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Housing, Community Support, And Homelessness: Emerging Policy In Mental Health Systems, Paul J. Carling

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article summarizes the dramatic changes in public policy through which public mental health systems are attempting to meet the housing and community support needs of persons with severe and persistent mental illnesses, including those who are homeless. It traces the historical approach to meeting these needs through defining people principally as patients and providing some combination of psychotropic medications, outpatient therapy, and structured, supervised quasi-institutional settings such as group homes, shelters, and segregated single-room-occupancy, or board-and-care facilities. A transition phase in public policy has emphasized defining these individuals essentially as service recipients who need greater or lesser amounts of …

The Kindred Bonds Of Mentally Ill Homeless Persons, Richard C. Tessler, Gail M. Gamache, Peter H. Rossi, Anthony F. Lehman, Howard H. Goldman

New England Journal of Public Policy

While the unraveling of the kinship bond has long been suspected to play a role in the epidemiology of homelessness, the connection between kinship and homelessness has been little studied. Based on a normative analysis of the role of family structure in response to adversity, this article explores the impact of the amount and quality of kinship ties on episodes of homelessness experienced by discharged psychiatric patients in Ohio. Survey data derived from personal interviews with both former patients and their kin indicate more strain in relations with kin of the homeless than the nonhomeless. The strain in the kinship …

State Government's Response To Homelessness: The Massachusetts Experience, 1983-1990, Nancy K. Kaufman

New England Journal of Public Policy

When Governor Michael S. Dukakis reentered the State House in January 1983, he focused his inaugural address and priorities for his incoming administration on solving the problem of homelessness. This article describes the policy approach taken during his two successive terms as governor from 1983 to 1990, outlines the various steps taken to rally public and private support and resources on preventing the problem and on finding long-term, permanent solutions designed to solve it, and points to some of the lessons learned during these years of experimentation and innovation.

The Pendulum Swings: How Changes In Federal And State Policy Have Affected The Status Of Homeless People With Mental Illness In Ohio, Kim Bryant

New England Journal of Public Policy

Public policy in the problem areas of homelessness and mental illness has been reactive, rather than proactive, for the past thirty to forty years. As a result of this approach, federal and state policies have swung, like a pendulum, from one extreme to the other, taking the homeless mentally ill population on a most difficult ride. Public policies concerning these issues must become proactive, even if it means a complete overhauling of federal and state social service systems. Only with proactive policies will mentally ill individuals, and all people, have the housing, food, and health care they need, and the …

Classification And Its Risks: How Psychiatric Status Contributes To Homelessness Policy, Anne M. Lovell

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article examines the extent to which psychiatric classification in public policy research contributes to the equation of homelessness and mental illness. Surveys that measure psychiatric status of homeless persons are reviewed to understand whether they contribute to biased rates of mental illness among homeless persons. The relationship between psychiatric classification and the concept of need is examined and alternatives to current classification are proposed. Classification is discussed particularly in relation to policies of segmentation for "single" homeless adults.

Representative Men, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

"Representativeness" is the theme of Shaun O'Connell's essay, "Representative Men." Reviewing six books, one about an actual man and five about fictional men, O'Connell sees them as attempts to define "representative men" of the 1980s, "an era," he observes, "when the worst were full of passionate intensities, particularly among men." Each antiheroic man in these books, he concludes, was "selfish, domineering, dangerous to women, and deceitful, yet each man was also committed to a system of values and ideas that made him an interesting case history — values which, in some instances, redeemed his failings."

As usual, O'Connell, in his …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

This issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy is an eclectic mix. Its range and diversity, however, illuminate one of the less considered aspects of public policy: the fact that policy itself, despite the efforts of policy theorists, and on occasion policymakers and practitioners, to invest it with the trappings of rational, scientific method, rarely if ever is defined in politically or culturally neutral terms. The pretense that this is not so suggests that there exists some set of objective criteria that are impervious to either political or cultural dictates. In reality, of course, nothing could be further …

Touched By Fire: Readings In Time Of War, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

In "Touched by Fire: Readings in Times of War," Shaun O'Connell draws us into the eerie atmosphere that pulled this country into itself in the late fall and early winter, when thoughts of war provoked hard questions and when, for a time, doubt became the stuff of eloquence.

The works discussed in this article include: Pledging Allegiance: The Last Campaign of the Cold War, by Sidney Blumenthal; Millie's Book, as dictated to Barbara Bush; An American Life, by Ronald Reagan; The Civil War: An Illustrated History, by Geoffrey C. Ward with Ric Burns and Ken Burns; …

Aids Public Policy: Implications For Families, Elaine A. Anderson

New England Journal of Public Policy

Much has been written about the AIDS crisis in the past few years. However, relatively little of this discussion has focused on AIDS as it may affect families. This report emerged from the 1987 Groves Conference on Marriage and the Family. It is a version of the chapter on public policy in AIDS and Families (ed. Eleanor Macklin, Hayworth Press, forthcoming, summer 1988), prepared by the conference's Task Force on AIDS and Families. The book details the probable impact of AIDS on individuals, families, and communities and delineates the implications for relevant professionals, organizations, and public policy. Those individuals who …

A Public Manager Looks Back: What I Wish I'D Been Taught, Dan H. Fenn

New England Journal of Public Policy

The author, a practitioner-teacher of public administration, writes that the special context of government in the United States, whether federal, state, or local, needs to be specifically explored by schools for would-be public managers. The constitutionally established system of fractionated power at once makes government jobs extraordinarily difficult and provides great opportunities for those who see themselves as partners in the policy-making process and want to put their stamp on the events of their times. Despite the view of the general public, government is made to order for entrepreneurs who are adept at accreting and maintaining power regardless of the …

Remembering Who We Were: Boston Books, 1986, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

Shaun O'Connell's essay, "Remembering Who We Were," gives a Boston perspective to our search for self, identity, and possibility. For its writers, he concludes, "Boston remains a vibrant state of mind, an occasion for sustained verbal reflection, a site of personal and cultural conflict, a city still in the making." And while there may be anxieties "beneath its high-tech prosperity, its high-style glitz and its political clout ... over the separations between the people we once were and those we have become or those we might become" — that "might" will be immeasurably strengthened if policymakers adhere to policies that …

The Double Character Of Daniel Webster, Irving H. Bartlett

New England Journal of Public Policy

Between 1815 and 1852, when people in New England wanted advice on matters of public policy, they sought out Daniel Webster. His extraordinary reputation rested in large measure on his ability to play a conservative role, to assure his followers that the federal Union was sound and that their role in a rapidly changing democratic society was consistent with their historic legacy. In 1850 the message failed and Webster fell.

The Demography Of New England: Policy Issues For The Balance Of This Century, George S. Masnick

New England Journal of Public Policy

New England's rapidly aging population, its traditionally low fertility rate, and the fact that net migration from other regions and abroad should continue to be close to zero means that only very slow population growth will characterize the region for the balance of this century. Nevertheless, New England's demographic metabolism is exceptionally dynamic: (1) the numbers of different age groups are growing at very different rates; (2) a redistribution of population is occurring from the southern to northern tier states; (3) within each state population is dispersing into non-metropolitan areas; and (4) metropolitan areas, both central and suburban, are quickly …