Category Archives: News

September, 2018. Eight CASWE-ACFTS members collaborated on a bilingual presentation at the International Sexualities and Social Work Conference in Montreal in August 2018. The panel, entitled CASWE-ACFTS: Integrating sexualities, genders, and intersectionalities into social work education, included Hélène Albert, Commission on Accreditation; Nick Mulé, Queer Caucus; Shirley Chau, Race, Ethnicity, and Cultural Issues Caucus; Liza […]

June 26, 2018. The Honourable Ahmed D. Hussen Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6 Re: Ending child detention in Canada and the United States Dear Minister Hussen, We are writing on behalf of social work educators across Canada who have been horrified in the past weeks about the […]

June, 2018. During the 2018 Annual General Assembly, the following Directors were re-elected to the Board of Directors: Dr. Kathy Hogarth, Renison University College, affiliated with the University of Waterloo, Dr. Stéphane Grenier, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue and Dr. Anita Vaillancourt, from the University of the Fraser Valley. We are pleased to welcome newly […]

June, 2018. Mr. Nikolas Harris, MSW student at Dalhousie University selected to join the Canadian Delegation, led by Minister Kirsty Duncan to the 11th session of the United Nations Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), held June 12-14, 2018 at the UN Headquarters in New York […]

The Canadian Association for Social Work Education-Association canadienne pour la formation en travail social (CASWE-ACFTS) aims to provide funding support to student members who have the most promising presentation submissions and who are registered to attend the Annual Conference of CASWE-ACFTS. The purpose of the award is to promote high-quality social work education and practice, […]

April, 2018. Dr. Peter Donahue, Director of the School of Social Work at King’s University College, Western University, has been elected President of the Ontario Association of Social Workers (OASW). Dr. Donahue is currently a member of the Board of Directors of CASWE-ACFTS and the Chair of the Nominating Committee, and was previously the Co-Chair of […]

April, 2018. A working group is in the process of developing an online Field Instructor’s course. This project began in 2014, when the Field Education Committee (FEC) received a grant from the CASWE-ACFTS Special Projects’ fund to research and design a national online field instructors’ course. Dr. Sheri McConnell, the field education coordinator at the […]

I have recently returned from the Social Work Hospice Palliative Network (SWPHN) annual conference in Boston, Massachusetts. (Check it out at www.swhpn.org; it needs a larger Canadian presence.) I have been on their board for a number of years now. I was invited to be part of the opening keynote about pediatric palliative care and presented a research poster along with a team member. It was an excellent conference with lots of good discussions about the role of social work in hospice and palliative care.

It was interesting to be there on the heels of another presentation in which I was involved. I was asked to be part of a panel on death and dying, which was put together as part of an advanced training session for field instructors. One of the panel members was highly critical of how little training social workers receive about death, dying, grief, and loss. In Canada, only a few schools offer courses in this topic area. The United States programs have a little more content, however, it is far more common that people learn on the job or out of personal interest.

I have been doing research in death, dying, and bereavement for all my academic life, and as such, I bring the conversation into the classroom as much as I can. One of my favourite teaching moments occurred in a groupwork classroom where we were role modelling endings. One student knew where I was headed in my comments and urged me not to use the “d word”.

March, 2018. We are pleased to announce that Dr. Renée Brassard and Mrs. Pamela Pezoa as our Keynote Speakers. Renée Brassard is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Université Laval, as well as a researcher at the International Center for Comparative Criminology of Université de Montréal and at The Interdisciplinary Research […]

March, 2018. The Canadian Council of Social Work Regulators (CCSWR),  The Canadian Association for Social Work Education – L’Association canadienne pour la formation en travail social (CASWE-ACFTS) and  The Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW)  have chosen the theme Bringing Change to Life to open space for the social work profession to reflect and act […]