The COVID-19 pandemic swept the nation, killing more than 184,000 residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. The post pandemic response to this massacre has been confusion, doubt, and indecision on the part of the elderly and their caregivers about the use of long-term care facilities.

Your response to last week's blog on the social worker's role in juvenile justice was overwhelmingly positive but many of you thought that the issues might be better clarified in context. So, let's try to put juvenile justice in some historical perspective.

• During a single year, an estimated 2.1 million youth under the age of 18 are arrested in the United States.
• Though overall rates have been declining over the past years, approximately 1.7 million delinquency cases are disposed in juvenile courts annually.
• Youth are referred to the juvenile justice system for different types of offenses.
• The majority of youth processed through the juvenile court are adjudicated (i.e., declared by a judge to be) delinquent, for most offenses.

The COVID-19 doomsday pandemic introduced an entirely new class of celebrity to the American zeitgeist, the public health official. From Anthony Fauci, the wise old sage of caution and mutual concern, to Robert Redfield, the reluctant dour villain caught between the evil genie and an army of helpless victims, to Rochelle Walensky, the newcomer fairy godmother who wished us well and told us it would all end happily, to Vivek Murthy, the good scout who counseled us not to fear the final dangerous crossing. All public health officials - all newly minted celebrities.

With the popularity of CSI shows, the word "forensic" has wormed its way into our everyday conversations. No one, however, seems to know what it means. "Forensic social work", therefore, is an even deeper mystery. We decided to ask a real "forensic social worker" exactly what forensic social workers do. Here's what she told us.

"Social workers are my collective heroes. They sit at the juncture between those with too much power and those with not enough. "

- Gloria Steinem -

Paperwork is a dirty word in social services. Social work is not about keeping records, it’s about “hands-on” interpersonal contact with abused children, single parents, the neglected elderly, the abandoned homeless, and other vulnerable populations. As you might suspect, as social work became a more integral part of our society’s fabric, our social workers have been swamped by a virtual paperwork tsunami.

We recently talked to a child and family services case worker in Phoenix, Arizona who, contrary to popular opinion, shed a positive light on all this confounded paperwork.

Only social workers who deal with childhood hunger every day realize how devastating the COVID-19 pandemic has been for millions of everyday school children who attend school with your children and mine. For many of your children’s classmates, not attending in-person school has meant missing 5 essential meals a week and, in many cases, the bulk of their nutrition.

Social workers tell us that primary care providers are inundated with patients seeking help with psychic symptoms that require the attention of a psychiatric specialist. Family physicians and emergency room doctors often do not feel qualified to deal with this new mental health crisis and need the help of social workers to execute a referral process while helping patients feel more comfortable going to a new and unfamiliar physician.

Case workers in the US have been refining their role in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic by taking inspiration from the pivotal role their Chinese colleagues played in controlling the rate of infection in Wuhan.