Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Influence Of Bureaucratic Factors On Welfare Policy Implementation, Gerard S. Gryski, Charles L. Usher

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The authors argue that previous welfare policy research has suffered from its neglect of bureaucratic factors, as well as a tendency to exclude policy-making arenas above and below the state level. Using several measures of organizational structure, administrative professionalism, and within-state need, they attempt to relate these variables to within-state variations in welfare policy implementation. While certain socio-economic conditions were found to be significant determinants of this variation, of greater importance are characteristics of state welfare bureaucracies such as the degree of administrative centralization and the level of professionalism of administrative staff. Their research suggests the need for further refinement …

Multiple Constituencies, Differential Power, And The Question Of Effectiveness In Human Service Organizations, Patricia Yancey Martin

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A multiple constituencies model of human service organizations identifies twelve interest groups which must be considered when effectiveness questions are raised. The differential power of the interest groups suggests that some groups' preferences are likely to be emphasized over others. The relationship between power inside the organization and that on the outside is analyzed. Recent trends in the growth andmiiitancy of professional associations and employee groups suggest that internal control by senior administrators is increasingly challenged and variable. Future studies of effectiveness in the human services are encouraged to remain sensitive to the effects of constituency interests and power on …

Social Work And Social Welfare: A Conceptual Matrix, Louis Levitt

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Through a structural-functional analysis, the relationship between the profession of social work and the institution of social welfare is examined. Social welfare Is defined as an institution concerned with those legitimated needs of people which relate to the quality of life which cannot be met in the marketplace. The central mission of the institution of social welfare is seen in three dimensions: social control, humanitarianism and feedback to society of patterns of social hurt which prevent the achievement of humanitarian aspirations and threaten the stability of the social order.

Institution provides one set of coordinates to the grid of social …

Non-Governmental Emergency Food Services: A Descriptive Study Of The Tertiary Welfare Sector, Stanley Wenocur

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper presents the findings of an exploratory study of voluntarily organized emergency food centers in Baltimore. These agencies comprise the heart of a tertiary welfare system that provides basic survival supplies without a means test to the needy who cannot obtain relief from traditional public or private sources. Forty-one emergency food services were identified in Baltimore and the heads of 37 of these agencies were interviewed in depth. The findings indicated that a large and heterogeneous population bad utilized emergency food agencies and that the agencies generally met the requisites for a true safety-net function - i.e., accessibility, non-bureaucratic …

Family Health Policy Formulation: A Problematic Definitional Process, H. Hugh Floyd Jr.

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The family has become a focus of much concern over the past two decades as a variety of family related problems have become major social issues. These social-psychological problems are considered to have negative consequences at three analytical levels: individual, family and society. Therefore, considerable discussion has been raised about the establishment of family policy. Family policy is discussed in this paper as a definitional problematic process. Several problems of a conceptual and logistical nature are cited and some guidelines for family policy construction are made.

The Public And Care By Non-Physicians: Health Policy Consideration, Bebe F. Lavin

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In an effort to resolve what some define as a crisis in health care, medical paraprofessionals have become an increasing part of the primary care scene. As the training and use of paraprofessionals expands there has been growing insistence that much of what office-based physicians do could be handled as well or better by these non-physicians. If it is health policy to encourage the use of paraprofessionals to alleviate the shortages and maldistribution of primary care doctors, acceptance of these personnel by the public is a critical issue.

A study of the public in a Midwest area suggests considerable variability …

Organizational Structure And Professional Norms In An Alternative Health Care Setting: Physicians In Health Maintenance Organizations, Judith K. Barr, Marcia K. Steinberg

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The development of new organizational forms for the delivery of health and medical care in the U.S. includes health maintenance organizations (HMOs), designed to provide a set of comprehensive basic health services to a defined population for a fixed prepaid premium. As complex organizations, HMOs have the potential for limiting the autonomy of professionals working in them. This paper describes the legal requirements and organizational mechanisms under which physicians practice in HMOs and considers the potential for conflict between the organization and professional norms.

On the basis of document and interview data from nine HMOs, it appears that mechanisms developed …

Veterans' Medical Care: The Politics Of An American Government Health Service, Judith Lasker

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The history of veterans' benefits and services in the United States is reviewed; it demonstrates their responsiveness to dominant political, economic, military and medical interests. The ideological position that social services must be "deserved" is also seen to be an important influence on the V.A. system. The consequent inaccessibility of V.A. medical care to most veterans and almost all non-veterans raises questions about the appropriateness of the V.A. system as a model for national health care.

