In this episode, I share the mic with my mother Mrs. Yvonne Jones.

A family member reached out to my mother and requested that we share his experience as a person who has been incarcerated and has a diagnosed mental illness. We share our family's experience of navigating the limitations of services and supports when we have had family members in mental health crisis.

The letter he wanted us to share with you is below in it's entirety:
Hi I'm have a message that needs to get out on Mental Health.

I'm suffocating my host, and he can't tell anybody because I'm supposed to be all better now, and if anyone finds out he's not - "It's gonna be Trouble Trouble.” 

See the Boogeyman is back, and this time, this joker is badder than he ever was. He ain't even got nobody!!!!! He is just a virus now, and every 30 seconds he kills off all my family and friends!

On December 15th at 4am in the morning, that sneaky son-of-a-bitch crept up in Momma's window and killed her!

Now that wasn't right, she was just learning how to be a good girl, so why did he want to go and do that ? She never did nothing to him.

Now the unit managers and counselors in this prison full of boogeyman carriers say I need to call home to get the bad news, but then they say I need to hurry up and get back to my cell, cause we are quarantined and I only got 5 minutes.

5 whole minutes to lie to my children and say Papa alright, I'll be home someday soon, now go say goodbye to my Momma for me. But don't get too close or he'll get you too!

Every 30 seconds seconds he kills somebody, every 30 seconds he cuts off somebody's lights!

I'm not gonna be alright cause President Trump won't test the vaccine, so my people don't trust it and won't take it either so now the boogeyman can't die!!!

Because Trump wouldn't wear a mask, people think they didn't need one either, and so we all became super spreaders, and helped the boogeyman kill our families, and friends every 30 seconds.

Hello my name is Orell Leroy Logan, I'm a 52 year old African American man, I am one of the millions of young black undiagnosed suffering from mental illness incarcerated in the United States of America. I've been locked up for 30 years, it took 25 years of long term segregation in a super maximum prison before I was told I was bipolar.

Before my diagnosis I thought I was just a crackhead. See I'm the other side of the victimless crime from the 80s and 90s war on drugs. I didn't know I was born with a compulsive, addictive personality disorder, and that I just simply wasn't a match against the high potencies of crack's addictive nature.

I would serve crack faithfully against my weak will until I was locked up, or killed. Crack's black on black violence, and the booming new money maker at that time (the prison industry) along with being poor and with mental health issues, that no one ever talked to me about was a perfect storm!!

I didn't see it coming, the destabilizing of every urban inner city, and otherwise minority populated community in America. This storm touched every African American life one way or another. A movement was even founded behind the results of this tragedy. The Black Lives Matter movement, ask them.

I'm here to tell anybody that will listen, all of that put together, on top of every other thing we been through as a people, short of the horrors of slavery itself, will be nothing compared to what this monster will do to us, if we don't wear our mask, wash our hands, and get vaccination shots. And get mental health help because no you are not OK.

If you or a family member are suffering because of an undiagnosed mental illness please seek help. Here is one resource: https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline.

Join me as I invite my mother, Mrs. Yvonne Jones, back to the studio to talk community.

In her lifetime Mrs. Jones has made a commitment to support children in the community with the resources she has. In this conversation she provides very specific strategies for building community where you are:

1. Set an intention to help
2. Take an inventory of what you have to offer
3. Seek and opportunity to match what you have to offer with a need
4. Fill the need with what you have

These four steps are how 'ordinary' men and women have worked for and made big change in their communities through out history. You do not have to have a 'big name' or 'big resources' to make a difference. You only really need the will to do the work. As my mother says, "Start where you are."

Organizations mentioned during this conversations include 

• Pan African Women's Association
• North End Youth Improvement Council
• Wilma's Angels of Mercy
• Moratorium Now!
• Georgia Gilmore: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/obituaries/georgia-gilmore-overlooked.html

All groups and organizations founded by average people who wanted to make a difference. What can you offer to make a difference in your community.

Once again we're talking education with Ms. Cassie Williams, M. Ed. a master educator and leader in education. Educators, parents, and community leaders across the country have been promoting and demanding culturally responsive instruction in classrooms.

In this episode, Ms. Williams breaks down that the pathway to Culturally Responsive Instruction is paved with  providing students with the tools they need to 'be whatever it is they want' in life. Ms. Williams bases her belief on the tenet that  'hard word and having a plan will get you anywhere you need to go in life.' With that in mind, we discuss the importance of student-centered instruction. In this model of student-centered instruction, the student is in charge of what they learn and teachers serve as role models and guides that promote learning as a life long process.

We reference the work of Zaretta Hammond, M.Ed. in our conversation. Please check out Ms. Hammond's book: Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. You can also learn more about her work by visiting her website: https://crtandthebrain.com/

We also reference Dr. Gholdy Muhammad. Please check out her book:  Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy.

