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Articles 1 - 15 of 15

Full-Text Articles in Social Work

Legislating The Family: Heterosexist Bias In Social Welfare Policy Frameworks, Amy Lind Dec 2004

Legislating The Family: Heterosexist Bias In Social Welfare Policy Frameworks, Amy Lind

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This article addresses the effects of heterosexist bias in social welfare policy frameworks on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals and families in the United States. It discusses the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), federal definitions of family and household, and stereotypes about LGBT individuals. It argues that poor LGBT individuals and families lack full citizen rights and access to needed social services as a result of these explicit and implicit biases.


Review Of Assessing Outcomes In Child And Family Services: Comparative Design And Policy Issues. Anthony N. Malucchio, Cinzia Canali And Tiziano Vecchiato (Eds.) Reviewed By Sherill Clark., Sherrill Clark Dec 2004

Review Of Assessing Outcomes In Child And Family Services: Comparative Design And Policy Issues. Anthony N. Malucchio, Cinzia Canali And Tiziano Vecchiato (Eds.) Reviewed By Sherill Clark., Sherrill Clark

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Anthony N. Maluccio, Cinzia Canali and Tiziano Vecchiato (Eds.) Assessing Outcomes in Child and Family Services: Comparative Design and Policy Issues. Hawthorne, NY: 2003. $49.95 hardcover, $24.95 papercover.


Intimate Partner Violence And Use Of Welfare Services Among California Women, Rachel Kimerling, Nikki Baumrind Dec 2004

Intimate Partner Violence And Use Of Welfare Services Among California Women, Rachel Kimerling, Nikki Baumrind

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The current study is a population-based investigation of the association between past-year exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) and current welfare use, while also accounting for the effects of other violence experienced in adulthood and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These data indicate that acute exposure to intimate partner violence is significantly over-represented among women currently on welfare. However, it appears to be a woman's cumulative exposure to interpersonal violence and associated symptoms of PTSD that are uniquely associated with welfare participation. These data highlight the prevalence of violence against women and its consequences for this population. Results suggest …


Cleavage In American Attitudes Toward Social Welfare, William M. Epstein Dec 2004

Cleavage In American Attitudes Toward Social Welfare, William M. Epstein

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Opinion polls probing both the narrow and broad senses of social welfare among Americans indicate hardly any substantial differences over crucial social sentiments among a variety of groups with at least theoretically divergent interests: rich and poor, men and women, blacks and whites, a variety of ethnic groups, union and nonunion households. The items mainly concern the provision of welfare to the poor through AFDC, now TANF, and Food Stamps but also cover OASDHI. Consistently over more than sixty five years of systematic opinion polling, there is an astonishing consensus, so large in fact that it may undermine any effort …


Losing The "Eyes In The Back Of Our Heads": Social Service Skills, Lean Caring, And Violence, Donna Baines Sep 2004

Losing The "Eyes In The Back Of Our Heads": Social Service Skills, Lean Caring, And Violence, Donna Baines

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Violence in the social services work place in general, and the developmental services in particular,h as increased in the last several years. Findingsf rom an ethnographic study suggests that new, lean forms of work organization remove opportunities to use or learn many of the tacit or practice skills workers previously used to keep themselves and their clients safer in the work place. This article describes many of these skills and the new management schemes that remove the possibility to develop or transmit these praxis skills. The article concludes by analyzing the convergence between the new labour processes and the competency …


Economic Well-Being Of Single Mothers: Work First Or Postsecondary Education?, Min Zhan, Shanta Pandey Sep 2004

Economic Well-Being Of Single Mothers: Work First Or Postsecondary Education?, Min Zhan, Shanta Pandey

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This article investigates the relationship between single mothers' education and their economic well-being. Through the analysis of the 1993 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data, we examine the effect of education on a sample of White and African American single mothers. The results indicate that past work experience is a weak predictor of current economic well-being. Having education, particularly postsecondary education, on the other hand, significantly improves their economic status. The results challenge the "work-first" approach to alleviating poverty and provide more support for designing policies to develop human capital.


What Mothers Want: Welfare Reform And Maternal Desire, Patricia K. Jennings Sep 2004

What Mothers Want: Welfare Reform And Maternal Desire, Patricia K. Jennings

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In this study I use participant observations,face-to-face interviews, and focus group interviews to examine how women on welfare read and negotiate culture-of-poverty discourse and the imagery that this discourse spawns. I spoke with two groups of young single mothers receiving welfare. The first group included young mothers between the ages of 18 and 23 who were attending high school in a community-based program that served women on welfare. The second group included mothers in their early to mid 20's who were attending either a local two-year college or research university. Education was a path of resistance for the women in …


Review Of Global Decisions, Local Collisions: Urban Life In The New World Order. David Ranney. Reviewed By Robert L. Boyd., Robert L. Boyd Sep 2004

Review Of Global Decisions, Local Collisions: Urban Life In The New World Order. David Ranney. Reviewed By Robert L. Boyd., Robert L. Boyd

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Book review of David Ranney, Global Decisions, Local Collisions: Urban Life in the New World Order. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003. $69.50 paperback.