American Health Care: Paradigm Structures And The Parameters Of Change, Allen W. Imershein

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Recent commentary on the health care scene in the U.S. has moved increasingly toward explanations of why little or no change has occurred despite many declarations of "crisis." From Alford's (1975) elitist analysis in Health Care Politics to Navarro's (1976) marxist analysis in Medicine Under Capitalism, critics in and out of the social sciences have tried to make sense of the array of current problems and the apparent lack of response to or change in them. These analyses are in striking contrast to earlier commentaries (e.g., Schwartz, 1971; Garfield, 1970; Anderson, 1972; Citizens Board, 1972) which, while highly critical of …

The Paradoxes Of Health Planning, Bonnie Morel Edington

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The National Health Planning Act of 1974 designated 200 Health Systems Agencies (HSAs) nationally and a State Health Planning and Development Agency in each state. Components of the law are analyzed to illustrate its ambiguities and contradictions. The components analyzed are: the findings which led to the passage of the law; the law's purpose; the ten national health priorities; the National Guidelines for Health Planning; the purposes of the HSAs and the data they are to assemble and analyze. The major contradiction is that agencies designated to focus on cost containment in health care are expected to make health care …

Mission Neighborhood Health Center: A Case Study Of The Department Of Health Education And Welfare As A Counterinsurgency Agency, Thomas S. Bodenheimer

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In the 1960's, working class communities all over the country, particularly minority inner city neighborhoods, exploded in violent anger. The federal government responded with a pacification or cooling-out program: the War on Poverty. The War on Poverty provided federal funds to bring a few programs into the community, to create a few jobs, and to buy off working class leaders who were a threat to those in power. In the course of this program of counterinsurgency, the War on Poverty took over a slogan of the 1960's, "community control," and turned it into its opposite; rather than control by the …

The Impact Of Consumerism On Health Care Change: Alternatives For The Future?, Allen W. Imershein, Eugenia T. Miller

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The quest for consumer participation in the management of health care delivery may have experienced its first signs of success, but the implications of that success are as yet unclear. The establishment of consumer majorities on the newly developed health systems agency (HSA) boards was seen as an important milestone in the development of the consumer movement in America over the last ten years. The initial wave of optimism over the Great Society programs that in part gave birth to the consumer movement has long since vanished, but some of the organizational results of those attempts at innovation have become …

Work Ethic And Work Incentives: Values And Income Maintenance Reform, Beverly G. Toomey

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Although the American belief system surrounding the concept of work has been analyzed and challenged by social scientists seeking solutions to the problem of poverty, the strength of the work ethic philosophy is still evident in public resistance to welfare reform which would support adequate income maintenance and government efforts at job creation. This paper discusses the relationship between the work ethic philosophy, job creation programming and welfare reform. It reviews relevant theoretical and empirical literature and identifies some misconceptions which continue to hamper policy formulation and program development in welfare reform.

Day Care: A Spectrum Of Issues And Policy Options, William Roth

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Currently, debates about the merits of one form or another of day care frequently miss some significant issues and hence some of the important policy options may be ruled out or in for the wrong reasons. Here, child day care is layed on a spectrum one end of which offers maximum market freedom in the form of income redistribution, a negative income tax, children's allowance, or other transfer assistance, to be spent on the market if so desired for day care services, and on the other end of the spectrum a system of comprehensive child day care centers. In between …

Will Carter's Welfare Reform Plan Reform Welfare?: Evidence From Empirical Research, Mary Bryna Sanger

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper introduces the central dimensions which have emerged in the current welfare reform debate. They include adaquacy, work incentives, family stability and cost. The last legislative session introduced a new group of "welfare reform" proposals, each attempting to address these critiques of the current welfare system. Considering four major bills including Carter's Comprehensive Program for Better Jobs and Income on the basis of recent research findings, results in a tentative preference for Carter's plan. It addresses the major reform dimensions better than the others and would result in modest improvements. Nevertheless, true reform is unlikely to be achieved by …

Political De-Moralization Of The Poor: Organizing Lower-Class Families Of The Mentally Retarded, Leonard Fontana

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper employs an analytic framework based on organizational incentives to explain the failure of recent welfare reform efforts. The data consists of observations, interviews, and routine inhouse reports collected on a federally funded program, Project STAR. The project was developed with the aim of mobilizing lower-class and minority families of the mentally retarded in support of reform of mental retardation services in five cities in the U.S. A service-inducement strategy was pursued by the reform organization to overcome the difficulties of enticing lower-class families of the retarded to participate in organizational activities. This strategy appears to have had several …

Toward The Democratization Of The Social Policy Process, L. K. Northwood

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the nature of social policies and the public policymaking process. It is demonstrated that public social policies tend to accrue an aura or ideology of benevolence that is only partially warranted, and that may be quite misleading to policy analysts and citizenry. The major thrust of the paper is to consider the social policy process as a strategy for public decision-making. As such, properly organized, it can provide an alternative and complementary strategy to electoral politics and protest movements. To be effective as a strategy, three major barriers must be overcome: …

Social Welfare Agencies And Social Reform Movements: The Case Of The Single Parent Family, Michael J. Smith, Beth Moses

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

To a greater extent than before, social welfare agencies are emphasizing social change over direct services. A social reform movement is a mechanism by which societal and institutional change may be accomplished. The relationship between social welfare organizations and social movements has not been clearly defined. The sociological theories of Smelser, Turner, Killian and others on collective behavior and social movements provide a useful knowledge base for welfare organizations and professionals espousing social reform goals. The single parent family population is discussed as a group with the potential to generate into a social reform movement.