The corruption of the social work enterprise is not simply episodic but systemic and long-standing including education, research, governance, and practice. Reform is unlikely since the constituency within the field and outside of it that wishes to change the situation is small and ineffective. The corruption of social work reflects the unfortunate…

McBeath and Austin define the concept of research-minded practitioners, describe the organizational contexts, structures, and strategies for supporting this type of practitioner. Further, the authors propose a research agenda to establish effective organizational development strategies to support research-minded practitioners, align their efforts…

Responding to David Stoesz's invited article criticizing the Children's Bureau and the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI), the author's inaccurate assertions are challenged, and new information is provided about the significant work underway to support the child welfare workforce. The Children's Bureau has made historic investments…

This article is a critique of David Stoesz' descriptions of organizational issues in child welfare, and more specifically, the relationships between the U.S. Children's Bureau and the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute. The focus is on Stoesz perspectives and assessments of sub-entities (cartels) that are currently influencing funding and…

Although the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI) is a specific focus of Stoesz's article, a more expansive and thought-provoking critique is made of the NCWWI within the context of a purported overreliance and dependency on the Children's Bureau, concerns regarding the quality of social work education, and the development of a…

Epstein makes a strong argument for the value of clinical data mining (CDM), although he minimizes some of the potential limitations in that methodology, such as attrition. Epstein's portrayal of evidence-based practice (EBP) as practitioner-bashing and treasuring intervention manuals overlooks the emphasis in the EBP process on the need for…

This paper is a reaction to Marsiglia and Booths' paper, "Cultural Adaptation of Interventions in Real Practice Settings." In their paper, Marsiglia and Booth present the difficulty of implementing and replicating evidence-supported treatments, such as randomized clinical trials, among culturally diverse clients. Practitioners working in…

This response considers together simultaneously occurring discussions about causal inference in social work and allied health and social science disciplines. It places emphasis on scholarship that integrates the potential outcomes model with directed acyclic graphing techniques to extract core steps in causal inference. Although this scholarship…

The article by David Stoesz and Howard J. Karger, "Reinventing Social Work Accreditation," is misleading and erroneous in its assumptions, makes unsubstantiated assertions, and demonstrates an ideological shallowness on the part of the authors in their understanding of social work education, the Council on Social Work Education, and the…

Stoesz and Karger contend that the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) accreditation has poorly served the profession by perpetuating an environment of low standards epitomized by the very leaders responsible for the credibility of social work as an academic discipline. Graduates are "ill-prepared" and what qualifies as scholarship in the…

The main assumption of the article under discussion seems flawed and misconstrued. The "professional decline of social work" neither is because of the "lack of scholarship of the Board of Directors" nor is an outcome of an imperfect accreditation process. The presumption that independently achieved accreditation will improve the quality of…

It is unlikely that Stoesz and Karger will be widely commended for the critique of social work accreditation. Social work academics do not usually handle criticism with equanimity. In some respects, their case is overstated. The problems associated with social work accreditation are not caused by the low publication productivity of social work…

The authors respond to the invited commentary addressing their paper "Reinventing Social Work Accreditation" published earlier in this issue. Many of the comments provided were sensible and sober appraisals of the critical state of social work education and of the profession, largely congruent with the authors' analysis. They judge the response…

Many of the criticisms of Stoesz and Karger contained within their article titled "Reinventing Social Work Education" and focused against the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) are misdirected. The CSWE accreditation mandate does not extend to the publishing records (or lack thereof) of social work faculty or deans, to the GRE scores of…

Stoesz and Karger contend that the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) has promulgated accreditation mechanisms and processes that have failed to assure sufficient quality in social work education. Although certain of their conclusions are subject to challenge, their central propositions are credible and warrant serious consideration on the…