OnPrisons

Built environments can also produce negative health risks when developers are not thinking about the effects of built spaces. In particular, urban layouts are designed to maximize living space. The way in which prisons are built in America is another example of how population growth results in building structures to house the influx of humans, often with inadequate built infrastructure such as the lack of windows limiting one’s access to natural light. Consequently, the population has been exposed the potential for limited healthy food options and environmental toxins such as noise pollution and water pollution. The categories described above do not occur in an isolated form but are layered throughout the structure of a community, making it a multifaceted problem. Deducing personhood to common variables, or quantifiable ones, suggests that low income and minority groups face larger negative implications of the structural environment. Through this knowledge, urbanization becomes a variable which can cause health risks, if not designed properly. Overall, health through the environment depends on a range of social, economic, and environmental factors.

Resources for Prospective Social Workers — The Political Social Worker

Rachel L. West, MSW, LMSW The Political Social Worker A couple of days ago a Tumblr follower asked me for some advice about applying to an MSW program. This gave me the idea to put together a small list of resources for perspective (and current) social work students. socialworkhelper.com A social networking site for helping […]

Resources for Prospective Social Workers — The Political Social Worker

Economic Globalization, Sleep-Wake Rhythms & COVID-19

Macro/Policy Environmental Social Work Perspective

Economic globalization become a worldwide trend (Han, 2019). With globalization comes technology. Technology and the environment should be of growing concern. Now more than ever. Given COVID-19, are legislators and enforcers thinking of the stimulus and social welfare in terms physiological rhythms in humans? 

Studies show that relevant to the environment (the built environment that is, the once we are all confined to… if heavily impacted by environmental cues; light, noise, and temperature are synchronizing to Sleep-wake rhythms in humans. 

            As the current state of our lives will have it, much of work is being done in the same spaces we often strive, or should strive to keep sacred. This is because our rhythms are extremely effected by noise pollution, night work, social media, blue light. Thanks to open data it has been found that  

“Extensive open-access databases now focus on these disturbing environmental and societal cues”

Damien Legerab &  Christian Guilleminaultc

The fields associated with sleep are: noise, light, radio frequencies, transportation, and internet”

Damien Legerab &  Christian Guilleminaultc

These environmental open data may help us in understanding better sleep rhythms globally”

Damien Legerab &  Christian Guilleminaultc
  • Insight of the day: “the development index of Digital Economy and Society (DESI), an instrument that can detect a data system in order to quantify the level of technological development at the macro level and the micro level” (Vanessa Russo : Qualitative and Quantitative Models in Socio-Economic Systems and Social Work pp 427-442| Cite as Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI). European Guidelines and Empirical Applications on the Territory)

The Nature of Silent-Welfare

Never have I ever ☝️👉 not found silence to be the most resourceful tool when met with disorder. Silence is an action & a weapon when not used appropriately as it likely causes an influx of unbalanced power dynamics. “The increase of disorder or entropy with time is one example of what is called an arrow of time, something that distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time” (Stephen Hawking) •


Silence is #selfcare

silence is #introspection

silence is #tactful

silence is #mindful


At times some will go silent but they are not invisible • each of us has a way of coping & that wayward style is intrinsically comorbid with time & place (#natural & #built)


Scale silence to many bodies and it’s heard loudly • now scale it down & somehow I find that society has juxtaposed varying stereotypes or archetypal #preconceptions on the scaled down version. Why didn’t you speak up? Why didn’t you reach out? Why didn’t you….? #silence now becomes a result of an unmet #expectation

Full Circle. Feedback Loops

I was in the sculpture and instillation program. A dual degree in psychology before I transferred to begin my path in Social Work. However for a brief moment my artistic self was at bay while I studied. It recently has come back through engaging with STEM research and environmental justice work in the form of infographics. The ability to conceptualize is critical but following my artistic intuition has led me further than I knew it would.

It seems I have inadvertently followed a path that led back to the one I started on, but I come back to the arts with a new intellectual knowledge base. Thank you for seeing that. In many ways what’s why I left, I needed more theory and grounding. I felt it strongly my first year at SMFA and it seems that the decision to leave and investigate into the scientific process Comes full circle as I Transcend back into my artist self. There is a newfound respect for my personal and professional self and with that I interject that Social Work is and will continue to be a professional path that brings about deep growth. We and our clients are impacted by the environment- the smallest shifts in the physical are variables to internal mental states. We support the environments of those around us.

Social Work and Environmental Justice

SOCIAL JUSTICE SPOTLIGHT

October 2019

Environmental Racism and Systems of Oppression

Gabrielle Conrad-Amlicke | Policy 2020

Frederick Olmsted, an American Landscape designer best known for Central Park (New York, NY) and The Emerald Necklace (Boston, MA), also designed Keney Park (Hartford, CT). Keney Park runs vertically up and down the west half of Hartford’s Northeast neighborhood. The northern areas of this city are where the highest rates of crime and vacancy are reported among a predominately Black population. The decaying aspects of the physical environment contextualize an aspect of loss, both for the community members and potentially for the general public. Despite powerful community-led efforts to reduce violence in the area, ongoing oppression and political marginalization undermine these activities.  Fear pushes even those who live in the Northeast neighborhood to seek out other community parks. Thirty-years of activities aimed at improving park conditions have been disrupted by the larger political failures to protect and nourish this neighborhood.

Famous natural spaces have the potential to stimulate individual and economic growth. Why then is Keney Park, which sits almost directly between NYC’s “Central Park” to the south and Boston’s “Emerald Necklace Conservancy” park system to the north, less renowned than its Olmsted siblings?

The answer: environmental racism.  Anytime environmental decisions are shaped by the intersectional identities of those benefiting from, or occupying, a particular environment—racism is at work. Social workers must identify and amplify these instances. We must advocate for investment in these environments or else the historic systems of oppression that harm our clients and our profession will never be dismantled.