By Nicole Gollis Golden, MSSW ’04 On Thursday at 5:00 a.m, power was restored at my home in Austin after 75 hours without heat or electricity. For those few days, the temperature read 44 degrees inside during the daytime, while lows outside dipped into the single digits at night. In a dark and cold cave-like […]
Issues
Removing the stigma of addiction
Megan and Matthew Szabo Endowed Excellence Fund at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work. Liz Pires thought it odd when spoons started vanishing from her kitchen. She asked her teenage children, Matt and Megan, to please put used spoons in the sink or dishwasher and make sure they were not accidentally throwing them with […]
Why your support matters: Norma Jaramillo, BSW ’21
Norma Jaramillo graduated in the top 7% of her high school class in Lockhart, Texas. Still, she didn’t think she could go to college. “My family couldn’t afford it,” she said. But when her 12th grade culinary teacher, a UT Austin alum, encouraged her to pursue higher education, Jaramillo decided to take a chance. She […]
Learning policy making
Junior Carrington Lee is passionate about social justice. This past fall, when she had to choose a research topic in professor Doug Smith’s social policy course, she decided to focus on the racial disparity in incarceration rates in Smith County. “As an African American woman, this is an important issue for me,” Lee said. “The […]
Patients with chronic conditions put off needed care
Working with countless disabled and homebound older adults, professor Namkee Choi sees many who live with no health insurance. After the onset of disability in their 50s, people could no longer work and lost their coverage. “Eligibility for Medicare and/or Medicaid is tough, and many did not have it for many years when they needed […]
New resources for Texas sexual assault survivors
Texans who support victims of sexual assault have not always had access to the localized information they need to connect the survivors to services and resources in their area and across the state. Now, new research from The University of Texas at Austin will enable survivors of sexual assault, professionals supporting them, and lawmakers to see the […]
What makes youth in foster care feel supported?
More than 80% of children who enter into foster care after the age of 12 end up emancipating from care without achieving legal permanency–the court’s decision to make an adult a legal guardian for a youth. They also have higher rates of home life instability after adoption or guardianship compared to younger children. Youth in […]
Neighborhood racial segregation and premature births
Existing research has shown that Black women in the United States are more than 50% more likely to deliver a premature baby than white women. In a new article published in the Journal of Urban Health, alumna Yeonwoo Kim and professors Shetal Vohra-Gupta and Catherine Cubbin examine how the racial composition of a mother’s neighborhood […]
Clinician’s Corner
The Texas Institute for Child & Family Wellbeing has released their third edition of Clinician’s Corner on the digital blogging platform Medium. This annual publication is meant to unite social work research and practice by exploring various issues relevant to the social work discipline. The 2020 edition, titled “Everyday Justice: Cultivating intentional connection,” explores the various ways […]
Improving services for Texans experiencing early psychosis
Early or first-episode psychosis can be a first sign of serious mental illness such as schizophrenia. Acting quickly to connect a person with the right treatment at this early stage can be life changing and prevent many of the long-term impacts experienced by people with schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders. A new, $5.6 million grant […]
