Social Work Commons^™

Human Consequences Of Animal Exploitation: Needs For Redefining Social Welfare, Atsuko Matsuoka, John Sorenson

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper addresses an area which has not been given serious consideration in social welfare and social work literature, the instrumental use of nonhuman animals, in particular as food, and argues that the welfare of humans and other animals are intertwined. The paper examines the consequences of animal exploitation for humans in terms of health, well-being, environmental damage, and exploitation of vulnerable human groups. The paper concludes that a necessary redefinition of social welfare entails attention to these issues and the recognition that other animals have inherent value and their rights must be respected.

Redefining Social Welfare: Connections Across Species, Christina Risley-Curtiss

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A growing body of research supports the notion that human well-being is inextricably connected to the welfare of other animals. Social scientists are exploring these connections in research in social work and various subfields of sociology, including those focusing on the environment, deviance, the family, health, social inequality, and religion, as well as the emerging field of animals and society. This special issue taps researchers and theorists from several countries in a wide range of subfields in order to capture the breadth of the connections among species that affect all aspects of human well-being. This is a double issue, as …

Welfare Reform In The States: Does The Percentage Of Female Legislators In State Legislatures Affect Welfare Reform Policies?, Lee W. Payne

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

My research tests the proposal that female legislators have issue specific political agendas and that female representation may affect these issues. Welfare is an issue that affects women and children to a larger degree than it does men. To test this hypothesis I use three measures of welfare sanctions and one measure of overall welfare environment as dependent variables. Results indicate that the level of female legislators does not have the expected impact on two of the three sanction policies, but it does have the expected impact on the overall welfare environment.

Social Security: Strengthen Not Dismantle, Michael M. O. Seipel

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Social Security has benefited more than 55 million people. It has lifted about 14 million seniors and 6 million more people out of poverty without adding a penny to the federal budget. Social Security is increasingly becoming an important source of income for many people. Despite the projected shortfall, the program will continue to meet its obligations for the next two decades, and with minor adjustments, it can be on solid footing for the next 75 years. Cutting the benefits or privatizing may not be the best approach. This paper discusses the structure and function of Social Security and what …

Arthur J. Altmeyer, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Arthur J. Altmeyer (1891-1972) was a key figure in the design and implementation of the U.S. Social Security system. Appointed to the original Social Security Board by President Franklin Roosevelt, he advocated expansion of the program and expanded benefits for many years. His career also involved advocacy in the civil service system and opposed political patronage in the Social Security system.

Milking The System: Do Poor People Deserve Fresh Food?, Melanie M. Meisenheimer

SURGE

Poor Americans are all lazy, selfish people who must first prove their worth as human beings if they want to be able to feed their children.

It sounds harsh, stereotypical, and judgmental when you put it like that, and few people would feel comfortable saying that exact phrase. However, it’s a perception of poverty in America that I’ve found still has a strong grip on our way of thinking. [excerpt]

Focal Point, Volume 27, Portland State University. Regional Research Institute

Research and Training Center - Focal Point

This special issue of Focal Point focuses on best practices for helping youth and young adults with mental health challenges reach their educational and employment goals, by highlighting preliminary results from some of our research at Pathways to Positive Futures as well as some of the work being done at the Transitions RTC at the University of Massachusetts.

The Effectiveness Of A Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program That Offer Special Benefits For Pregnant And Parenting Teens: A Qualitative Study, Marsha Brown

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Teen pregnancy continues to be a problem for families, educators, health care professionals, and the government. Teenagers are not afforded the opportunity to learn or receive reinforcement on God's laws on abstaining from premarital sex because religious education is not allowed in the public school system. This increase has led to the creation of the Teenage Parenting Center (TAPP), located in southwest Georgia. TAPP is one of 64 schools in a school district that offers special benefits for pregnant and parenting teens. This qualitative case study used a phenomenological approach to explore the experience of eight former attendees of the …

Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein

Honors Projects

This project focuses on American prison writings from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Much has been written about American prison intellectuals such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, who wrote as active participants in black and brown freedom movements in the United States. However the new prison literature that has emerged over the past two decades through higher education programs within prisons has received little to no attention. This study provides a more nuanced view of the steadily growing silent population in the United States through close readings of Openline, an inter-disciplinary journal featuring …

Remarital Chances, Choices, And Economic Consequences: Issues Of Social And Personal Welfare, Kevin Shafer, Todd M. Jensen

