Social Work Commons^™

Lessons From Private Health Insurance, Martha N. Ozawa

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

All across the country there is a sense of urgency, and even of crisis over what is happening in the health industry. Of special concern are the rapid rate of increase in the cost of health care services and the increasing national expenditures for health care. For fiscal year 1976, the total U.S. spending for health care reached $149.8 billion, or a per capita expenditure of $638. Expressed as a percentage of the gross national product (GNP), the national spending for health care reached a record-breaking 8.6 percent.1 From the early 1960s--except during the period from August 1971 through April …

Social Choice And Policy Formulation: Problems And Considerations In The Construction Of The Public Interest, Irv Berkowitz

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The need for and adoption of certain social policies for the nation are frequently rationalized by their advocates as being in the public interest. Often, though, the interest of the many merely disguises the special interests and wants of the few. It is obvious that the social choices made in the policy process only rarely benefit the interests of all without being adversely consequential to some. This paper argues that the problem of social choice in the conflictual process of policy making is as much a conceptual dilemma as a practical political or economic one. A major source of this …

The Social Policy Of Denial: Unemployment In Israel, Harris Chaiklin

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

When reality does not match the dream nations tend to suffer. In Israel unemployment compromises social democratic ideals. The country oscillates between bombast and despair. Official data is not trusted. Those who leave Russia on Israeli visas and do not come are "dropouts." Those who leave Israel for other countries are "yordim." Those who go to work every day when there is nothing to do are draining the nation with "hidden unemployment." These are terms of derision. Some of the difficulty with unemployment data and understanding Israeli response to the problem may be for security reasons. Israelis have lived in …

Public Monitoring Of Contracts With Nonprofit Organizations: Organizational Mission In Two Sectors, Bruce S. Jansson

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Public officials in the human service delivery system must wrestle with complex decisions regarding utilization of agencies in the nonpublic sector to deliver publicly funded services. Data from a survey of 167 agencies in a major metropolitan area suggest that there are still substantial differences in priorities and service approaches of public and nonpublic agencies. These differences suggest that public officials may need to devote more resources to ascertaining whether and when public agencies should themselves deliver publicly funded services and to strengthening public monitoring of contracts in the private sector.

Social Polics And Social Welfare Administration, Bernard Neugeboren

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Effective administration of social welfare programs requires the integration of knowledge of social policy with the understanding of the theory and practice of management and administrative decision making. This integration of substantive knowledge of social policy with administrative practice is needed to avoid overemphasis on means to the detriment of the goals of social programs. This paper discusses a policy analysis framework in relationship to a model of decisionmaking which includes rational and non-rational elements. Principles of policy formulation (major system change) is applied to specific issues in social welfare, i.e. should social services be directed at changing the individual …

Organizational Considerations In The Application Of Budgeting And Cost Effectiveness Systems To Social Welfare Organizations, Charles Cowger

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Social welfare organizations have distinctive organizational characteristics which hinder their adaptability to budget and cost effectiveness systems. This paper identifies those characteristics and discusses their significance.

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.

Stressful Life Events : A Comparative Study Of Native American And Urban Samples, Sandra Ketcher

Dissertations and Theses

The subject of this paper is an extension of the work done Holmes and Rahe on the development of the Social Readjustment Rating Scale or SRRS and of the study, “Individual Perception of Stressful Life Events: A Comparison of Native Americans, Rural, and Urban Samples,” conducted by Dr. Liberman and Joel Frank. This study will compare those two samples with a sample of a selected Pacific Northwest Indian tribe served by an Indian Health Service facility.

“The Stressful Life Events: A Comparative Study of Native American and Urban Samples” study is a singular component of a total effort on the …

Policy Analysis And Older People: A Conceptual Framework, John E. Tropman, Jane Mcclure

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The policy sciences, says Harold Lasswell, require "clarification of goals, analysis of conditions, project of future developments, and invention, evaluation, and selection of alternatives."1 This rocess is imbued with values and often these values lie unrecognized.3 Both personal values of the individual analyst and social values of the Society can be and often are involved. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate four policy problems involved in analyses concerning the elderly, and to suggest some additional considerations which would bring these problems into the open and aid in specification and focusing of policy research in this area. While only …

The Transition: An Historical-Materialist Perspective On Social Welfare And Social Work Practice, Thomas Keefe

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

From an historical-materialist perspective American society is in a transition to a new structural form--a new order. The future of social welfare and social work practice is intimately bound to the nature and outcome of this transition. Moreover, the transition has economic and ideological characteristics that hold important implications for changes in the ways social workers view their clients and conduct their practice. Employing an historicalmaterialist analysis, this article will discuss the nature of the societal transition and its implications for social welfare and social work practice.

The analysis will be prefaced with a synopsis of basic concepts and assumptions …

Cpacs Happenings (August-September 1978 Newsletter), College Of Public Affairs And Community Service, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

CPACS Newsletters

The College of Public Affairs and Community Service (CPACS) newsletter that reported on the news, collaborations, events, and general happenings of the UNO College of Public Affairs and Community Service. This newsletter has had many names and variations over the years including SPACS Newsletter (1973); Newsletter of the College of Public Affairs and Community Service (1973-1974): Happenings (1974-1980s); and the current e-newsletter titled the CPACS Collective (2021-)

Some Critical Questions In The Political Economy Of Social Welfare - The Carter "Welfare Reform" Proposals, L. K. Northwood

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The purpose of this paper is to discuss President Carter's welfare reform proposals, appropriately titled, "The Program for Better Jobs and Income." If these proposals are adopted by Congress, they will guide the Administration in its stance toward and its work with the lowest income sectors of the nation: the welfare poor--those who cannot work and must be supported by the government, and the working poor--those who are able to support themselves, but whose yearly income is less than the poverty level.

