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Articles 1 - 17 of 17
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Social Work And Diverse Models Of Public Safety: Advocating With And On Behalf Of African American Communities, David R. Hodge, Stephanie Clintonia Boddie
Social Work And Diverse Models Of Public Safety: Advocating With And On Behalf Of African American Communities, David R. Hodge, Stephanie Clintonia Boddie
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
George Floyd’s death sparked an intense national debate about policing practices. In social work, the discussion has generally focused on whether the profession should partner with, or shun, law enforcement. While affirming the need for structural change, this paper suggests a different approach; that social workers should advocate with and on behalf of African American communities to implement a public safety model that reflects their preferences. After discussing how practitioners can facilitate structural reform in this arena, five alternative models of public safety are reviewed to familiarize readers with options that may have some degree of currency with African Americans: …
Is It Just Enough?, John Solas
Is It Just Enough?, John Solas
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
Since its inception, social work has professed an abiding commitment to social justice. Indeed, it is perhaps one of the few professions to have maintained such an obligation. This pledge is officially inscribed in the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). This document affirms the pursuit of social justice as a core value, not just for members of the Association, but also for social workers in general. However, what kind of social justice does the Association advocate and how just is it? While answers to these questions are critical to the Association’s members and broader …
The Need For Social Work Advocacy To Create Social Justice For Transgender People: A Call To Action, Justin Lerner, Gabriel Robles
The Need For Social Work Advocacy To Create Social Justice For Transgender People: A Call To Action, Justin Lerner, Gabriel Robles
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
Transgender people in the United States experience high levels of employment discrimination. The Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) is one mechanism that would provide basic workplace protections for this population. We argue, however, that passage of ENDA is only one of many preliminary steps to help transgender people experience an essential basic version of social justice. Using Bonnycastle's (2011) social justice relational illustrative model, we develop a conceptual framework that argues that social workers need to advocate for transgender people on a policy level in order to move them from their current nonexistent version of social justice to a basic version …
Grand Challenges: Social Justice And The Need For Evidence-Based Sex Offender Registry Reform, Jill S. Levenson, Melissa Grady, George Leibowitz
Grand Challenges: Social Justice And The Need For Evidence-Based Sex Offender Registry Reform, Jill S. Levenson, Melissa Grady, George Leibowitz
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
Sex offender registries, though popular, bring with them enormous fiscal costs and unintended consequences for offenders and communities. Consistent with the Grand Challenges, social workers can play a role in advocating for sex offender management policies that are better informed by evidence and thus a better use of resources. Registry reform would also moderate the stigma resulting from the sex offender label, and reduce barriers to offender reintegration. First, a brief history of registration laws and the research around their effectiveness will be provided, followed by a rationale for needed improvements in sex offender management policy. Finally, evidence-based recommendations for …
An Examination Of The New York State Workers' Compensation Reform Act Of 2007, Julia Ostrov
An Examination Of The New York State Workers' Compensation Reform Act Of 2007, Julia Ostrov
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
Workers' compensation, a critical safety net for injured and ill workers in the form of medical care and wage replacement benefits, emerged on the heels of the Industrial Revolution as the first extensive social insurance program in the United States. Over the past two decades, workers' compensation policy in New York State has followed a national trend of severe retrenchment in benefits to workers. This paper takes as its focus an examination of the most recent workers' compensation reform legislation in New York, and provides a discussion of the important role social workers can play in promoting social justice within …
Social Work Advocacy: Professional Self-Interest And Social Justice, Mary Ellen Brown, Michelle M. Livermore, Annahita R. Ball
Social Work Advocacy: Professional Self-Interest And Social Justice, Mary Ellen Brown, Michelle M. Livermore, Annahita R. Ball
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
This study employed an analysis of the advocacy-related resources and materials available through the 50 NASW state chapter websites. Results revealed that a large number of states had no information about advocacy on their websites (42%). One third of the mission statements reviewed contained language indicating that advocacy was part of the chapter mission, while nearly as many included no content related to advocacy or social justice on their homepages. Nearly two thirds of the websites contained no resources, tools or links to help with advocacy practice, promotion or education. Thirteen advocacy themes emerged, which represented policy issues within the …
Zones Of Exclusion: Urban Spatial Policies, Social Justice, And Social Services, Karen H. Bancroft
Zones Of Exclusion: Urban Spatial Policies, Social Justice, And Social Services, Karen H. Bancroft
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
Across the United States homeless persons, prostitutes, and drug and alcohol users are subject to policies that severely limit their freedom of movement. These new policies create spatial exclusion zones that deny these groups the right to inhabit or traverse large areas of their cities, particularly in the downtown cores, where treatment centers, shelters, food banks, soup kitchens, government services, and other social services are typically concentrated. In this paper, I examine these new spatial exclusionary policies (with a focus on Washington State's policies), present a brief historical account of socio-spatial practices, contextualize the current spatial laws, and end with …
Why You Should Care About The Threatened Middle Class, Jill Littrell, Fred Brooks, Jan Ivery, Mary L. Ohmer
Why You Should Care About The Threatened Middle Class, Jill Littrell, Fred Brooks, Jan Ivery, Mary L. Ohmer
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
In the last two decades, the income and security of the individual middle class worker has declined and the gap between the middle class and the wealthy has widened. We explain how this is bad for democracy, the economy, and the aggregate health of the nation. We examine the governmental policies and interventions that increased the middle class following the depression and maintained its vigor through the post-World War II period. The impetus for these changes in governmental policies in the 1930s was to end the Great Depression. We pose the question of whether a nation can recover from a …
Social Justice Implications Of The Organism Metaphor, Gerald V. O'Brien
Social Justice Implications Of The Organism Metaphor, Gerald V. O'Brien
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
The denigration of marginalized groups is frequently supported through the widespread employment of metaphors that present a pejorative image of the group in question. The organism metaphor, wherein the target group is portrayed as a threat to the integrity of the social body, is a particularly important metaphoric theme in the advancement of social injustice. Drawing largely from primary source documents, this paper provides an overview of the organism metaphor as it has been employed historically to denigrate various social subgroups. Implications for the social work profession are discussed.
