The Social Work Podcast

Episode 103: Today's episode is about the Grand Challenge Initiative for Social Work. I asked Dr. Richard P. Barth if there was a plan to bring practitioners, educators and policy makers on board with the Grand Challenge initiatives - he said they were already on board. I asked him to walk us through a Grand Challenge topic – he picked the challenge "Ensure Healthy Development for All Youth." I as...

Episode 102: In today’s episode of the Social Work Podcast, I speak with Lisa Damour, Ph. D. about her 2016 book, "Untangled: Guiding teenage girls through the seven transitions into adulthood." We talked about why a teenage girl’s erratic and confusing behavior is actually healthy, necessary, and natural. We talked about what’s going on in the minds of teenage girls and how parents can reframe th...

Episode 101: Episode 101 of the Social Work Podcast is a critique of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition: DSM-5 My guest is social work faculty member from Florida State University, Jeffrey Lacasse, Ph. D. Dr. Lacasse has published several critiques of the changes in DSM-5. In today's episode, Dr. Lacasse critiques the definition of mental illness, the empirical...

Episode 100: Today's episode of the Social Work Podcast is about private practice. My guest, Dr. Julie Hanks, LCSW talks about key ingredients for a successful private practice including: identifying your "big message;" building relationships online and offline; knowing what you're good at and outsourcing what you're not good at; and reconciling "social work" with "private practice." We end our co...

Episode 99: Today's episode of the Social Work Podcast is about becoming a clinical social worker. My guest is Dr. Danna Bodenheimer. In today's interview Danna and I talk about what makes a social worker a clinical social worker, what distinguishes a good from a bad clinical social worker, the one essential thing that all social workers bring to supervision, and the role of narcissism, observing...

Episode 98: Today's episode of the Social Work Podcast is about Cognitive Enhancement Therapy (Eack, 2012) - a relatively new approach to addressing some of the most persistent and intractable problems faced by people with schizophrenia. In order to learn more CET, I spoke with Shaun Eack, Ph. D. Dr. Eack has been involved in most of the clinical research on CET. He is the David E. Epperson Associ...

Episode 97: Today’s episode of the Social Work Podcast answers that age-old question, how do I live tweet a conference? In April 2014, I recorded a conversation with members of the social media team that was live tweeting the 2014 American Association of Suicidology conference: April Foreman, Tony Wood, Quintin Hunt, Dese'Rae Stage, and Cara Anna. The conversation was recorded at the end of four i...

Episode 96: Today's episode of the Social Work Podcast is on family therapy for depressed and suicidal youth. I speak with two of the three developers of Attachment-based Family Therapy (ABFT), Guy S. Diamond, Ph. D. and Suzanne Levy, Ph. D. The third developer Gary M. Diamond (no relation to Guy Diamond) lives in Israel and was unavailable for the interview. ABFT is the only family-based psychoth...

Episode 95: March is Social Work Month. I know, you're saying, but every month is social work month. Yes. That’s true... for social workers. But, social work is one of those professions that, to misquote Ogden Rogers [Episode 87], if you’re doing it well, people don’t know you’re doing it. So, let’s have a month to remind the general public of what social workers do. In that spirit, today's episod...

Episode 94: Today’s episode of the Social Work Podcast is on Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) for social work. My guests, Marion Bogo and Mary Rawlings, and their co-authors Ellen Katz and Carmen Logie, are pioneers in the development, implementation, and evaluation of OSCE adapted for social work. The audience for today's episode is social work faculty, specifically practice instr...

Episode 93: Today’s episode of the Social Work Podcast is on Religious Child Maltreatment. In today’s episode I spoke with two people who bring very different perspectives to this issue. Bethany Brittan is on the board of the Child Friendly Faith project and is a survivor of RCM. Ann Haralamby is a certified family law specialist and a certified child welfare law specialist practicing in Tucson Ar...

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. 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...

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. 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 Schol...

Episode 90: In today's interview I speak with Dr. Laurence Steinberg, author of Age of Opportunity: Lessons From the New Science of Adolescence. We 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 a...

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. I speak with Elizabeth Shuman, LCSW. Liz is a clinical social worker with the Grove School, lives with CF, and is the co-founder of the n...

Episode 88: Today's episode is about Medicaid, the most important program that most Americans know nothing about. I spoke with Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. We talked about his role in NAMD and the function of the organization. We spoke at length about the ethical and economic dilemma that has faced Medicaid lately - the development of a cure for...

Episode 87: In today's social work podcast, we're looking at the beginning, middle, and end of social work. No, this is not an apocalyptic tale of burning towers of progress notes and zombie utilization managers... although that does sound kind of interesting. No. Today’s episode is much more innocent than that. Ask any social worker, first year undergrad or emeritus professor, "what are the most...

Episode 86: In today's social work podcast I spoke with two leading on youth suicide in schools. Jim Mazza and Dave Miller. Jim is at the University of Washington and director of their school psychology program. Jim is the past-president of the American Association of Suicidology. Dave Miller, is at SUNY Albany in the educational and counseling psychology program. He is the president-elect of the...

Episode 85: Today's episode of the Social Work Podcast explores the similarities and differences between social work in the United States and the United Kingdom. David is the former National Chair of the British Association of Social Workers (BASW). He has over 30 years national and international experience in the field of social welfare and is recognized as an independent expert on matters of chi...

Episode 84: Today's episode of the Social Work Podcast is about Motivational Interviewing, Third Edition. In today's episode I speak with Mary Velasquez, Ph. D., Centennial Professor in Leadership for Community, Professional and Corporate Excellence and Director of the Health Behavior Research and Training Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Velasquez is a trainer for the Motivatio...

Episode 83: Today's episode of the Social Work Podcast is about sex. My guest is Dr. Gail Wyatt. Dr. Wyatt and I talked a bit about the research, but mostly we talked about two of the techniques that were used in the clinical trial. The first was a way of having couples plan and enjoy safe sex. The second had to do with addressing past histories of abuse within the context of a consensual sexual r...

Episode 82: Today's episode of the Social Work Podcast is about how to balance the demands of doing good research with the passion that practitioners and advocates have for addressing the social problems that face their communities. My guests are Corey Shdaimah and Sanford Schram. I speak with Corey and Sandy about the differences between Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Community-Based Par...

Episode 81: In today's social work podcast I spoke with Rebecca J. Macy. I started our conversation asking Rebecca how she became interested in identification of sex trafficking victims in human service delivery. Most of our conversation focused on how to identify and respond to victims of sex trafficking. We talked about the interdisciplinary nature of sex trafficking; how it involves representat...

Episode 80: Today's episode of the Social Work Podcast looks at Trauma Informed Care, one of the most promising approaches to working with people without causing additional trauma. And I had the honor of talking about Trauma-informed care with Nancy Smyth, professor and Dean of the School of Social Work at the University at Buffalo. There are three reasons why Nancy was the perfect guest for today...

Episode 79: In today's episode, I spoke with one of the profession's leading scholars and experts on perinatal loss, associate professor of social work at Virginia Commonwealth University, Dr. Sarah Kye Price. We talked why it is important to do a thorough assessment of pregnancy and pregnancy-related loss during a biopsychosocialspiritual assessment. She talked about the importance of allowing mo...