Public Policy Commons^™

Improving Workforce Conditions In Private Human Service Agencies: A Partnership Between A Union And Human Service Providers, James Green

New England Journal of Public Policy

In 1995 the Service Employees International Union Local 509 and four Massachusetts human service providers signed an unusual agreement to forge a partnership in which employers would remain neutral while the union approached its workers with an offer to advocate in the state legislature for greater funding for private human service employees and to promote cooperative relations with their employers. This study examines the context of the agreement and the pressures on public employee unions and small human service providers whose workforce copes with low wages, high turnover, meager benefits, and poor public image as well as the give-and-take between …

From Welfare To What?: The Limitations Of Low-Income Work, Lande Ajose

New England Journal of Public Policy

The premise of the welfare law enacted by Congress is that people living in poverty could vastly improve their economic status if only they were employed. The author argues that economic security for welfare recipients will not be realized simply by increasing the labor-force attachment. Home health aides comprise an occupation that could absorb many of the large pool of workers expected to join the labor market because demand for their services is high and barriers to entry are low. However, as this survey shows, the home health field offers limited promise to welfare recipients because, significantly for women rolling …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

This special issue of the journal, "Workforce Development: Health Care and Human Services," focuses on a range of problems in the health care and human service fields from a perspective that is, to say the least, frequently neglected in public policy discussion — the perspective of their workforces and the labor organizations that represent them. In many respects, the questions the articles address are a microcosm of the problems that will daunt us in the future, daunt us even more because, in a world of limited choices, denial has a special utility: by allowing us to evoke the unpalatable, it …

Foreword, Andrés Torres, James Green

New England Journal of Public Policy

Many important debates about public policy at the national level and in states like Massachusetts have centered on health care and human services, including welfare and the care of children, the abused, the disabled, the elderly, and those suffering from mental and physical illness. In this issue scholars and advocates examine a range of problems in the health care and human service fields from a perspective often lacking in the public policy discussion — that of the workforce and of the labor organizations that represent the workforce.

The Potential Impact Of Workforce Development Legislation On Cbos, Edwin Meléndez

New England Journal of Public Policy

The proposed congressional legislation revamping the employment and training system will result in budget cuts, program consolidation, and block grants for the states. These changes are potentially harmful to community-based organizations (CBOs) because (J ) they eliminate categorical funding that traditionally has required contracting with organizations which specialize in servicing the disadvantaged, and (2) they introduce stricter performance standards that may be unattainable for many small-scale operations. However, the adoption of best practices in serving non-English-speaking and poor populations, increasing connections to emerging government intermediaries in labor markets, and establishing greater linkages to postsecondary educational institutions may offer CBOs the …

Nursing: A New Day, A New Way, Lin Zhan, Jane Cloutterback

New England Journal of Public Policy

The U.S. health care environment is changing rapidly. Its structure, financing, and delivery are being reconfigured toward an integrated system based on managed care. Increasingly, national interest in health promotion and disease prevention is moving care away from a disease-oriented, institutionally based model to a population-focused, wellness-oriented, and community-based system. Health care consumers are diversifying in age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The approach emerging from these changes and others requires nursing to rethink, redesign, and retool its workforce to meet new challenges. This article analyzes nursing education, practice, and operations. The authors discuss the dilemmas and complexity of developing an …

Research To Practice: Unrealized Potential: Differing Outcomes For Individuals With Mental Retardation And Other Disability Groups, Sheila Fesko

Research to Practice Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

A national study examined job search practices used by community rehabilitation providers and state vocational rehabilitation counselors. Employment outcomes for individuals with mental retardation are contrasted with those for individuals with other disabilities.

Eastward Ho: Issues And Options In Regional Development For The Metropolitan Boston Region, Robert C. Wood, Laura C. Ghirardini, Lori L. Prew, Aundrea Kelley

John M. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies Publications

Conventional wisdom suggests that the basic job of public policy studies (and public institutions, for that matter) is to deal in a timely and practical fashion with pressing public issues of the day. The focus typically is on 'ripe' topics, 'hot' political problems. If a study can be ahead of the curve, in John Kingdon's apt phrase "an idea whose time has come," so much the better. But unlike more traditional academic research, where the focus is timeless — i.e., an explanation of previously inexplicable phenomena, timeliness is a prime reason for initiating a policy study.

In this context, analyzing …

A Snapshot Of Individuals And Families Accessing Boston's Emergency Homeless Shelters, 1997, Donna Friedman, Michelle Hayes, John Mcgah, Anthony Roman

Center for Social Policy Publications

This document summarizes key findings from a survey conducted on March 19, 1997 with 338 homeless individuals and 94 families sheltered or served by 33 of 40 shelter programs in the City of Boston. The data presented in this report were collected at one point in time. Point in time data results in an overrepresentation of the "longer term" homeless, and offers limited insight regarding the structural dynamics underlying movement from homelessness to residential stability (Culhane, Lee, Wachter, 1996; White, 1996). However, it does provide a snapshot of the men, women, and children who were spending the night in a …

Managing The Central Artery/Tunnel Project: An Exploration Of Potential Cost Savings, Allan K. Sloan

John M. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies Publications

The John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Massachusetts Boston is an institution whose primary mission is public service. Through public policy research, educational programs, policy practice and the dissemination ofknowledge, the Institute seeks to have a constructive impact on policy formulation, problem solving and public discourse concerning urgent civic challenges facing state and local government in the New England region.

In 1996, under Chapter 205 of the 1996 Acts and Resolves, the Massachusetts legislature authorized the Institute to undertake a study *to review and explore possible cost savings within the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel project" …

Public Sector And Black Church Partnerships: A New Public Policy Tool, Marjorie B. Lewis

Trotter Review

Since the mid-sixties, local, state and federal policies and their resulting agencies have been involved in an ongoing war on poverty. The goals of this effort have been to eradicate poverty through exogenous motivators, which include "work fare" programs, "head start" programs, and welfare "reform" initiatives. As well-intentioned as these efforts may have been, results have proven less than successful, particularly for inner-city African-American youth. In his paper, "The Rich Get Richer and the Black Poor Get Poorer," Samuel Myers reiterates this assessment, and shows that the plight of the inner-city dweller who is poor, uneducated, and African American has …

Research To Practice: Responding To The Needs Of Youth With Disabilities Who Are Runaway Or Homeless, Sheila Fesko, David Temelini

Research to Practice Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Results from a national survey of Family Youth and Service Bureau-funded agencies regarding their knowledge of the needs of youth with disabilities who are runaways, homeless, or at risk for running away.