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Many divorced women experience a significant decline in financial, social, physical, and psychological well-being following a divorce. Using data from the NLSY79 (n= 2,520) we compare welfare recipients, mothers, and impoverished women to less marginalized divorcees on remarriage chances. Furthermore, we look at the kinds of men these women marry by focusing on the employment and education of new spouses. Finally, we address how remarriage and spousal quality (as defined by education and employment) impact economic well-being after divorce. Our results show that remarriage has positive economic effects, but that is dependent upon spousal quality. However, such matches are rare …

Homeless Youth In Philadelphia: An Innovative Method For Identifying Youth Who Are Homeless, Staci Perlman, Joe Willard

Staci Perlman

No abstract provided.

¿Cuánta Conciencia Tenemos Hacia El Maltrato De Los Niños? / How Aware Are We About Children Abuse?, Angela Bauman

Spain: Language, Community, and Social Change

This semester I worked with Aldea Infantiles SOS, an NGO aiming to place children without a concrete home or security into secure housing with a loving family. Founded in 1949 by a WWII veteran from Austria, this program has grown internationally with 119 autonomous members active in one hundred and thirty-three countries and governs itself through a system similar to the United Nations. Twice a week I traveled to the school, Ave Maria las Vistillas, where I volunteered with two groups of kids participating in the sports program, aiming to teach teamwork skills and improve integration into society.

For this …

The Impact Of Home Visitor Relationship Quality On Parenting And Child Outcomes: Does Maternal Age Matter?, Elizabeth A. Colsey

Senior Honors Theses

Early Head Start (EHS) is an early intervention program that seeks to mitigate the effects of risk for those families with young children. Consistent with attachment theory, the home visiting component of EHS targets parent-child relationships in order to combat negative child outcomes. Research indicates that children of adolescent mothers are susceptible to poor outcomes both in childhood and adulthood. The current study utilized EHS data from 1198 parent-child dyads to assess the indirect relationship of home visitor quality on child aggression through parent quality, as moderated by maternal age. Findings indicated that home visitor quality may have a greater …

Fostering The Orphaned And Vulnerable Child: Exploring Identity Economics In Relation To Orphaned And Vulnerable Children In The Eastern Cape And Cape Town, South Africa, Khaliyah Yasmeen Washington

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

According to UNICEF, 3.7 million children are orphaned in South Africa (2010). Parliament enacted the Children’s Act on April 1, 2010 to grant and protect the rights orphaned or vulnerable children (OVC). The Children’s Act aims to promote the well being of children, prevent abuse or neglect, and increase options for the care of children found to be in need or care and protection (Jamieson, Mahery, and Scott 2011). Children not receiving care and protection from a parent or guardian are placed in one of three options of alternative care. One being child and youth care centers (CYCC); also known …

2013 Massachusetts Family Impact Seminar: Youth At Risk, Part 2, Denise A. Hines, Fern L. Johnson, Donna Haig Friedman, Deborah A. Frank

Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise

The youth of Massachusetts are of primary concern to legislators and citizens. This briefing report features three essays by experts — Fern Johnson, Deborah Frank, and Donna Haig Friedman — who focus on three aspects of children in need: children in foster care who need adoption, children who are hungry, and children who are homeless. Each report has further and more detailed suggestions for helping these children in need; below is a summary of the problems we face.

Paperwork First, Not Work First: How Caseworkers Use Paperwork To Feel Effective, Tifany Taylor

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A great deal of research has explored welfare agency caseworkers, especially how they use discretion. Paperwork in county welfare bureaucracies, however, is often taken-for-granted by caseworkers and researchers studying welfare. In this case study of a county welfare program in rural North Carolina, I focus on how caseworkers use paperwork through document analysis, interviews, and observation data. My findings illustrate caseworkers spend far more time on paperwork than they actually spend assisting program participants find employment. Finally, I show how caseworkers use paperwork to feel effective in a job that offers little to help clients move from welfare to work.

