With the year coming to a close, it can only mean one thing: it is time to start planning for that annual holiday event. Even though holiday gatherings are typically planned to reward associates and employees with a fun experience, being the one behind the curtain planning all the details can be anything but enjoyable. From the tracking down the right venue to the hiring suitable entertainment, it is easy to get overwhelmed with all that has to be done.

Yet, planning a great holiday party doesn’t have to be stressful. Check out these tips from a professional event planning service and breeze through the whole ordeal without so much hassle.

Elaborate high-profile events get all the attention these days. Planners spend little time trying to create unique meeting environments or leading edge high-tech for small trainings or sales meetings. Although the smaller everyday meetings are still our bread and butter, perhaps the limited budgets and short lead times of these meetings have produced a certain ennui among planners. We think our job is done when we simply arrange a conference room, look after coffee service, and make sure the Wi-Fi and AV are working. This is, of course, an oversimplification, but small company meetings are afforded little creative attention and are rarely memorable.

NEW BOUTIQUE VENUES

Every Day - 20 U.S. Veterans Commit Suicide

In 2014, the latest year statistics are available, 7,400 veterans took their own lives.

SOCIAL WORKERS FEEL HELPLESS

Social workers who work with veterans often feel helpless or unprepared to deal with the burgeoning psychic and spiritual crisis that is overwhelming combat veterans from the Vietnam war to the war in Afghanistan.

My colleague, Mary Pat Baxter, was Hyacinth Bucket when it came to "Keeping Up Appearances". I should have suspected an awkward affair when she invited me to afternoon tea. I am not ashamed to admit that I am rarely invited to tea, let alone by a woman pretending to social status. Suffice it to say that my presence could perhaps have a diminishing effect on one’s standing among the best people. I am not a bore by any means, just a little clumsy when it comes to an intimate knowledge of the graces.

So, I foolishly accepted Mary Pat’s unexpected invitation and set about deciding the proper etiquette regarding a gift. I decided my favourite Czech pastry, Bublanina, would be a pleasant upgrade over the ubiquitous “Victoria sandwich” that stuffy hostesses seem compelled to serve at every tea. 

Plum Butter imported from the Czech Republic and Slovakia is not a sugar laden jam or marmalade typically used in the UK to sweeten all manner of otherwise bland foods. Plum butter is health food.

Fruit butters are made by simply slow cooking fruits like plums and apples down to a thick paste, the texture of dairy butter, then “putting the butter up” in sealed containers without additives or preservatives. Voilà, health food!

An article in this month’s Social Work Today is a must read for all social workers practicing in the field of education. New research is uncovering the effects that trauma has on a student’s ability to think clearly. When traumatic experiences that children bring with them to the school setting aren’t identified, it can lead to a dysfunctional circular process of mutual re-traumatization in school. 

A THORNY ISSUE

The ethical standards in many areas of social work are still being worked through the legal system. A particularly compelling example of evolving standards concerns social workers’ response to parents’ request to examine their children’s counseling records. At the beginning of the social worker-client relationship, social workers routinely discuss with minor clients and their parents the minors’ right to confidentiality and possible exceptions. Nonetheless, in many cases social workers encounter ethical challenges when parents ask to examine their child’s records because of their curiosity or because of their relevance to legal disputes. 

I recently had occasion to see the new movie, Selma, the story of Martin Luther King's fight for the voting rights of African Americans. I expected the film to be the stirring story of the great man's inspirational leadership of the civil rights movement. It wasn't. Rather, Selma was the story of the persistent, courageous self-sacrifice of people great and small, black and white, who were willing to give everything they had, including their lives, for a humanitarian cause greater than themselves. 

"Lay-down Tony" was the only name he would give me. “Good enough for everyone around here,” he said. “I guess it’s good enough for me.” 

 When I heard that the city of Phoenix was closing its only public homeless shelter, I headed downtown to interview some of the homeless and get their side of the story. 

Back in April of 2014, this blog reported on a scandal that was first uncovered at the Phoenix, VA Hospital but eventually spread to VA centers nationwide. It seems that administrators were manipulating records to hide dangerously long patient wait times and collecting bonuses for improving those falsified wait times.