Region A Update

By Shelly Kalmer, MSW, ACSW, Director, Region A

Happy New Year! Region A is looking forward to a busy 2015. For those of you in the Marin unit, keep your eyes peeled for upcoming CEU events on topics such as Teamwork as an Approach to Overcoming Secondary Stress, Eating Disorders, Integrated Mediation, Suicide Prevention, Marriage Issues and more. We have been busy securing speakers for the year and are looking forward to providing you with these exciting, interesting, thought provoking topics and presenters.

The San Francisco and Sonoma units also are busy putting together their schedules for the year and will announce topics and dates soon. Be sure to follow us on Facebook to get the latest info: www.facebook.com/NASWCaRegionA.SFtoDN

Also, Region A is proud to co-sponsor a four-day workshop led by John Hughes, PhD: Clinical Training in the Psychological Treatment of Children and Youth with Trauma-Attachment Problems. The workshop will be held March 3-6, 2015. Other sponsors include local Sonoma County non-profit organizations, Sonoma County Family, Youth and Children’s Services, Santa Rosa Junior College, and Redwood Empire CAMFT. This event is sold out and we hope to see some of you there.

Region A also will be co-sponsoring an Autumn 2015 event with Dr. John Hughes, so stay tuned if you missed out on the March conference.

If you haven’t been to the NASW-CA Chapter website lately be sure to take another look. As your Regional Director, I’ve participated on a subcommittee to enhance the usability of this tool.  See for yourself at naswca.org and let us know your thoughts.

And in case you missed the announcement a few months ago, the Chapter Board of Directors voted to extend funding the Birdwoman Scholarship, a program in which NASW-CA provides up to twenty $1,000 scholarships to Native American undergraduate or graduate social work students in California. Congratulations to our local recipients of the scholarship HSU graduate students Silver Galletto and Angela Sandberg, and to SFSU graduate student Carly Kohler.

And finally, 2015 will also bring some changes to the Region. Our Assistant Regional Director, Mark Thoma, will finish up his term at the end of June. Mark has been a volunteer and elected leader with the Region for the past six years. His commitments to the profession and to our professional organization are, and have been, models for all to emulate.

Thank you, Mark!