The Social Work Policy Network sends weekly resources regarding national & local legislature, events, as well as media.
Thank you for your continued support of the Social Work Policy Network!
Professional Opportunities
Data Coordinator, Gender Based Violence, Government Representative 2 – Department of Children and Families (Trenton, NJ)
Prevention Specialist - NJ Coalition Against Sexual Assault (Mercer County, NJ)
Policy Analyst - Inclusiv (West New York, NJ)
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Talent Acquisition Manager - Princeton University (Princeton, NJ)
Manager for Foundation and Government Grants - New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (New York, NY)
Youth Wellness Program Coordinator - Nationalities Service Center (Philadelphia, PA)
Director of Positive Youth Development Policy and Advocacy - Advocates for Children of New Jersey (Newark, NJ)
Staten Island Community Organizer - Citizen Action of NY (New York, NY)
Upcoming Events
Women's Rights as Human Rights: The Seeds of Transformation
Anita Ashok Datar Lecture on Women's Global Health
Presented by the Rutgers University Institute for Women's Leadership Consortium, Rutgers Global, and the Innovation, Design, and Entrepreneurship Academy (IDEA)
Thursday, November 2nd, 2023
4:30-6:30 p.m..
Trayes Hall, Douglass Student Center
100 George St, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA
**FREE**
Featuring Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan lawyer, diplomat, and human rights advocate, served as the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) and The Special Representative on Children and Armed Conflict. She was appointed the first Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women in 1994, a position she held until 2003. In Sri Lanka, she was Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies for over twenty years and served as the Chairperson of the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission from 2003 to 2006.
Following her lecture, Dr. Coomaraswamy, Professor Charlotte Bunch, and Professor Radhika Balakrishnan will engage in a roundtable conversation to consider progress towards women's full inclusion in the human rights agenda and the challenges that remain. This event is open to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the wider community.
Learn more about the event and register.
Supporting Families with State Tax Credits: The New England Model
Thursday, November 2nd, 2023
2:00 p.m.
Online (Zoom)
The Niskanen Center invites you to join a timely virtual discussion featuring a panel of New England policymakers who have spearheaded a particularly promising approach to supporting families through state tax credits.
A quiet revolution is taking place in statehouses nationwide as policymakers rethink their approach to supporting families in state tax codes. Once rare, tax credits for children and other dependents are increasingly common across the country. Twenty-one states have introduced or expanded these tax credits over the last five years.
Income eligibility, dependent eligibility, and benefit amount vary widely across the states. An emerging New England model, which focuses on making these credits effectively universal with no phase-in (fully refundable) and high or no phase-out, offers a promising approach. This virtual panel brings together policymakers from Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maine to discuss their respective states’ experience designing family tax credits.
Full panel:
-Josh McCabe, Director of Social Policy, Niskanen Center (moderator)
-Rep. Janet Ancel, Vermont House of Representatives
-Sen. Susan Moran, Massachusetts State Senate
-Rep. Maureen Terry, Maine House of Representatives
Election Day is November 7th!
Election Day is right around the corner!
This is the year that every NJ legislative seat is up for re-election!
What's on the Ballot?
Do you know where to vote?
If you are a resident of New Jersey, click the button below to locate your polling place so you know where to go on November 7th!
Find your Polling Place!
National Updates
The opioid crisis has gotten much, much worse despite Congress’ efforts to stop it - POLITICO
“America’s drug overdose crisis is out of control. Washington, despite a bipartisan desire to combat it, is finding its addiction-fighting programs are failing. In 2018, Republicans, Democrats and then-President Donald Trump united around legislation that threw $20 billion into treatment, prevention and recovery. But five years later, the SUPPORT Act has lapsed and the number of Americans dying from overdoses has grown more than 60 percent, driven by illicit fentanyl.”
New SAT Data Highlights the Deep Inequality at the Heart of American Education - The Upshot, New York Times
In this interactive graphic article, “New data shows…how much students’ standardized test scores rise with their parents’ incomes — and how disparities start years before students sit for tests. One-third of the children of the very richest families scored a 1300 or higher on the SAT, while less than 5 percent of middle-class students did, according to the data, from economists at Opportunity Insights, based at Harvard. Relatively few children in the poorest families scored that high; just one in five took the test at all.”
