Tag: social workers
How Liberals Lost the White Working Class
On April 29, 1954, a cross section of Cincinnati’s municipal bureaucracy—joined by dozens of representatives drawn from local employers, private charities, the religious community, and other corners of the city establishment—gathered at the behest of the mayor’s office to discuss a new problem confronting the city. Or, rather, about 50,000 new problems, give or take. That was roughly the number of Cincinnati residents who had recently migrated to the city from the poorest parts of southern Appalachia. The
The U.S. Child-Welfare System Fails Its Children
When I was a teenager in the early 2000s, my parents both died. Like many American children, I had been steeped in stories about orphans for years, but the books I had read and movies I had watched (Jane Eyre, Annie) failed to mirror my experience of parental loss. They also contributed to my mistaken understanding of orphanhood and the makeup of our child-welfare system—misconceptions that many Americans hold today.
For one, I believed that orphanages were
What the Body Means to Say
Patient: Mechanism of injury: self-immolation. Pt conscious upon EMT arrival. Lighter fluid and matches on scene. When asked about the incident, pt reported intent to “turn herself into a phoenix.” Psych eval ordered.
The summer before last, I met a woman who lit herself on fire. I’ll call her R. One evening in June, she poured lighter fluid over and into her body—down her mouth and up her rectum—and struck a match.
Self-immolation isn’t unheard of on the burn unit.
Learning Loss Doesn’t Begin to Describe What Happened
On March 4, 2020, a week before the World Health Organization formally declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, Northshore School District, in Washington State, closed its doors, becoming the first in the country to announce a districtwide shift to online learning. Within three weeks, every public-school building in the United States had been closed and 50 million students had been sent home. Half of these students would not reenter their schools for more than a year. No other
The Other Guy Running for Governor in California
SAN FRANCISCO—Michael Shellenberger was more excited to tour the Tenderloin than I was, even though it was my idea. I was nervous about provoking desperate people in various states of disrepair. Shellenberger, meanwhile, seemed intent on showing that many homeless people are addicted to drugs. (If that seems callous to you, Shellenberger would say you’re in thrall to liberal “victim ideology.”)
He told me not to worry. “You seem like a tough Russian chick, right?” he said as we walked
Why Police Are Still Handling Mental-Health Crises
DURHAM, N.C. — When the murder of George Floyd in 2020 sparked widespread demand for police reforms, some cities moved to announce major overhauls of law enforcement. One of the most promising—and popular—proposals was to develop mental-health response units, staffed by social workers or crisis counselors, who could respond to mental-health incidents in lieu of armed police.
The idea grew out of frustration with police over a slew of horrifying and high-profile incidents when law-enforcement officers, dispatched to deal with