Social Policy Commons^™

Shelter Poverty In Boston: Problem And Program, Michael E. Stone

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

This paper argues, first, that most housing problems—in Boston and throughout the nation—are ultimately the result of the squeeze between inadequate incomes, on the one hand, and the cost of profitably providing housing on the other. It is also argued that housing cost and incomes together are the most decisive determinants of the overall quality of life of families and communities. Third, it is contended that the long history of inadequate attempts to cope with the affordabiiity problem have not only failed to solve the problem, but have indeed contributed significantly to the broader and serious problems of the overall …

Ideology In Social Welfare Policy Instruction: An Examination Of Required Readings, Paul Lyons

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A national survey of required readings in social welfare policy courses indicates that a liberal, pro-welfare state ideology is predominant. Such an ideology rests on the concepts of modernization and industrialization within a structural-functionalist methodology. This predominant model of social welfare policy suggests the inevitability of the welfare state while effectively excluding serious consideration of both conservative and socialist alternatives.

Urban Welfare And Administration: Discussion, Richard Lobban

Faculty Book Chapters

This work on urban research strategies in Egypt is the product of several factors. First of all is the challenge, excitement, diversity and stimulation of living in Egyptian cities, Cairo above all. Not only are Egyptian cities rooted in deep antiquity, but they have the richly stratified layers of a host of great civilizations. Modern urban Egypt is immeasurably complex in its own right, but its quite astounding past only adds to its wonderment. Thus, the chief inspiration for this publication is the wealthy cultural and historical context in which these scholars were assembled and where they sought to interpret …

Special Urban Research Projects: Discussion, Richard Lobban

Faculty Book Chapters

This work on urban research strategies in Egypt is the product of several factors. First of all is the challenge, excitement, diversity and stimulation of living in Egyptian cities, Cairo above all. Not only are Egyptian cities rooted in deep antiquity, but they have the richly stratified layers of a host of great civilizations. Modern urban Egypt is immeasurably complex in its own right, but its quite astounding past only adds to its wonderment. Thus, the chief inspiration for this publication is the wealthy cultural and historical context in which these scholars were assembled and where they sought to interpret …

Urban Research Theories And Strategies: Discussion, Richard Lobban

Faculty Book Chapters

This work on urban research strategies in Egypt is the product of several factors. First of all is the challenge, excitement, diversity and stimulation of living in Egyptian cities, Cairo above all. Not only are Egyptian cities rooted in deep antiquity, but they have the richly stratified layers of a host of great civilizations. Modern urban Egypt is immeasurably complex in its own right, but its quite astounding past only adds to its wonderment. Thus, the chief inspiration for this publication is the wealthy cultural and historical context in which these scholars were assembled and where they sought to interpret …

Aging And The Milieu Of Social Policy, Roger A. Lohmann, Nancy Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

One facet of the new conservatism, which is drawing so much interest but not much information currently is the proposal for converting a large number of social service programs (including the Administration on Aging) into a single community block grant program. Even without the Reagan Administration and its new conservatism, however, the case for substantial--if less dramatic--changes in the network of services and programs which benefit the aged has been growing for some time. In this chapter, wel review some of the broader implications of current social policies for the aged, and some of the criticisms raised among gerontologists, concentrating …

Planning For Aging Services: Implications Of Recent Amendments To The Older Americans Act (With 2019 Postscript), Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The 1978 Amendments to the Older Americans Act called for the establishment of social planning, greater emphasis on the needs of the frail elderly (“those in greatest social and economic need”), the establishment of community “focal points” and “comprehensive and coordinated service delivery systems” in rural and urban communities. The amendments were implemented in the 1980 guidelines to Area Agencies on Aging. In this unpublished paper portions of which were presented at several conferences, a Guttman Scaling Technique developed in rural New York state was used to examine the development of aging services in 13 counties in North Central West …

The Influence Of Bureaucratic Factors On Welfare Policy Implementation, Gerard S. Gryski, Charles L. Usher

