“Income only tells part of the story,” said Mat Despard, Department of Social Work Associate Professor. “We’re talking about people who may be struggling with student debt, child care, and unaffordable housing.”
Michael Thull, who has seen an increase in Xylazine in Greensboro, said the usage of the drug restricts the blood vessels and circulation, which causes wounds that can takes months to heal.
Liana Adrong recently received the 2023 Outstanding Americans by Choice award from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for her work. One of nine children who came to the U.S. from Vietnam, she is passionate about her Montagnard-Ede heritage.
A woman drove into a Walgreens parking lot in High Point, parked, and walked over to a group of social work students. “Hey, how’s your car doing?” asked Marella Farrington, a student interning with GCSTOP.
Amanda Clark ’14, ’18 looks forward to working with nonprofits like GCSTOP (Guilford County Solution to the Opioid Problem), which is a UNCG program that partners with Guilford County Emergency Services. GCSTOP is primarily manned by interns from UNCG’s social work and public health departments.
Have Narcan with you, have fentanyl test strips, ways to identify counterfeit anything. That will save a life. — Dr. Melissa Floyd-Pickard, licensed clinical social worker, lead researcher for GCSTOP, and Social Work Professor
Rajendra Roopchan says finding someone to talk to is more important to a college student than finding someone who has all the answers.
“Having a person or a community to suggest, ‘You can do this’ or ‘These are your options’ is a phenomenal resource to have.”
As a Department of Social Work and Gerontology Program, we are responsible for actively engaging in the values of our profession, including valuing the dignity and worth of people and fighting for social justice. Tyre is not only someone who was murdered by police but also a person who loved his family, whose mother remembers how much he enjoyed skateboarding and sunsets. We share in the grief of his loss.
“While uninterrupted attachment to the labor force is a good thing, higher levels of job loss in the US may have benefited economic efficiency as workers had more incentive to consider better job opportunities whereas continuously receiving a paycheck while furloughed may have discouraged seeking more productive job matches.”
One of the most powerful resources that UNCG provides to the effort, Albright says, is students.
Students in UNCG’s undergraduate and graduate social work programs are required to do internships to gain practical experience before they graduate. These internships allow GCSTOP to help more people.
