Call for Papers- Children & Schools – Responding to Grand Challenges for Social Work Practice
Edited by Martell L. Teasley, Kevin Poh Hiong Tan, Jandel Mary Crutchfield, and James P. Canfield.
In January 2016 the American Academy of Social Work & Social Welfare launched its Grand Challenges for Social Work initiative. Grand Challenges for Social Work are based on the develop- ment of groundbreaking initiatives designed to champion social progress related to critical social welfare problems. Grand Challenges aim to use innovative methods and partnerships to transform lives and strengthen communities, creating individual well-being and fostering transformative social changes. Essential to the development of the Grand Challenges for Social Work is the use of innovative partnerships through interdisciplinary collaboration, the strategic deployment of scientifically based practices and programs, and ongoing progress and sustainable quality assurance.
The Grand Challenges approach can be instrumental in solving long-standing and new challenges facing school social work practice. Given resource constraints in an era of fiscal austerity, school social work effectiveness and efficacy are key to practice in such an environment. Grand Challenges for school social work practice include (a) gaining resources at the local level to implement evidence-based interventions, (b) diminishing role ambiguity in the school setting, (c) overcoming fiscal retrenchment to support school social work practice, (d) providing services to homeless families with school-age children, (e) tackling the continued growth of charter schools and their impact on school social work practice, and (f ) reducing disproportionality in both discipline and special education and mental health diagnoses. We are interested in the response from school social work practitioners and researchers on solution-focused approaches to address these challenges and in studies that demonstrate the impact of social work services on school climate and outcomes. We seek manuscripts that outline innovative approaches to challenges facing school social work practice that have scientific merit. Quantitative, qualitative, and conceptual works that detail how existing evidence can be applied to identifiable school social work practice challenges are welcomed.
The deadline for manuscript submission is November 15, 2016. The journal encourages submission of full-length articles (20 pages), Practice Highlights (six pages), As Readers See It (two pages), and commentary (two pages). To prepare your manuscript in proper format for submission, see Writing for the NASW Press: Information for Authors at https://www.naswpress.org/authors/guidelines/00-contents.html
Please submit manuscripts as Word documents through the online submission portal at http:// cs.msubmit.net (initial, onetime registration is required) and indicate that your submission is intended for the Grand Challenges for School Social Work special issue.