelated information peak around 22, the study says, with a slow decline in abstract reasoning, brain speed and puzzle-solving starting around 27. More

Alcoholism Drug Not An Easy Sell
from The Boston Globe
For years, Kyle was a slave to alcoholism. Every day after work, he returned to his Burlington home to down malt liquor and vodka, slowly surrendering relationships with friends and family. "It wasn't a life to live," said Kyle, 29, who asked that his last name not be used. Finally, his parents intervened. After a month in rehabilitation, he moved into a group home for recovering alcoholics and started counseling. But Kyle also tried something different - a monthly injection of a drug called Vivitrol to reduce his craving for alcohol. More