Social Policy Commons^™

Focal Point, Volume 15 Number 02, Portland State University. Regional Research Institute

Research and Training Center - Focal Point

This issue of Focal Point begins from the idea that enrichments, far from being frivolous, are instead essential. The joy and meaningfulness which enrichments provide make a direct, positive contribution to quality of life. What is more, enriching experiences add to our reserves of strength and purpose, and these reserves in turn enable us to adapt, cope, recover and even thrive in the face of challenges and stresses. Specifically, this issue of Focal Point looks at research related to sources of enrichment, and at innovative programs that promote enrichment and achieve positive outcomes for children with emotional and behavioral challenges, …

The Impact Of The Economy And Welfare Policy On Welfare Accessions: Implications For Future Reforms, Vicky N. Albert, William C. King

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This longitudinal study analyzes the impact of labor market conditions and welfare policies accompanying the 1990s waivers granted by the federal government to California and the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (PRWOA) on families entering welfare (accessions). A time series model was specified for analyzing the number of families entering welfare from January 1983 to December 1998. The findings suggest that in 1998 under PRWOA, all else constant, there were fewer case openings. Prior to the PRWOA, policy shifts of the 1990s did not have an impact on case openings. The findings also show that under economic recovery …

The Transition From Afdc To Prwora In Florida; Perceptions Of The Role Of Case Manager In Welfare Reform, Adela Beckerman, Leonard Fontana

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Welfare reform was implemented in Florida with the passage of WAGES. WAGES' emphasis on support services in preparation for employment portends to be a radical transformation of the "eligibility compliance" organizational culture that had developed under AFDC. Interviews with welfare staff focused on whether WAGES' offices were able to develop the organizational culture and methods of frontline practice needed to implement the goals of welfare reform legislation. The interviews indicate an emerging organizational culture in which case managers readily identify with the mantra of welfare reform. The interviews also indicate a discrepancy between the importance of the case manager role …

A New Perspective On Families That Receive Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (Tanf), Christopher R. Larrison, Larry Nackerud, Ed Risler

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A review of the scholarly literature shows that a number of analyses of welfare are mistakenly based upon the premise that the overwhelming majority of welfare recipients receive benefits because they are young single women who are undereducated and caring for a child either born out of wedlock or abandoned by divorce/separation. The term welfare can encompasses a number of social programs (e.g. Food Stamps, state general assistance programs, Medicaid), but in this paper it refers specifically to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) or its contemporary Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). In an attempt to calibrate the …

Celibacy, Sexual Exclusivity, And Illicit Drug Abstinence: Giving Up The Life As Taboo In Aids Prevention, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article highlights social cognitions that seem to impede cost-effective approaches to AIDS prevention.

Welfare Reform Sanctions And Financial Strain In A Food-Pantry Sample, Jean Oggins, Amy Fleming

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Survey and interview data about life after welfare reform were collected from food pantry clients in upstate New York in 1997 and 1999. By 1999, respondents were increasingly likely to have no work or benefits. Having no work or benefits was also associated with having been penalized (sanctioned) for not working or for noncompliance with welfare rules. Sanctions for not working averaged 89 days. Clients sanctioned for job loss tended to report problems with health (including children's health). Sanctioned individuals reported relatively high levels of financial strain, unstable housing, children's changing schools, and lack of a phone. Implications for policy …

Focal Point, Volume 15 Number 01, Portland State University. Regional Research Institute

Research and Training Center - Focal Point

Transitions are difficult for all of us, but for children and youth with emotional and behavioral challenges, transitions are often both more difficult and more frequent than for their peers. Even “normal”, age-defined transitions such as the transition to kindergarten or the transition to independent living are often extremely difficult for children and youth with emotional and behavioral challenges, and for their families or other caregivers. Transitions—accompanied by the disruption of routine and the need to interact with unfamiliar people—are precisely the types of situations that are often most unsettling and stressful for these children.

Review Of Social Security For The Excluded Majority. Wouter Van Ginneken (Ed.). Reviewed By Mizanur Miah, Southern Illinois University At Carbondale., Mizanur R. Miah

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Wouter Van Ginneken (Ed.), Social Security for the Excluded Majority. Geneva: International Labour Office, 1999. $19.95 papercover.

Community Practice And The Internet, Roger A. Lohmann, John Mcnutt

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article examines several developments in electronic technology which appear to hold great potential for advancing human well-being and community organization and have already manifested some important portion of that potential in recent years. They are, in order of presentation, electronic communication and networking, electronic advocacy, fund raising support, geographic information systems and data base management. We conclude this brief article with a brief discussion of information poverty and the growing disparity of information haves and have-nots.

