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Journal Of Sociology & Social Welfare Vol. 8, No. 4 (December 1981)

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

• Reindustrialization and the Future of Social Welfare - STEVE BURGHARDT, MICHAEL FABRICANT • The Domain of Social Work: What is it? - MARY L. WARING, GERALD O'CONNOR • Sociological Perspectives on the Ecological Model - RONALD MANCOSKE • Welfare Legislation and American Poverty Traps: Ironies and Characteristics - RICHARD J. CASTON, THERESA A. VILLANUEVA • Professional Burnout: Sociocultural and Sociopolitical Perspectives - PAULA L. DRESSEL • The Political Influence of Older Americans - JOHN B. WILLIAMSON, LINDA EVANS, LAWRENCE A. POWELL, SHARLENE HESSE-BIBER • Local Government Policy on Aging: New Challenges for Old Problems - CHARLES P. SHANNON • …

Professional Burnout: Sociocultural And Sociopolitical Perspectives, Paula L. Dressel

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Social psychological, organizational, and administrative orientations dominate the literature on the phenarenon of professional burnout. This paper argues that sociocultural and sociopolitical perspectives offer additional insights into the issue. By the application of such perspectives we are compelled to examine how certain characteristics of social policies impact dysfunctionally on service providers as well as service recipients. Furthermore, the broader approach outlined here offers alternative intervention strategies for the alleviation or prevention of burnout than those ccomonly posed in previous literature.

The State Correction Officer As Keeper And Counselor: An Empirical Investigation Of The Role, Robert B. Blair, Clifford M. Black, Henry J. Long

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper addresses two essential research needs in criminal justice literature: (1) the need for an assessment of the content of the role of block officer; and (2) the need for an empirical test of the presumed irreconcilable goals of custody and treatment as these are embedded in the role of state correction officer. A Task Inventory approach was adapted and a random sample of 100 correction officers in four heterogeneous state institutions were interviewed. Results of the study reveal that custodial staff spend at least sixty-percent of their on-job time performing duties not classified as security in nature. Results …

Reindustrialization And The Future Of Social Welfare, Steve Burghardt, Michael Fabricant

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

"Reindustrialization" is a term of economic complexity and great, if confused, social implications to most human service workers. Human services workers can only challenge the plans envisioned by most reindustrialists if certain arguments and assumptions are understood. This article will lay out the reindustrialists plans and assumptions. It will also develop some of the reasons why such ideas, as they are now formulated, cannot work -- in terms based on common experiences highly familiar to every human service worker.

Analysis Of An Exploration For Training Materials In Child Welfare, John T. Pardeck, Rebecca L. Hegar

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Currently there is a serious gap in the child welfare system in the area of in-service training. As the child welfare system begins to fill this gap, information on what materials are available for training becomes critical. This article reports on an extensive exploration of what is currently available for training in the child welfare field. Several important findings emerged concerning the sources of materials and the lack of training materials for specialized groups.

Teenagers Problems: An Examination Of Youth And Adult Perceptions, Richard E. Isralowitz, Mark Singer

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

It has been pointed out by the Task Force on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (1976) that too often programs have been planned and implemented on the basis of uninformed speculation. In order to determine the major concerns of youths for purposes of delinquency prevention and resources allocation, a study was conducted in the Cleveland area of Ohio. This study was designed to compare the perspectives of youths and adults toward teenage problems.

While the exact ranking of problems were not identical, the eleven problem statements ranked highest by both populations were highly similar. The problems that are drawing the …

The Domain Of Social Work: What Is It, Mary L. Waring, Gerald O'Connor

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Cast within a framework derived from general systems theory, the authors examine the domain of the social work profession. Domain is first defined as having several components. These are specified and fully expanded as Claimed Domain, Domain Competition, Emerging Domain and Unclaimed Domain. This elaboration is followed by a discussion of some of the constraints that impinge upon the profession's ability to define and to choose its domain.

