ISP Update / September, 2006

Contents Greetings Initiatives

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GREETINGS

Greetings, ISP Board members, Liaisons, Friends, Advisory Council, NASW chapters!

I am pleased to send the first official Influencing State Policy (ISP) Update for the academic year and for fall, 2006. My hope is that you are well, enjoyed a satisfying vacation somewhere special, and continue to keep an eye on "state"  policies under consideration across our 50 states.

ISP has set goals and initiatives again for 2006-07 and is offering many of its usual services to students, faculty and practitioners. We urge you:

To produce at least one ISP Annual BSW/MSW Contest entry from your Social Work Education Program. Start planning now to get your students involved in a legislative advocacy effort.

To increase visits to the ISP website, www.statepolicy.org, to 2,000 per academic month.

To assist in attaining annual dues of $25 from 350 persons. New dues coming in November 06.

To help 9,000 Social Work student visit their state legislatures this year. We slipped to 6,230 last year.

INITIATIVES

Please make the ISP website a key portal to policy for ALL social work students. Tell all students with a policy question to start at www.statepolicy.org!

We are developing a supplement to the CSWE Accreditation standard that requires "policy practice" in the BSW and MSW curricula.  Our FAQ will soon have some info on this issue

We are developing guidelines for establishing field placements for SW students within the legislative arena. Our FAQ will soon have some info on this issue
 
We are collecting learning activities for students in educational programs more than 50 miles from the state capital.Our FAQ will soon have some info on this issue

We are developing an ISP video on Coalition Building for state legislative initiatives.

How can we increase our sponsorship of ISP? Six sponsors now assist us with the contest or dissertation award with cash. Can you find others?

We are updating the website and adding a FAQ section where we will post answers and updates to some of the initiatives above. It is still under construction, but should be more complete in a month.

For those attending the BPD conference of undergraduate social work program.....we want to sponsor a booth there, but I need a lead person and a set of volunteers to offer an hour's worth of staffing the booth. Anyone available to help out? Let me know by email asap.

I am sending a separate email to ISP members re The Policy Conference in Washington this past June. Please provide some feedback to me since the conference's future standing needs some attention from ISP members.

I have reordered all of the ISP video tapes recently and have a good supply on hand. If you do not have all 5 tapes, please let me know. If one of your tapes is not working well, let me know and I will send  you another one.

For now, please know that ISP appreciates your efforts to promote its mission of increasing social work's participation in the state policy making process either through education or actual advocacy. Let us know how we can help.

All the best. Bob

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