Practice In The Electronic Community, Roger A. Lohmann, John Mcnutt

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The Internet was at its inception a commons rather than a marketplace. Increasingly, however, communitarian notions have been overwhelmed by the internet as one huge shopping arcade. The potential is certainly there for this amazing technology to advance the causes of human freedom well-being and community. At the same time, however, this powerful set of technologies that in less than a decade have become nearly universal in scope and sweep, have the potential also to become simply another extension of the global economic marketplace. Far worse, there is also the potential to become a power tool for class domination or …

A Benefit-Cost Analysis Model For Social Service Agencies, Robert Schalock, John Butterworth

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

Current public policy is based on two fundamental principles: equity and efficiency. Equitable programs contribute to balancing the needs and desires of the various groups in society; whereas efficient programs are those that serve to increase the net value of goods and services available to society. Benefit-cost analysis is a tool developed to determine whether a program produces effects that justify the costs incurred to operate the program. The benefit-cost model presented in this monograph requires the reader to:

1. Understand the concept of an analytical perspective;
2. Move beyond viewing benefit-cost analysis as a simple ratio of benefits to costs;
3. Include …

Focal Point, Volume 14 Number 01, Portland State University. Regional Research Institute

Research and Training Center - Focal Point

FROM THE EDITORS. It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to the premiere collaborative issue of Focal Point. The joint effort between the Center For Effective Collaboration and Practice and the Research and Training Center on Family Support and Children’s Mental Health exemplifies a larger partnership initiative put forward by the Center for Mental Health Services’ (CMHS) Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program. The goal of an enhanced partnership is to promote improved services that lead to better outcomes for youth and their families. Along these lines we hope you find the fruits …

The Missing Safety Net And Families: A Progressive Critique Of The New Welfare Legislation, D. Stanley Eitzen, Maxine Baca Zinn

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This is an overview essay on the 1996 welfare legislation and its consequences. The paper is divided into five parts: (1) The basic elements of the legislation; (2) The conservative assumptions undergirding this legislation and the progressive responses to them; (3) The consequences of the legislation for individuals and families; (4) The missing elements in the new welfare legislation; and (5) The progressive solution to welfare.

Soziale Arbeit Und Ökonomie : Politische Ökonomie - Arbeitsmärkte - Sozialpolitik Grenzen Der Ökonomisierung - Soziale Ökonomie Gemeinwesenentwicklung - Bürgergesellschaft, Susanne Elsen, Dietrich Lange, Isidor Wallimann

Books

Globalization has seen the removal of borders and increased global flows of capital and goods and services, changing the employment landscape, pressuring revenues and social-welfare spending of modern welfare states. This collection of essays brings together perspectives from different disciplines to discuss the role globalization has had on social policies of the modern welfare state and the changing relationship between social policy, social work and the economy, describes its consequences and presents innovative approaches for action.

Focal Point, Volume 14 Number 02, Portland State University. Regional Research Institute

Research and Training Center - Focal Point

Young people are assuming more, and more empowered roles in systems of care. They participate actively in planning for their own services and treatment, setting policy, and evaluating programs. This issue includes a discussion of resources that have been developed to help in the process of developing youth-adult partnership in these areas.

Focal Point, Volume 13 Number 01, Portland State University. Regional Research Institute

Research and Training Center - Focal Point

This issue of Focal Point examines the ways in which families with employed caregivers and children with emotional and behavioral disorders manage to meet the demands of employment and family responsibilities. Finding a fit between the demands of work and family life is a struggle for every employed mother and father. For parents whose children have emotional, behavioral, or mental disorders, meeting this challenge can prove extremely stressful, particularly since supportive services are notably lacking. Although Fernandez has estimated that 10% of all employed parents have at least one child with a disability living in their homes, there has been …

The Massachusetts Welfare To Work Program: How Well Will It Serve Its Customers?, Abigail Jurist Levy

New England Journal of Public Policy

The author examined the initial two-year Massachusetts Welfare to Work plans to identify early signs of potential program strengths and weaknesses when the states were just beginning to implement it. She surveyed the then current literature that defines the work-first philosophy and its social context, outlining the essential elements of work-first programs for participants' success. The author then reviewed Massachusetts's sixteen regional plans to determine the degree to which they incorporated these elements in their program designs. Finally, she outlined the challenges, potential risks, and advantages that arise when national social policy shifts and local planners and policymakers must adapt …

Welfare Reform: Lessons From New England, Richard M. Francis, Thomas J. Anton

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article examines state welfare policy choices following the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. Using data from national studies and an intensive study of policymaking in New England, the authors demonstrate that states have acted independently rather than uniformly in response to devolution. Because states did not respond as predicted, and for reasons that were not anticipated, scholars must develop new approaches to understanding state policymaking. This study argues that accounting for state policy choices requires an understanding of the context of policymaking. Conventional analyses of welfare reform have ignored the institutional structures through which …

Housing For All: Addressing The Housing Needs Of Massachusetts' North Shore Residents, Theresa Mason, Elaine Werby, Caroline Coscia, Lisa Ward, Donna Friedman

Center for Social Policy Publications

The aim of this report is to support North Shore efforts to build a regional approach to housing.