Sociological Perspectives On The Ecological Model, Ronald Mancoske

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Germain and Siporin have written social work practice texts which seek to integrate diverse material into practice through an ecological model. Part of the integration deals with the issue of micro-macro practice which has been a dichotomous issue throughout social work traditions. Four perspectives which Kemeny used to analyze a similar dichotomy in sociology offer insights and caveats for social work to consider as it uses general systems theory as a framework for practice. The four perspectives are called the competitive, the inclusive, the exclusive, and the cumulative. This paper traces similar developmental notions in the sociological literature and notes …

Welfare Legislation And American Poverty Traps: Ironies And Characteristics, Theresa Villanueva, Richard J. Caston

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

We argue that legislative attempts to establish bureaucratic programs to eradicate American poverty will invariably result in ironic inconsistencies that will doom such programs to only limited or partial success. As an illustration, we examine the ironic history of the AFDC program as it has been legislated to deal with American poverty. Three sociological accounts for the ironies of welfare programming are then drawn together. One account suggests that undue concern over the work ethic has overridden more direct concern for the deprecating living conditions of the Door. A second account suggests that poverty is so functionally beneficial to a …

The Political Influence Of Older Americans, John B. Williamson, Linda Evans, Lawrence A. Powell, Sharlene Hesse-Biber

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This essay explores the future prospects for the political influence of older Americans. Some analysts contend that the next fifty years will bring a marked increase in the political influence of the elderly. Others argue that the aged are unlikely to become a significant political influence at any time in the forseeable future. We review the relevant evidence and conclude that it is not entirely consistent with either of these positions. Our analysis suggests a third alternative, that there will be a marked increase in the political resources of the elderly, which will not necessarily translate into an increase in …

Local Government Policy On Aging: New Challenges For Old Problems, Charles P. Shannon

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Historically, local government has made little effort to affect federal legislative policy on aging. The current defederalization of human service policy has created a need for local government to reexamine its role in providing services to the aged.

Early Social Security Retirement For Minorities Demographic And Philosophical Fallacies, Nathan Zirl, John Hedderson

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This article examines some of the problems and proposed solutions associated with the retirement of minority members, particularly early retirement within the Social Security System. We also discuss the failure of the Reagan administration's 1981 attempts to change social security benefits.

Consumer Participation - The Case Of Public Housing, Padi Gulati

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The participation of consumers, especially those from the deprived segments of society, in administrative decision-making, poses some perplexing dilemmas for public officials. Can the demands for participation be reconciled with the exigencies of administrative efficiency and effective service delivery. Our study focuses on consumer participation in public housing, an institution that today serves three million of the most deprived groups in society. The data used in the study came from a national sample of housing projects and was collected in 1978 by IWD's division of Policy Studies. It was used to test the hypothesis that tenant participation would explain part …

Social Work Practice In Health Care: An Ethnic Sensitive Approach, Elfriede G. Schlesinger, Wynetta Devore

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The relationship between ethnicity and modes of response to illness has been well documented. One example is stoicism as contrasted with volatile behavior in response to pain of different groups. Another is increasing awareness of the fact that non-traditional healers (eog., espiritistas, cuaranderos) are used extensively by members of various ethnic groups.

Insufficient attention has been paid to how such knowledge can be incorporated in social work practice.

This paper reviews prevailing social work interventive procedures and skills and suggests needed adaptations if social work practice is to be more sensitive and responsive to different health behaviors and beliefs of …

An Examination Of Public Housing In The United States After Forty Years, Mary Jo Huth

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This article first briefly reviews the history of public housing in the United States since its inception in 1937, noting that growing obsolescence of public housing units, the deterioration of inner-city neighborhoods surrounding public housing projects, racial tensions, and inflation have aggravated public housing problems in recent years. Moreover, public housing tenants are no longer predominantly white, upwardly-mobile, two-parent, working-class families, but predominantly non-white, non-mobile, female-headed, lower-class families. The remainder of the article presents the findings of a 1978 field survey of public housing in the United States conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in preparation for …

Criminal Justice Student Views Of The Criminal Justice System: The Impact Of Education And Self-Selection And Their Implications For The Human Services, Belinda Rodgers Mccarthy, Bernard Jerome Mccarthy

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The present study examines criminal justice student views of the criminal justice system. The purpose of the research is to investigate issues surrounding the influence of self-selection and criminal justice education on the opinions of criminal justice students toward the criminal justice system.