Globalization, Welfare Reform And The Social Economy: Developing An Alternative Approach To Analyzing Social Welfare Systems In The Post-Industrial Era, Vanna Gonzales
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
Our understanding of the relationship between globalization and contemporary social welfare systems is heavily influenced by three conventional approaches to studying welfare reform: the political economy, moral economy, and mixed economy approaches. In addition to analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of each of these approaches, a central aim of this article is to introduce the social economy approach as an emergent alternative. Drawing from a growing body of work on institutional innovation within the European third sector, I argue that the social economy approach makes a valuable contribution to understanding the role of welfare networks in reconfiguring globalizations' impact on …
Perspectives On Globalization, Social Justice And Welfare, James Midgley
Perspectives On Globalization, Social Justice And Welfare, James Midgley
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
Although the social science literature on globalization has proliferated, social policy and social work scholars have not adequately debated the consequences of globalization for social welfare and social justice. Drawing on different social science interpretations of globalization, four major perspectives that offer different analytical and normative insights into globalization are identified and their implications for social welfare and social justice are briefly examined. The implications of these perspectives for social policy and social work scholarship are also considered.
Social Theory & Its Relation To Social Problems: An Essay About Theory And Research With Social Justice In Mind, Richard K. Caputo
Social Theory & Its Relation To Social Problems: An Essay About Theory And Research With Social Justice In Mind, Richard K. Caputo
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
This essay examines the relationship between social theory and social problems, the truth-value of theories, and the importance of theorizing about the role of the state, i.e., national government, in the resolution of social problems and the achievement of social justice. The author argues that much contemporary social theory has lost its moorings in regard to amelioration ofsocial problems, that Popper's criterion offalsification is a requisitefor more meaningfully applied social theory, and that the state should be part of any social theory meant to address social problems. Moral and political philosophy is used to provide criteria to justify a positive …
Health Care Poverty, Lisa Raiz
Health Care Poverty, Lisa Raiz
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
This paper introduces and describes health care poverty. Underinsurance and its consequences for access to health care are highlighted. Definitions of underinsurance and its prevalence are presented. Groups that experience disproportionate barriers to obtaining medical care are identified. Manifestations of underinsurance are explicated and their relationship to receipt of medical care, such as vaccinations and medications is discussed. A refraining of the health care debate is suggested with emphasis moving from uninsurance to access to health care.
Applying Rawlsian Social Justice To Welfare Reform: An Unexpected Finding For Social Work, Mahasweta M. Banerjee
Applying Rawlsian Social Justice To Welfare Reform: An Unexpected Finding For Social Work, Mahasweta M. Banerjee
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
This paper sketches social workers' understanding of social justice and reliance on Rawls (1971), highlights findings about "hard to employ" welfare recipients facing welfare reform, and articulates the parameters of Rawlsian justice (Rawls, 1999a; 2001) with particular emphasis on people who have been on welfare for long. The paper shows that social workers do not have any space to maneuver in Rawlsian justice to uphold justice for long-term welfare recipients, and welfare reform's "work first" stipulation does not violate Rawlsian justice. The paper raises some questions about social workers' continued reliance on Rawls. It suggests social workers update the literature …
Honoring The Elders: Interviews With Two Lakota Men, Deborah E. Bowen
Honoring The Elders: Interviews With Two Lakota Men, Deborah E. Bowen
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
The beliefs that honoring the elders, commitment to family, and the connectedness to all creation are paramount are intrinsic to Lakota culture. Two Lakota elders, Albert White Hat, Sr. and Sylvan White Hat, Sr. are interviewed for this article. They express their concerns with major social justice issues, and offer hope for future generations of Lakota children. A strengths-based perspective of social work practice is compared to traditional Lakota customs and practices.
The Decline Of The Public Intellectual In Social Work, Howard Jacob Karger, Marie Theresa Herndndez
The Decline Of The Public Intellectual In Social Work, Howard Jacob Karger, Marie Theresa Herndndez
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
This article examines reasons for social work's abandonment of public discourse, activism and intellectual life. It also explores strategies to encourage the profession to reenter public life and develop a modern cadre of social work identified public intellectuals. Specifically, this process entails professional and academic reform and a renewed vision around the social justice mission of social work.
Families And The Republic, John Braithwaite
Families And The Republic, John Braithwaite
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
Restorative and responsive justice can be a strategy of social work practice that builds democracy bottom-up by seeing families as building blocks of democracy and fonts of democratic sentiment. At the same time, because families are sites of the worst kinds of tyranny and the worst kinds of neglect, a rule of law is needed that imposes public human rights obligations on families. The republican ideal is that this rule of law that constrains people in families should come from the people. Restorative and responsive justice has a strategy for the justice of the people to bubble up into the …