CSWE Full Circle - October 2017

Council on Global Social Issues:
Recent Accomplishments and Future Projects

Council on Global Social Issues: Recent Accomplishments and Future Projects
The Council on Global Social Issues (CGSI) strives to inform CSWE membership about existing and emerging global social issues and their relevance to local and global social work practice. We accomplish this through a wide range of activities including preparing information briefs, organizing global social issues forums, creating short educational videos, and presenting and publishing our work in special issue journals and other formats.

The most recent accomplishments of the CGSI include the following:

• With funding from CSWE, a recent 1-day refugee summit at University of North Texas brought together refugee-assisting agencies, individuals with refugee experience, and prominent scholars to develop a critical understanding of the conditions of global refugee populations. The council was also involved with another forum hosted in October 2016 on International Post-Disaster Recovery and Relief at the Sri Lanka Permanent Mission to the United Nations.

• The CGSI received special project funding from CSWE to create a video on the social work response to the Nepal earthquake of 2015. Through case studies, narratives of survivors, and social work faculty member presentations, this collaborative project with the Nepal School of Social Work was designed to educate CSWE membership about disaster management in postconflict transition countries such as Nepal. The video is currently in production.

• Information briefs developed by the CGSI on key social issues such as solitary confinement in the United States and early school leavers in Romania have been made available to CSWE membership through Full Circle.

 
Following is an overview of planned projects for 2017–2018:

• CGSI members will develop a special issue of the Journal of Human Rights and Social Work titled “The Rise of Nationalism and Neoliberalism: Challenges to Human Rights in Social Work.” The manuscript submission deadline is Nov. 15, 2017. The CGSI strongly encourages you to consider submitting a manuscript. If you have questions, please contact Joanne Bailey or Tanya Voss.

• Please plan to attend the upcoming Connect Session at the 2017 APM titled “Global Social Issues in National and International Political Contexts.” The session will be held on Saturday, October 21, from 12:45 pm–1:45 pm (Session 394). Panelists will discuss ongoing and planned projects and how they are affected by political events such as the recent U.S. election and related policy changes. Attendees will be invited to discuss their own relevant projects, strategies for linking global and social issues, and concerns for developing such projects of global importance.

 
The CGSI plans to continue updating the CSWE resource bank on disaster management to include recent social work research articles and syllabi. Stay tuned for more updates!