The research suggests that students choose criminal justice careers in part because their personal philosophies mirror the conflicting objectives of the criminal justice system. Criminal justice education seems to influence criminal justice student views of the criminal justice system, but in a direction that may make the transition to employment in criminal justice agencies a more difficult …

Factors Affecting The Economic Status Of Elderly Chicanos, Alejandro Garcia

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper identifies and discusses factors affecting the economic status of elderly chicanos. These factors include historical factors, labor force participation, familial support systems, and human services utilization. Implications for policy are addressed.

Assessing Part-Time Education In An M.S.W. Program, Ursula C. Gerhart

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Because of the dearth of debates on the merits of full-time vs. part-time M.S.W. education, some findings on law-school part-time education are reported, together with the results of an empirical study which compared the achievement of part-time and full-time social work students. Given the same opportunities, parttime students do as well as full-timers.

Organizational Resistance To Serving The Disadvantaged: The Case Of A State Employment Service, Ronald Randall

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Maintaining the commitment of public agencies to serve the disadvantaged persists as one of the most vexing problems in public affairs. This study places in an historical perspective the commitment of the Wisconsin State Employment Service (WSES) to serve the disadvantaged during the late 1960s and the retreat from this emphasis in the 1970s. The WSES displays a tradition of tension between operating-level employees who aspire to serve a job-ready clientele, and top decisionmakers who, from time to time, sense a need for direct service to the disadvantaged. The study suggests that effective service to the disadvantaged depends upon continuous, …

Abusers Of Clients Of Women's Shelter: Their Socialization And Resources, M. M. Brown, B. E. Aguirre, Carol Jorgensen

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This is a study of men who abuse women. The respondents were residents of a shelter for battered wives during 1977-1978. The study assesses the effect of the abusers' social resources and socialization experiences on their use of violence against the respondents. Abusers with military experience and criminal records used a greater number of different types of violence against their victims than their counterparts without these socialization experiences, and the relationships are specified by the abusers' socioeconomic resources.

Services Aren't Goods: Post-Industrial Principles For Policy Design, Howell S. Baum

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

As the United States moves from an industrial society to a post-industrial society, fewer people are engaged in the production of goods, and a majority now produce services. The processes of designing and producing goods and services are radically different. This differences calls for innovation in both the structure of the work setting and the policies which govern work in the society as a whole. The article examines differences between goods and services and proposes a new model for designing and producing services, as well as new principles for social policy for service production. The model and principles are illustrated …

Native American Elderly Formal And Informal Support Systems, Gregory R. Versen

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

As a minority group, American Indians have the distinction of being the smallest and the poorest. Their cultural diversity and unique relationship with the United States government set them even further apart from other minority groups. A subgroup of Native Americans about which little is known and even less has been written is the Native American elderly. This group is the focal point of this paper.

This paper reviews selected works by anthropologists, psychologists, social workers, health care professionals, and Native Americans. The intent is to identify and assess the formal and informal support systems to which the Native American …

Journal Of Sociology & Social Welfare Vol. 8, No. 3 (September 1981)

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Table of Contents

• Abusers of Clients of Women's Shelter: Their Socialization and Resources - M. M. Brown, B. E. Aguirre, Carol Jorgensen
• An Examination of Public Housing in the United States after Forty Years - Mary Jo Huth
• Services Aren't Goods: Post-Industrial Principles for Policy Design - Howell S. Baum
• Native American Elderly Formal and Informal Support Systems - Gregory R. Versen
• Factors Affecting the Economic Status of Elderly Chicanos - Alejandro Garcia
• The Future of Welfare Programs in the United States: Four Approaches - Wim Weiwel
• The Reagan Election and Mandate: Their Fiscal Policy Implications for the Welfare State …

The Future Of Welfare Programs In The United States: Four Approaches, Wim Weiwel

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

There are many theories which attempt to explain why the United States has become a welfare state. Four main approaches can be distinguished which focus on 1) the maintenance of social order; 2) welfare as empowerment; 3) welfare as an expression of egalitarianism; and 4) welfare as contributing to economic growth.

