Infusing Integrated Behavioral Health in an MSW Program: Curricula,Field, and Interprofessional Educational Activities

ABSTRACT

An essential aspect of integrated care is the coordination of medical and behavioral health needs concurrently. This has sparked renewed emphasis on interprofessional (IP) education and practice. The impetus for IP efforts was crystalized in large part because of health care reforms, and federal funding to expand the behavioral health work force. Using an ecological systems perspective, this article describes how one school is preparing a new generation of MSW students to work in integrated behavioral health care using a three-pronged approach involving curricula, field education, and IP activities. Social work education must ensure that new and experienced professionals can (a) understand the profession’s role in IP health care settings, and (b) navigate an evolving and complex health care environment.     

Assessing habitat requirements of pond-breeding amphibians in a highly urbanized landscape: implications for management

Urban Ecosystems - Management of urban aquatic habitats for native wildlife, such as amphibians, is an important contemporary goal for many municipalities. However, our understanding of how local...     

Contemplating the monster: UK national press treatment of the Frank Beck affair

In November 1991, at Leicester Crown Court, Frank Beck was sentenced to five life terms and twenty-four years' imprisonment for sexual abuse during his work as a residential social worker. His activities resulted in four official reports. Given the scale of his wrong-doing, surely a torrent of sensational coverage would have been predicted at every stage of these events? Yet neither the trial nor the official reports received high profile press treatment. This relative silence about a major criminal episode with fundamental policy implications graphically illustrates the social construction of news. It is first described, and then analysed in terms of the daily practices, the political preoccupations, and the framing devices that constitute ‘news’ in UK national newspapers.     

The Migration of Organizational Functions to the Work Unit Level: Buffering, Spanning, and Bringing Up Boundaries

In this paper, we propose that the locus oforganizational boundary activities has migrated from theorganization to the work unit level as enterprisesreengineer structures, increase the use ofcross-functional teams, cut organizational slack, and adoptadvanced information technologies. From an open systemsperspective, we examine how environmental andorganizational forces affect this migration process.Three types of boundary activity relevant for workunits are identified: buffering, spanning, and bringingup boundaries. A set of preliminary propositionsregarding relationships between environmental andorganizational changes and boundary activities is offered asa guide for future research.     

Rethinking the concept of professionalism: the case of journalism

Journalists in the UK have always been ambivalent about what form of occupational control to pursue. Although resistant to the structures of the conventional profession, they have embraced the idea of 'professionalism'. As the formations traditionally associated with Anglo-American professions become relevant to fewer and fewer employees and increasingly subject to external regulation it is more relevant, we suggest, to investigate how the discourse of 'professionalism' as a set of values and identities can be mobilized by employers as a form of self-discipline. Journalism, notable for its powerful occupational mythology, provides a vivid example of how this process has eased the imposition of radical changes to the organization of work. Now, ironically, recent changes in the occupation's social composition and training may mean that journalists, who have always cherished a self-image as socially marginal, will aspire to conventional professional respectability.