Health Inequalities And The Welfare State In European Families, Simone Sarti, Marco Alberio, Marco Terraneo

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Using EU-Silc data from 2005, our aim in this article is to estimate how self-assessed health and the gradient between education and health vary among individuals in different European countries, considering their contextual socioeconomic vulnerability. In order to do this, we use a hierarchical model with individuals nested in households at the second level, and in various European countries at the third level. Our main research interest is on the modelling variables associated with better health conditions and their improvement or worsening according not only to micro/ individual and macro/national levels but also to the household: a level on which …

Supportive Supervision And Resiliency Ohio - Accwic Training Curriculum, Atlantic Coast Child Welfare Implementation Center

Other QIC-WD Products

Purpose The International Federation of Coaches (ICF) defines coaching as: “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” “Coaching is highly focused on individuals designing their future – and that of their organization – and achieving excellence through setting personally and professionally challenging goals and committing to taking the actions necessary to achieve them” (Byrne, 2007). In the field of child welfare, coaching is being utilized in work situations, at all levels of the system, to focus on specific skills and abilities to reach specific outcomes, enhance performance and …

A Case Study Of The Effects Of Privatization Of Child Welfare On Services For Children And Families: The Nebraska Experience, Grace S. Hubel, Alayna Schreier, David J. Hansen, Brian Wilcox

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Privatization, or contracting with non-governmental agencies for provision of state or federally funded services, is a strategy that has gained recent attention from policymakers as a potential tool for successful child welfare reform. The Child Welfare Privatization Initiatives Project was created in 2007 as a joint effort between the United States Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. The framework identified by this project produced twelve key considerations for states moving towards a privatized system. This case study considers these twelve considerations in a description of the large-scale effort to …

Supportive Supervision And Resiliency Ohio - Accwic Coaching Curriculum, Atlantic Coast Child Welfare Implementation Center

Other QIC-WD Products

Purpose The International Federation of Coaches (ICF) defines coaching as: “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” “Coaching is highly focused on individuals designing their future – and that of their organization – and achieving excellence through setting personally and professionally challenging goals and committing to taking the actions necessary to achieve them” (Byrne, 2007). In the field of child welfare, coaching is being utilized in work situations, at all levels of the system, to focus on specific skills and abilities to reach specific outcomes, enhance performance and …

Oral Care & Asian And Pacific Islander Communities In Oregon, Amira Caluya

Center to Advance Racial Equity Publications and Reports

This report attempts to describe the current knowledge of oral health care access within Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities in Oregon based on secondary data from the Oregon Health Authority’s Smile Survey 2007, Smile Survey 2012; and the Coalition of Communities of Color’s 2012 report, The Asian and Pacific Islander Community in Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile. To be clear, the 2012 survey report draft is cited most, as the 2012 survey reported more data on children of color compared to the 2007 survey. This paper also attempts to highlight the multifaceted aspects of access to care …

Managing The Polarities Of Democracy: A Theoretical Framework For Positive Social Change, William J. Benet

Journal of Sustainable Social Change

People around the globe have embraced democracy to bring about positive social change to address our environmental, economic, and militaristic challenges. Yet, there is no agreement on a definition of democracy that can guide social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model is a unifying theory of democracy to guide healthy, sustainable, and just social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model consists of ten elements, organized as five polarity pairs: freedom & authority, justice & due process, diversity & equality, human-rights & communal-obligations, and participation & representation. In this model each element has positive aspects and negative aspects and …

Policies To Eliminate Racial Disparities In Education: A Literature Review, Ann Curry-Stevens, Analucia Lopezrevoredo, Dana Peters

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

In response to an increasing need to understand the reach of the literature and the research undertaken on initiatives to eliminate racial disparities, a literature review was initiated in 2012 for the Eliminating Racial Disparities Collaborative within the All Hands Raised initiative to improve academic outcomes for students in Multnomah County. This was an expansive undertaking – and at the end, we have drawn upon about 160 different articles, some of which were meta-analyses of an array of publications in a particular field.

The first section in this report is a summary document that details each policy-based recommendation in this …

The African Immigrant And Refugee Community In Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile, Ann Curry-Stevens, Coalition Of Communities Of Color

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Since 1975, African immigrants, refugees and secondary migrants have been relocating to Multnomah County and now represent the fourth largest immigrant community after Latino, Asian, and Slavic immigrants. The African community here is incredibly diverse in its make-up, with over 28 different African countries and numerous ethnic groups represented. Estimates from 2003 suggest that African immigrants make up 2% of the foreign-born population in the Portland Metro (tri-county) area. Nearly half (45%) of the tri-county area’s African foreign-born population is from eastern Africa, including Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Other countries of origin include Sudan, Sierra …