Love thy God – Love thy Neighbor: Responsibility to Clients Is Grounded in This Gospel Message

The Catholic Charities USA Code of Ethics sets forth broad ethical principles that reflect Catholic Charities core values and establishes a set of ethical standards that should guide practice and ethical decision-making in Catholic Charities agencies. These ethical standards apply to responsibility to clients and agency activities of governance boards, executives, management teams, staff, volunteers, funders, investments, and research. The ethical standards outlined in the Code flow from the principles of Catholic social teaching and the fundamental values held by Catholic Charities. As the Gospel tells us that the greatest commandment is to love our God, with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength (Mark 12:30), it also tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:39). For staff, “loving our neighbor” is the foundation of the first ethical standard outlined in the Code, responsibility to clients. Review of the literature on ethical standards and codes of ethics support the twenty responsibilities identified as concern for the client. Although other segments of the Code affect staff relationships to other constituencies, the segment on responsibilities to clients is primary and the most comprehensive

The Call to Justice: Social Work in Catholic

This paper describes the congruency between Catholic social work education and Catholic social teaching. Schools of Social Work in Catholic institutions prepare students for social work practice in ways that are compatible with the call to justice, the goals of Christian service and the tasks of the Catholic Church’s social teaching. Articulating the connections between Catholic social teaching and social work education is an important starting point for understanding the importance of social work education to Catholic colleges and universities

Geriatric Enrichment: Guaranteeing A Place For Aging In the Curriculum.

Two years ago, the School of Social Work embarked upon a new and challenging initiative to create sustainable structural changes that enrich gerontological learning experiences for all our BSW and MSW students, faculty, fieldwork instructors and community practitioners. We envisioned that participation in this initiative would enable us to expand and embed geriatric content in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum, to increase our geriatric fieldwork placement opportunities, to evaluate and enhance our teaching and learning resources on aging, and to develop two new aging specific courses. Having reached our third year of operation, we find ourselves reflecting on what have been our successes, what could we have done differently, and where do we go in the future. This article will describe our process of developing a model of curriculum change that will guarantee a place for aging in both our undergraduate and graduate curricula

Social Work for Social Justice: Strengthening Social Work Education through the Integration of Catholic Social Teaching

Catholic Social Teaching (CST), by virtue of its convergence with social work values and ethics, is a valuable resource for strengthening the social justice content of social work education. This paper describes how CST is complementary to the NASW Code of Ethics, foundational to the Integrative Framework (a generalist practice model), provides substance to the Core Competencies as defined by the Council on Social Work Education, and operationalizes justice in the classroom

Advancing Administrative Supports for Research Development

Research intensive universities have raised the bar for all academic units, expecting them to increase research grants and contracts to support knowledge creation and scholarship. Similarly, performance requirements for faculty have changed, with annual reviews and tenure and promotion decisions weighting obtaining grants along with publication of scholarly products, teaching effectiveness, and service to the school, university and community. These expectations compel Deans and Directors of schools of social work to undertake new roles related to research development and administrative capacity building in order to help faculty and their units succeed. Social work schools and departments must stay or become strategically positioned in their university or college, even as the context for research development has been dramatically altered as colleges and universities invest in the nanosciences or bio- technology rather than the social sciences. A $4 billion nanoscience operation dwarfs the$20 million that a robust research enterprise that a few schools of social work enjoy. This paper highlights some of the opportunities, barriers, challenges, as well as stepping stones to success in the process of building research supports and infrastructures. Drawing upon presentations at recent meetings of the National Association of Deans and Directors of Schools of Social Work (NADD) that have been organized by the Institute of Social Work Research (IASWR), we feature several examples of approaches advancing supports for research development. Brief scenarios illustrating efforts underway at several schools depict challenging and often rewarding research capacity building endeavors. This paper presents the perspective of several Deans and Directors in the development of administrative research supports. The paper also features one model for a supportive research administration structure in the pre- and post-award environment