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The authors argue that previous welfare policy research has suffered from its neglect of bureaucratic factors, as well as a tendency to exclude policy-making arenas above and below the state level. Using several measures of organizational structure, administrative professionalism, and within-state need, they attempt to relate these variables to within-state variations in welfare policy implementation. While certain socio-economic conditions were found to be significant determinants of this variation, of greater importance are characteristics of state welfare bureaucracies such as the degree of administrative centralization and the level of professionalism of administrative staff. Their research suggests the need for further refinement …

Natural Language Processing And Computer Use In Social Work, Roger A. Lohmann, Jay Wolvovsky

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Can computers do social work? Can social workers do computers? This article seeks to outline a text-oriented approach to answering these questions through an approach labeled Natural Language Processing.

Geronomie And Social Policy, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Does qualitative sociology have anything positive to offer those who seek personally and professionally adequate resolutions of the troubles and social problems of old age? The purpose of this review essay is to examine a sampling of recent books published in social gerontology with regard to: 1) formulations of the problems of geranomie - rolelessness, loneliness, social isolation, etc.; and 2) general solutions to these problems.

Symbolic Interaction And Social Planning: Perspectives From The Early Years, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The principal thesis of this paper is that the inadequacies of recent efforts at social planning are essential failures of theory, rather than failures of practice. Economic, land use and social welfare planners it is suggested have all shared a common unwillingness or inability to abandon commitments to an essentially utilitarian rhetoric of reasoned behavior, wherein means are matched with ends, persons are viewed as essentially self-interested and goal-directed rational problem solvers operating on schedules of goal attainment known or predictable by the planners. Symbolic interaction theory has resources to revitalize planning theory. Selected publications by John Dewey, G.H. Mead, …

Dying And The Social Responsibility Of Institutions, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Contemporary American society has established a comfortable reliance upon a large network of total and quasi-total institutions for dealing with certain life threatening events and socially disruptive conditions As a consequence these institutions have become primary locales for dying. It is the principal argument of this paper that although a large proportion of all deaths now occur in institutions, they are generally harsh and unsympathetic in their handling of dying, and particularly insensitive to the social and psychological needs of surviving significant others in the period immediately following a death. It is suggested that along with accepting the responsibility to …

Determinants Of Old Age Assistance In The American States, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

A large body of research evidence has accumulated in the past two decades dealing with the question of variations in state-level public expenditures in the United States. Variations among the states in public welfare expenditures are the most outstanding exception with regard to the explanation of state governmental expenditures. This study explores the reasons that public welfare is so unlike other public expenditures, outlines the principal findings of other studies bearing on this question, and reports findings explaining at least part of the observed variations in the expenditure patterns.

Understanding The Health And Social Service Needs Of People Over Age 65, Laurence G. Branch

Center for Survey Research Publications

The complexity of the issues involved with providing appropriate health care and social services from the appropriate setting to people over age 65 can hardly be overstated. One of the present debates in the field focuses on the value of institutions as the customary setting for providing health care; the arguments are based on considerations of economic efficiency and the recipient's quality of life. Some of the debators suggest deinstitutionalizing as many of the health care recipients as possible, while simultaneously upgrading the quality and quantity of home based support services. The logic of deinstitutionalization is often buttressed by claims …

Urban-Designed Programs For The Rural Aged: Are They Exportable?, Roger A. Lohmann, Nancy Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

There are a variety of problems that affect older people in rural areas. In the first part of this paper, we examine four problems affecting the rural aged in particular: health, income, housing and social integration into rural communities. In the second part of the paper, we examine the question of whether programs to deal with these problems that have developed in various cities in the United States can readily be translated into rural communities. The paper concludes with a warning that the urban crisis, largely discovered by human services and other urbanists in the 1960s, is increasingly being expropriated …

Matrix Analysis And Social Planning, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This study is a follow-up to an earlier (1971) proposal for the application of Input-output analysis to social planning in human services (Repository item #753), and predates current models of human services as part of the nonprofit, or third sector. The manuscript details a study of financial inputs and service outputs in human services in the United Way system of Knoxville TN, noting a variety of quantitative ratios and measures of the human services delivery system, and assessing some of the strengths and weaknesses of the matrix approach.

