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Clinical social work practice is increasingly informed by theoretical frameworks that attend to social justice. These frameworks include the just practice framework, the structural approach, and critical social theories such as critical race theory, feminist theory, and post structural theory, among others. Moreover, host settings that employ clinical social workers may be both consistent and inconsistent with social justice. Integrating clinical social work and social justice can be a complex process because it requires a clear definition of social justice to guide practice, and knowledge about racial disparities and how attitudes, values and beliefs might influence presenting problems. Consequently, a major competency for the clinical social worker is the ability to assess the influence of social injustice, racial disparities, and attitudes, values and beliefs on presenting problems. Additional competencies include the ability to assess the practice setting to address social injustice and provide clinical interventions, and apply social justice frameworks. Despite the fact that racial disparities exist in mental health and substance abuse treatment and services affecting black and Hispanic populations, limited information is available to guide clinical social workers with integrating social justice interventions. The purpose of this article is to consider the lessons from police social work practice to inform the integration of clinical social work practice and social justice when providing mental health and substance abuse services to black and Hispanic populations. These lessons offer recommendations intended for clinical practice in other host settings that provide services to these populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the results of a systematic review examining police shootings of unarmed African American males. Each source was evaluated by two reviewers and coded based on topic relevance and inclusion criteria. Because of the weak external validity found among the experimental studies, the authors made a substantive decision not to synthesize studies in a meta-analysis. Social work practice implications are gleaned from secondary data obtained from coroner, medical examiner, toxicology, police reports, and the experimental studies included in the systematic review. Individual, community, and police departmental policy factors were most often reported to explain such shootings when excluding sources that examined armed African American males. Implications for micro and macro–social work practice are summarized as individual, community, and police departmental policy factors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examined situational and demographic characteristics in a sample of 47 children missing person police reports obtained from a law enforcement agency to identify the service needs of runaway youth and their families. Results show that runaways represented the only category of missing children contained in the data. The present findings are consistent with national data which suggest that: a typical runaway youth is most likely engaging in acting out rebellious behavior; more girls than boys ran away; most were 14 or 15 years old and most had a prior history of running away. These results support the need for a comprehensive integration between social work research and practice and are used to provide recommendations for the service needs of runaway children and their families. Social work practice recommendations include: (1) community campaigns, (2) training, and (3) increased collaboration between law enforcement and child welfare agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the current study was to assess the effects of mandatory child abuse training on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward abused children and abusive parents among a sample of police recruits. An experimental pre- test-posttes, design was used in which 81 participants were randomly assigned to experimental conditions and 101 to comparison conditions. Participants in the experimental group received the mandatory child abuse training while those in the comparison did not. Analysis of covariance results suggest that recruits participating in the experimental group acquired more knowledge, developed more skills, and felt more caring and sympathetic toward abusive parents than recruits in the comparison group. These results are discussed relative to the provision of joint child abuse training as part of a police-social work collaboration model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to examine the empirical evidence demonstrating the efficacy of police-social work crisis teams, barriers to effective teamwork, and the tasks and situations that police social workers are likely to experience. Descriptive data obtained from a police-social work team within a midsize law enforcement agency located in the northeastern U.S. is used to illustrate the situations and tasks that social workers encounter. Implications for the use of such teams with assisting law enforcement agencies with their community service and community policing functions, and research implications for conducting program evaluations to determine the efficacy of police-social teams are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes collaboration between police officers, social workers, and other mental health professionals in which the social workers were volunteers and represented a diversity of organizations. The paper utilizes the lessons learned from police-social work collaboration in response to the World Trade Center attacks to build capacity for the future of police-social work collaboration in response to mass emergencies and disasters. A collaborative disaster response provided during the early hours and days following the attacks, before the American Red Cross and other agencies were involved are described. Social workers and other mental health professionals collaborating with law enforcement personnel to provide a disaster response can assist law enforcement agencies with their community service and community policing functions. The benefits and barriers to police-social work collaboration, and social practice roles are discussed as they relate to disaster preparedness, response, recovery, and collaborating effectively, with law enforcement personnel.

This article discusses some of the problems encountered by prisoners when they are released from prison and reenter the community and the services that are available to help them. Some of the problems encountered by such prisoners include substance abuse, mental illness, HIV and AIDS, lack of education, public housing restrictions, and difficulty obtaining state-issued identification. U.S. President George W. Bush proposed the Prisoner Reentry Initiative to provide grants to faith-based and community organizations to strengthen services from urban communities and to lower recidivism. The article describes necessary services and some of the programs that provide them.