The report explores the housing needs of people who are caught in the squeeze between low incomes and high housing costs. The report has two goals:

1. to provide information for understanding the need to expand below market rate housing;
2. to illustrate that need by providing detailed documentation on the situation in Gloucester, Peabody, and Salem.

The report is not intended to propose solutions, but to provide groundwork for solutions.

Disjointed Incrementalism: The Overture To A Full (And Unfinished) Symphony, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

On the 50th anniversary of the publication of Charles Lindblom's seminal article on incrementalism, this reconsideration finds that it is still one of the major contributions to understanding how decisions are actually made in organizations and public life.

Has The Time Come To Evaluate Evaluation? (Or Who Will Be Accountable For Accountability?), Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

A review essay of six recent books represents an occasion to examine the very idea of accountability, and to examine what the effects of several decades of emphasis on evaluation have been.

A Few Contributions Of Economic Theory To Social Welfare Policy Analysis, Michael A. Lewis

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The National Association of Social Workers' (NAS W) code of ethics states that social workers have a professional obligation to advocate for social policies that promote the general welfare (NASW, 1996). Presumably, in an effort to provide social workers with the analytical tools that would allow them to do so, schools of social work typically require students to do course work in the area of social welfare policy. Although these courses provide students with valuable information, it is my view that they tend to be limited in one important respect. They usually do not contain a great deal of content …

Focal Point, Volume 12 Number 01, Portland State University. Regional Research Institute

Research and Training Center - Focal Point

Much of the family member involvement that is happening at the state and local level is due, at least in part, to the efforts by the federal government to institutionalize family involvement in policymaking. In 1985 Child and Adolescent Service System (CASSP) staff added a family goal to the program. This goal translated into a requirement that state applications for CASSP funds describe how families would participate in service planning efforts at the child and family, program, and system levels. In 1986 Congress passed the State Mental Health Services Comprehensive Plan (Public Law 99-660), which mandated family member participation in …

Acknowledging The Crisis In Social Liberalism: A Call For A New Approach To Teaching Social Policy, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

A graduate social policy course at West Virginia University has been redesigned by a senior faculty member and lead instructor to recognize advances in political philosophy and to confront the decline of the social liberal welfare state and the rise of populist radicalism, through civic engagement by citizen-professionals.

A Policy Brief: Massachusetts (T)Afdc Case Closings, October 1993-August 1997, Donna Friedman, Emily Douglas, Michelle Hayes, Mary Ann Allard

Center for Social Policy Publications

When a DTA (Department of Transitional Assistance) worker assesses whether a family's (T)AFDC (Temporary Aid to Families with Dependent Children) case will be closed, s/he decides which one of 67 different codes best describes the reason cash benefits for the household will be stopped. To carry out the analyses, we sorted all of the 67 codes into clusters of codes that logically grouped together: Cluster I, Increased Income; Cluster H, Sanctions; Cluster III, Eligible Persons Moved; Cluster IV, Fraud; Cluster V, Client Request; Cluster VI, No Longer Eligible; Cluster VII, Other or Multiple Meanings. The Appendix displays a description of …

Armut : Der Mensch Lebt Nicht Vom Brot Allein : Wege Zur Soziokulturellen Existenzsicherung, Isidor Wallimann, Susanne Schmid

Books

While the usual discussion about the poverty of the minimum financial security speaks, the authors ask what it could mean for to be living in a secure socio-cultural minimum. The fact is that poverty can be both "caused" by various forms of exclusion, as well as the socio-cultural exclusion promotes or "causes".

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

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

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 …

The Future Of The Third Sector, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The U.S. "nonprofit sector" and other forms of contemporary national third sectors which are currently spreading around the world arose in a unique historical moment and for distinct historical reasons and are unlikely to outlast that moment in history. Voluntary action on the other hand has deep roots reaching far back in human history and is likely to be around far into the future.

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 …

Focal Point, Volume 11 Number 01, Portland State University. Regional Research Institute

Research and Training Center - Focal Point

In the discussion on the issues of juvenile crime, the nation has ignored the prevalence of mental disorders among youth who commit crimes, and it has failed to provide policy directives on how state systems should respond. With the nation’s attention riveted on youth violence, the issue of prevalence has began to emerge, with the realization that many of the violent acts are committed by a small percentage of young people. Policymakers are beginning to ask questions about the conditions that contribute to a young person’s tendency toward delinquency acts.