Similarly, there are many predictions about the likely future of the welfare state. They can be related to the four approaches which analyze the welfare state's historical origins and current function. The aim of this article is to clarify the debate about the future by relating the different predictions …

The Reagan Election And Mandate: Their Fiscal Policy Implications For The Welfare State, James Fendrich, Douglas St. Angelo

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper has three main thrusts. The first searches the Reagan campaign, the 1980 Republican Platform, the election and survey results to determine whether or not Reagan can creditably lay claim to a mandate for his social policies. The second thrust investigates the 1982 Reagan spending and taxing programs. Our purpose here is to ascertain if those policies denote major new directions in U.S. social policy. Our third purpose involves an assessment of the Reagan fiscal policies upon the U.S. economy.

This study concludes: (1) Reagan can claim a mandate for much of his social policies, (2) the Reagan fiscal …

Strategies For Crime Reduction In Public Housing, Mary Jo Huth

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Many recent studies have revealed that not only are residents of public housing the most vulnerable segment of the American population in terms of criminal victimization, but that even in projects where the actual incidence of crime is not high, a great fear of crime prevails, especially among the elderly tenants. There is general consensus among crime prevention experts that crime reduction programs in public housing must utilize an integrated set of measures, including: (1) physical design, security hardware, and maintenance improvements by management; (2) increased organization of tenants around crime prevention issues; (3) employment of unemployed tenants--both youths and …

Determinants Of Primary Group Assistance During Unemployment, Martin D. Hanlon

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In recent years much research attention has been given to the role of primary groups in ameliorating stressful life events. However, little is known about what factors determine the amount of assistance people receive from relatives and friends during a situation of crisis. This is the focus of the present study. The data base is a sample of public sector workers who were involuntarily laid off from their jobs.

The data revealed that respondents received considerable assistance from parents and friends--the two primary group types included in the analysis--during the period of unemployment. Objective economic deprivation, indexed by the difference …

Social Network Analysis: A New Tool For Understanding Individual And Family Functioning, Jane H. Pfouts, Ellen J. Safier

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

During the last decade, social work, along with the other helping professions, has moved toward conceptualizing practice within a social systems framework. Intrapsychic variables are still important but, increasingly, the emphasis is on the clients' intimate social network as both cause and solution of a wide range of social problems. It is now widely believed that clients' well-being is enhanced when system functioning is enhanced (Gitterman and Germain, 1976).

Most of what social workers know about social systems theory comes from the sociological literature, particularly the social action system of Talcott Parsons. Although this orientation has great heuristic value for …

Child-Care Usage Patterns As Estimates Of Child-Care Need, Nancy Hendrix

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Child-care utilization studies are often used to estimate the need for future child-care. The author stresses the limitations of the use of past patterns to judge future needs. Specifically the article focuses on the reliability and validity of measures of usage and satisfaction with various child-care modes, errors in study design, lack of conceptual clarity, and problems of the correlation of child-care modes and other variables.

The Self Disclosure Of Clinical Social Workers, Herman Borenzweig

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

My interest in this study arose from what I believed to be the discrepancy between the conventional wisdom about self disclosure and its occurrence in the practice of clinical social work. Bradmiller'sI study, one of the few studies about self disclosure in the practice of social work, found that persons with masters degrees in social work (MSW's) disclose significantly more to their colleagues than do undergraduate social work majors. The MSW's in Bradmiller's study self disclosed to clients at a lesser rate than they did to other target persons. Bradmiller2 interprets her study, " ...... most simply as an indication …