A Qualitative Assessment Of Clark County's Mental Health Delivery System, John L. Hutchison

Dissertations and Theses

During the past several years, service delivery for mental health in Clark County has changed dramatically. The increase in funding from the federal government in the 1960's, the trend toward de-institutionalization, the emphasis on local control and administration, the proliferation of service agencies and types of programs, and the increase in demand for mental health services, has created the complex, multi-dimensional, multi-funded "system" called the mental health system.

This increased complexity in the service delivery system has resulted in confusion among decision makers, consumers, providers of service, and the community at large. This confusion has manifested itself in a call …

Community Action Programs And Poor People Of Maine : A History, Maine. Division Of Economic Opportunity

Maine Collection

Community Action Programs and Poor People of Maine : A History.
State of Maine. Division of Economic Opportunity. Augusta, Maine, 1975.

Contents: 1.Introduction / 2.Myths of the Poor in Maine / 3.Concepts / 4.Head Start / 5.Legal Services-The Poor and the Law / 6.Health / 7.Native Americans / 8.Housing / 9.The Elderly-Never Too Late to Fight Poverty / 10.Manpower Training / 11.Donated Commodities / 12.Vista / 13.Poverty Is Here to Stay / 14.Results of the War / 15.The Role of SEOO and New Directions for CAP

Relief Vs. Rehabilitation: Conflicting Goals Within The American Social Welfare System, Matthew Silberman

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

There are two distinct orientations within the American social welfare system. The first orientation is a bureaucratic one in which heteronomous agencies are committed to a set of externally imposed regulations designed to provide relief to individuals who require some form of assistance in order to survive (Blau, 1965; Friedlander, 1968: 258-284; Wilensky and Lebeaux, 1965:233-282). Assistance usually takes the form of monetary grants. The second orientation is professional in character (Meyer, 1959). In many agencies, priority is given to the provision of the rehabilitative services to which professionally trained social workers are committed in principle and to which nonprofessionals, …

Reallocation Of Responsibilities And/Or Financing For Selected Municipal Services To The State: A Municipal Finance Alternative, Joseph S. Slavet, Katharine L. Bradbury, Philip I. Moss, Boston Urban Observatory, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Boston Urban Observatory Publications

This report recommends that the administration and/or financing of a selected group of public services be shifted from municipalities to the state government in Massachusetts.

Several criteria are used to identify local functions and local fiscal responsibilities which are more suitable for state than local financing. The first criterion is the efficiency of delivery of the service: for some functions, such as solid waste disposal, technology makes it more costly per capita to provide the service separately through individual municipalities than to operate regionally-based waste disposal facilities. The second criterion is the degree to which residents of the service area …

Factors Leading To Client Degradation In Welfare And Public Housing, Elizabeth D. Huttman

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Excerpt from the full-text article:

Degradation and humiliation are the consequences of using many social services In our society. Added to this is classification as a non-normal or a failure because one turns to a government source for help. The person is stigmatized for use and the agency is negatively labeled by both non-users and users.

While these public opinions stem partly from a long-held philosophy regarding the role of social services and the nature of the poor, these attitudes are reinforced and strengthened by specific policies and practices in the administration and structuring of the programs. Comparisons between services …

Substandard Housing And The Cost Of Providing Housing-Related Services, David Podoff, Daniel A. Primont, Louis Esposito, Boston Urban Observatory, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Boston Urban Observatory Publications

Designed as a comparative undertaking by the National League of Cities (NLC) , this study is officially entitled "National Research Agenda Project No. 5: Substandard Housing and the Cost of Providing Housing-Related Services." A similar study was carried out by the urban observatories in Denver and Nashville. According to the study scope of services, the NLC was interested in the cost of "a wide variety of local government activities ... required to support and service urban housing," and how these costs "are affected by housing quality, housing location, age and type of structures. ..." It was also suggested that attention …