Youngkin orders Virginia Inspector General to investigate voter removals - NPR
“Gov. Glenn Youngkin has ordered the Virginia Office of the Inspector General to investigate the removal of eligible voters from state rolls. His response comes as people who’ve had their rights restored continue to report problems accessing the ballot. In a letter to the ACLU of Virginia dated Monday, Youngkin’s secretary of administration, Lyn McDermid, said the governor was “deeply concerned” to learn that people who’d had their rights restored were stripped from the voter rolls after probation violations.”
New infertility definition a "game-changer" for hopeful LGBTQ+ parents - Axios
“The decision by an influential organization of reproductive health providers to redefine the condition could lead to broader insurance coverage of fertility services like egg freezing and in vitro fertilization for all people who need help starting families — not just those in heterosexual couples.”
Local & Regional Updates
NJ Elections: Mental health — an important policy issue, just not a campaign issue - NJ Spotlight News
“As voters across the state prepare to cast ballots in the upcoming legislative elections, politicians have been campaigning on topics ranging from offshore wind farms and abortion rights to “parental rights” and property taxes. But mental health is not being talked about as frequently as these hotly debated topics this election season.”
N.J. Democrats boast of tax relief — and the promise of more — as Election Day nears - New Jersey Monitor
Features: Ashley Koning, Director of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling
“New Jersey Democrats are looking to the state’s high cost of living as they campaign to keep the legislative majorities they’ve held in both chambers for two decades. Since they unexpectedly lost one Senate and six Assembly seats in 2021, Democrats have moved to expand state tax relief programs and create new ones aimed at the state’s seniors…Those programs include Anchor, a property tax relief program that sends checks of up to $1,500 to New Jersey homeowners and $450 to renters, and the recently enacted — but still nascent — StayNJ program, which seeks to cut seniors property tax bills in half, to a cap of $6,500.”
Governor Murphy Signs Legislation Launching a New Online Portal to Provide Access to Critical Reproductive Health Care Information - NJ Office of the Governor
“Governor Phil Murphy…signed a bill (S-3275/A-4829) alongside members of his Administration, legislators, advocates, and public officials to launch a brand new website – the Reproductive Health Information Hub accessible at nj.gov/reproductivehealth – providing critical information on reproductive rights, access, and health care coverage across New Jersey. The Governor also highlighted forgivable loan awards for reproductive health care facility upgrades, the availability of funds for security upgrades, the recent implementation of a Medicaid rate increase for providers, and rollout of an initiative to grow the State’s reproductive health care workforce.”
Q&A: Mental health impacts of eviction on children and families - NJ Spotlight News
Features: Dr. Schenike Massie-Lambert, Rutgers Children’s Center for Resilience and Trauma Recovery
“Eviction is the precipitating cause of a wide range of economic, physical and mental hardships, all of which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Children and Black Americans are especially impacted by this form of displacement. A recent report by researchers from Princeton and Rutgers universities and the U.S. Census Bureau linked 38 million eviction court cases to census data to show that 7.6 million people, including 2.9 million children, faced the threat of eviction each year between 2007 and 2016.”
Ride into the Data-zone!
Are you looking for health policy data? Maybe you're looking for polls that can help you with a research paper? Check out this source:
The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF)
KFF is the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism. Their mission is to serve as a nonpartisan source of information for policymakers, the media, the health policy community, and the public. On their website you can find interactive data, graphics, and charts for health-focused data like women's health policy, racial equity and health policy, and global health policy, to name a few areas of focus.
Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker
KFF also partners with the Peterson Center on Healthcare to provide a tracker that monitors how well the U.S. healthcare system is performing in terms of quality and cost. "The Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker provides clear, up-to-date information on trends, drivers and issues that impact the performance of the system. It also illustrates how the U.S. is performing relative to other countries and how different parts of the system are performing relative to one another."