Making Tanf Work: Organizational Restructuring, Staff Buy-In, And Performance Monitoring In Local Implementation, Frank Ridzi Jun 2004

Making Tanf Work: Organizational Restructuring, Staff Buy-In, And Performance Monitoring In Local Implementation, Frank Ridzi

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

While research suggests that staff resistance to change and intentional subversion have hampered prior welfare reform efforts, this does not appear to be the case for the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). This paper draws on data from a study of East County, New York to explicate the mechanisms that have enabled the unprecedented transformation in local implementation practice in this case. Interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis of legislative and program documents identify new program creation, staff buy-in, and the environment created by stern performance measures as instrumental in bringing about the PRWORA's successful implementation …


Private Food Assistance In The Deep South: Assessing Agency Directors' Knowledge Of Charitable Choice, Suzie T. Cashwell, John P. Bartkowski, Patricia Duffy, Vanessa Casanova, Joseph Molnar, Marina Irima-Vladu Jun 2004

Private Food Assistance In The Deep South: Assessing Agency Directors' Knowledge Of Charitable Choice, Suzie T. Cashwell, John P. Bartkowski, Patricia Duffy, Vanessa Casanova, Joseph Molnar, Marina Irima-Vladu

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In recent years,food banking has emerged as an important tool in America's fight against hunger and malnutrition. At the same time, the charitable choice provision of 1996 welfare reform law has significantly expanded the opportunity for public-private partnerships in the provision of social services. Given the new opportunities ushered in by this legislation, this study examines the knowledge that food pantry directors in Alabama and Mississippi possess about charitable choice. Our study reveals that food pantry directors are generally lacking in knowledge about key charitable choice provisions, thereby limiting the potential for this initiative to be utilized fully in this …


Work-Based Welfare As A Ritual: Understanding Marginalization In Post-Independence Lithuania, Arunas Juska, Richard Pozzuto Jun 2004

Work-Based Welfare As A Ritual: Understanding Marginalization In Post-Independence Lithuania, Arunas Juska, Richard Pozzuto

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The paper analyzes the functioning of the newly created labor exchange in post-Soviet Lithuania. It is argued that the labor exchange in post-Soviet Lithuania operates under the conditions of a structural contradiction: welfare services are designed to reintegrate unemployed into the labor force under the conditions of (a) increasing competitiveness of the labor markets and (b) a rapid decline of employment within the Lithuanian economy. As a result, labor redundancy is produced which consists predominantly of low skill/education individuals. Because the economy is unable to generate employment, job searches for this segment of the population are transformed into a highly …


Family Group Conferencing In Child Welfare: Responsive And Regulatory Interfaces, Joan Pennell Mar 2004

Family Group Conferencing In Child Welfare: Responsive And Regulatory Interfaces, Joan Pennell

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A regulatory approach compels the child welfare worker to make decisions according to set procedures and prevents responding flexibly to families. Differential response is a way that child welfare is departing from legal formalism. One means is convening a family group conference (FGC) to develop a plan. John Braithwaite's regulatory pyramid assists in concep- tualizing differential response. This article reports a factor analysis of data on achievement of FGC objectives to elaborate three interfaces for fostering responsive regulation. Each interface keeps the family group at the center of planning while firmly maintaining their connections with community and government programs.


Achieving Justice In Child Protection, Rob Neff Mar 2004

Achieving Justice In Child Protection, Rob Neff

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

As formal systems for the protection of children have evolved in this country, certain barriers to achieving justice within the child protection system have emerged concomitantly. Specifically, these barriers involve ambiguous definitions of abuse and the appearance of social inequality and bias within the child protection system. One means of surmounting these barriers to justice is family group conferencing (FGC). Support for this assertion comes from the integration of the restorative justice model and procedural justice theory. When applied to the practice of FGCs in child protection, the integration of these theoretical perspectives provides a strong rationale for the use …


Responsive Regulation In Child Welfare: Systemic Challenges To Mainstreaming The Family Group Conference, Paul Adams, Susan Chandler Mar 2004

Responsive Regulation In Child Welfare: Systemic Challenges To Mainstreaming The Family Group Conference, Paul Adams, Susan Chandler

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The purpose of this article is to examine the challenges inherent in trans- forming child welfare services. We apply Braithwaite's model of responsive regulation to the restorative practice of family group conferencing in child welfare. Shifting the role of the state away from controller of families in the child protective services system to one of regulatory partner with them is extraordinarily difficult. The paper looks at the complexities of reorienting child welfare services through the use of family group conferences on a large scale.


Family Involvement Interventions In Child Protection: Learning From Contextual Integrated Strategies, David Stuart Crampton Mar 2004

Family Involvement Interventions In Child Protection: Learning From Contextual Integrated Strategies, David Stuart Crampton

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The use of family group conferencing and related family involvement interventions in child protection is rapidly increasing in the United States and many other countries. There is some concern that the child welfare field will travel down the same road as it did with intensive family preservation services; that is, tremendous enthusiasm later derailed by rigidly designed evaluations that showed unimpressive effects. The work of John Braithwaite suggests an alternative path for finding justifiable excitement about these interventions. Drawing upon Braithwaite's writings and ongoing evaluation research, this article suggests a few steps we can take towards an integrative strategy for …