Party Politics And The Poor: A Research Note, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Following the “rediscovery” of poverty in the Kennedy years (1960-1963) and the initiation of the Johnson-era (1968-1968) War on Poverty, there has been much interest in the social sciences on the question of the relationship between poverty and politics in American society. One of the most interesting hypothesis in recent research is the suggestion of a correlation between welfare payment levels in various states and the level of inter-party competition in those states. If this is the case, there is a strong case that citizens are being treated differently by their government in violation of the equal protection clause of …

A Matrix Model Of The Public Social Welfare System For The Aged In The U.S.: A Research Proposal, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The creation or adaptation of planning tools will in all probability be an integral feature of the future development of social planning practice. One tool that offers a great deal of potential utility if it can be adapted to the constraints of the social planning milieu is matrix analysis utilizing input-output matrices. The specific focus of the proposed study is on the public welfare system of theaged in the United States. The fundamental hypothesis of the proposed matrix model proposed here is that the general overall characteristic most representative of the system of public social welfare for the aged is …

The Impact Of The Federal Stamp Program On Food Purchasing Habits Of The Socioeconomic Class, Joe Turner

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The implementation of the Federal Food Stamp program affords an opportunity to do responsible research on this topic due to the manner in which the program is administered. The fact that coverage is authorized on a county basis rather than a state-wide basis, which requires that each individual county request and apply for the Stamp Program, provided the availability of a sample area in southern Kentucky where five contiguous counties existed, three of which were participating in the program and two of which were not. This permitted both a control and experimental group from which to draw a sample.

Input-Output Analysis And Social Planning, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article is a proposal for an adaptation of Leontief input-output analysis in economics to uses in community-level social planning. It was made in the later years of the Great Society period, when a relatively large number of federal social grant programs in aging, children's services, disability services, housing, and other health and human service fields mandated social planning and a national system of multi-jurisdictional social planning agencies was emerging.

Medicare, Medicaid And The Geriatric Residential Environment, Nancy Lohmann, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article reports on a study of interstate differences in the availability of nursing home beds, personal care home slots and public housing, and attempts to assess the impact of the adoption of Medicare and Medicaid six years before on the availability of these components of what was termed the "geriatric residential environments continuum" or GRE. The underlying idea is that components of long-term health care, personal care and housing/shelter are three common elements of a wide variety of public policy for the aged.

Residential Child Care Manpower And Training Needs, Song K. Cho

Dissertations and Theses

National movement and local demands indicated the necessity of training programs for child care workers (herein referred to as CCW's) in Oregon. In 1966, the "First National Survey of Children's Residential Institution" was done by Pappenforst & Kilpatrick. This survey showed that the primary concern of directors of children's institution was the quality of CCW's. A national conference was held in Cleveland in 1967 to study the characteristics essential to excellent performance and make recommendations for training programs of CCW's in residential treatment for children.There have been numerous expressions of the demands for training programs in Oregon by directors of …

The Utilization Of Aides In Public Welfare; Analysis, Evaluation, And Proposal, Leonard Mark Robinson, Shirley Ann Youngstrom

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this project was to trace the developments which led to the utilization of para-profess iona1 persons as service aides in public welfare departments and to examine, in particular, the developments in Oregon at the state and county levels. The establishment of such programs was mandated in the Social Security Amendments of 1967. A review of the 1967 legislation showed the legislative intent to be inconsistent with the stated purposes of the program. This inconsistency, it was found, has been reflected in Oregon’s aide program. The theoretical origins underlying the aide concept were also examined in order to …

Camps: A Failed Manpower Planning Venture, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

In 1967, the U.S. Labor Department and Office of Economic Opportunity and other federal agencies undertook an experiment in regional manpower planning labeled the Cooperative Area Manpower Planning System, or CAMPS. This paper, written during my graduate program in public administration, 1969-1970 reflects my experience as a rural community action program director and an ex-officio participant in the CAMPS planning process of a rural region in southern Minnesota during 1967-1968.