That Social Work Lady welcomes our first guest Ms. Cassie Williams, M. Ed. to talk parity in education. Ms. Williams, a leader in education, shares her experience as a product of traditional public schools, a parochial school, a private afrocentric school, and a charter school academy. As a leader, Ms. Williams is a champion for Education for Liberation which she defines as empowering students with the knowledge they need to 'be whatever they want to be.'

During this conversation we explore the impact school choice had on the trajectory of our lives as well as the power adults in schools have to minimize the disparities students in urban schools experience. Schools being equally funded is the first step in eliminating the resource gap. However, once schools are funded with parity the adults in charge must take up the mantle of education students for their liberation.

Let's build community!

NOTE:
The United States has had 2 black men serve as Secretary of Education:

1. Rod Paige was the 7th United States Secretary of Education 2001 - 2005 during the Bush Administration. He was the architect of the No Child Left Behind Act. He was the first black person ever to serve as the US Secretary of Education.

2. John B. King, Jr. was the 10th United State Secretary of Education 2016 - 2017 during the Obama Administration. To learn more about him please visit his website www.edtrust.org. During his tenure as Education Secretary , Mr. King focused his efforts of the department on achievement gaps between disadvantaged students and their better-off peers. He was instrumental in the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Your mental health baseline is you at your mental best. It is your personal mental health norm. Unfortunately, most of us assume that our mental health norm is  happy. However, happy is an experience or a mood it is not a mental health status. 

In this episode, I provide you with a quick guide to discovering your own mental health baseline. It is my hope that you will be able to take this information so that you can learn your mental health norm and create a plan to support yourself when you get off your baseline.

The black communities of Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta were called out for their activism and the subsequent outcome of the 2020 election.

On January 20, 2021, many of us in all of those communities breathed a sigh of relief when the 46th President of the United States was installed. However, the election of Joseph R. Biden and the changing of the guard in the US Senate do not represent the end of our community activism. 

Each of us must find ways to remain engaged and active in our communities. We can no longer afford to sit on the side lanes and count ourselves out of the game. We no longer have the luxury of 'waiting and seeing' or allowing others to make decisions for us that determine our abilities to provide for ourselves, our families, and our communities. Everyday we gotta fight until justice is the norm.

When you are born at the intersection of disdain and disregard, society sets you up to be a person without worth who can be ignored. Black women everyday consider their place in this society as disdained and disregarded and choose magic instead. Let's talk about #BlackGirlMagic and one of the secrets that make it work.

Mary Mcleod Bethune built a school from selling sweet potato pies for $1.50 in 1904. Here is her recipe:

Filling
9 Medium Sweet Potatoes or Yams (about 4 pounds)
1 Cup Butter or Magarine, softened
1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar, firmly packed
1/2 Teaspoon of Salt
1/4 Teaspoon of Nutmeg
3 Eggs, well beaten
2 Cups Milk
1 Tablespoon Vanilla

Crust
3 Unbaked 9-Inch Classic Crisco Sing Crusts

1. For filling, boil sweet potatoes until tender. Peel and mash.
2. Heat over to 350 degrees farenheit
3. Combin butter, sugars, salt, and nutmeg in large bowl. Beat at medium speed of electric mixer until creamy. Beat in mashed sweet potatoes, until well mixed. Beat in eggs. Add milk and vanilla slowly. Spoon into 3 unpack pie shells, using about 4 cups filling per shell.
4. Back at 350 F for 50 -60 minutes or until set. Cool to room temperature before serving. Store in refrigerator.

Recipe borrowed from The Black Family Reunion Cookbook: Recipes and Food Memories from the National Council of Negro Women (c) 1991. 

On this episode of That Social Work Lady I delve into the ideas of #cancelculture. The fact is that whatever you don't heal will come back to haunt you. 

Cancelling someone won't change that dynamic in your life. Cancelling someone what heal the spaces in you that are broken. But it will allow you to ignore those places. It will allow you to sink deeper into denial about the hurts and pains and incomplete grief you harbor.

In this episode we explore 'cancel culture' and what's at the root of the need to cancel people out of your life.

I’m Wanda Olugbala and this is my podcast, That Social Work Lady. 

Let's build community.

In this episode we connect the tradition of Santa Claus with patriarchy and white supremacy. Learn how I disconnected these traditions in order to set myself on the path for raising a free black child.

I’m Wanda Olugbala and this is my podcast, That Social Work Lady. Let’s build community.

I have nearly 3 decades of experience in social work. I’ve only worked in urban centers. The primary focus of my practice is children and their families. I invest in children. I help create environments where children are seen, heard, nurtured, cherished and safe to explore both their internal and external worlds. I am dedicated to helping adults repair and strengthen their primary relationships in such a way that they bring up competent, healthy, successful families where positive self esteem and self concept are the norm.

Individuals in families make community. So when I say to you ‘let’s build community’ I am speaking to the inherent human desire to belong. Here is where you belong. Thank you for being a part of my community. Let’s build...