Consequently, the paper starts with an analysis of what the government documents have to tell us about the …

The "Science" Of Social Policy: Max Weber Revisited, Asoke Basu

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Science documents two sources of knowledge--sense and reason. Further, according to Kant, "The nature of the outer empirical world is not known, what becomes known is that which is perceived." Human constructs represent outer reality. They do not express reality directly as it is in original nature. The aim of the social scientist can never be to eliminate the relative perspective of social reality. It is to understand and explain it within a larger cultural framework. The nature of this task brings the social scientist "close" to defining the social reality within a broader cultural praxis. Any policy--essentially, a set …

Interagency Conflict, Power, And Sanctioning Systems: An Alaskan Example, Dorothy M. Jones

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The covert processes in the interagency system in Anchorage social services is the subject of this paper. The emphasis is on (1) conflicts between explicit goals of planning and rationality in social services and covert or hidden goals concerning protection of organizational jurisdiction; (2) the structure of interagency power; and (3) the socialization and regulation of member agencies' behavior. The data for the study derive from focused interviews with agency administrators and staff members and observations at community planning meetings. The major finding of the study is that the explicit goals of rationality, integration, and planning in social services are …

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, …

Social Control Or Social Wage: On The Political Economy Of The "Welfare State", Paul Adams

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Discussion between liberal apologists for the "welfare state" and their radical critics has tended in recent years to focus on the question of "social control." In this area the corporate liberals and social democrats (the "welfare statists") are weak. They talk of the "welfare state" as if, at least in principle, it represented the collective assumption by society of responsibility for the basic needs and dependencies of its members. Insofar as "social control" is relevant for them, it has to do with society's exercise of restraint over the selfish pursuit of private profit.1 Radical critics of the "welfare state," on …

A Political Economy Critique Of The American Welfare State, Gerben Dejong

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Despite its rapid expansion over the last decade, the American welfare state appears unable to remedy many of the social problems it has been designated to solve. In many instances, the welfare state has become as much a part of the problem as the solution. Unfortunately, most proposals to reform the welfare state do not go beyond the liberalconservative conception of the welfare state as a backup to the capitalist market system. This conception of the welfare state is part of a larger comitment to a free market-pluralist ideology that singles out certain social phenomena as problematic and limits the …

The Msw And The Mpa: Confrontation Of Two Professions In Public Welfare, Thomas H. Walz, Harry J. Macy

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

From its inception in the 1930's, public welfare has emerged as a major service industry commanding a sizeable portion of the public tax dollar. Concomitant with growth and size and expenditure has come the federalization of the program. In the face of a series of changes--the growth of welfare, added administrative complexity, and the emergence of new economic function--public welfare's identification with social work was weakened. Correspondingly, and perhaps logically, its identification with public administration has been strengthened. In this paper, there is exploration of the changes leading to the confrontation between social work and public administration within public welfare. …

Cpacs Happenings (December 1977-January 1978 Newsletter), College Of Public Affairs And Community Service, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

CPACS Newsletters

The College of Public Affairs and Community Service (CPACS) newsletter that reported on the news, collaborations, events, and general happenings of the UNO College of Public Affairs and Community Service. This newsletter has had many names and variations over the years including SPACS Newsletter (1973); Newsletter of the College of Public Affairs and Community Service (1973-1974): Happenings (1974-1980s); and the current e-newsletter titled the CPACS Collective (2021-)

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 …

Discourse Management: Key To Policy Development, Joseph R. Steiner

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Skills in discourse management are necessary in order for democratic policy development groups to be productive. These skills, like other skills, are developed by practicing their utilization. A general cognitive framework, however, can assist one in this development. This paper develops and then describes the use of such a general framework.

Cpacs Happenings (August 1977 Newsletter), College Of Public Affairs And Community Service, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

CPACS Newsletters

The College of Public Affairs and Community Service (CPACS) newsletter that reported on the news, collaborations, events, and general happenings of the UNO College of Public Affairs and Community Service. This newsletter has had many names and variations over the years including SPACS Newsletter (1973); Newsletter of the College of Public Affairs and Community Service (1973-1974): Happenings (1974-1980s); and the current e-newsletter titled the CPACS Collective (2021-)

Journal Of Sociology & Social Welfare Vol. 4, No. 6 (July 1977)

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Editorial - FLORENCE KASLOW - p. 842
• Women: Re-entry and Challenge - LITA L. SCHWARTZ - p. 845
• Work Incentive Policies: An Evaluation of Their Effects on Welfare Women's Choice - JACQUELINE BALLOU - p. 850
• Debunking Sapphire:Toward a Non-racist and Non-sexist Social Science - PATRICIA BELL SO - p. 864
• The Scarlet "W":Public Welfare as Sexual Stigma for Women - PHYLLIS J. DAY - p. 872
• The Role of the Female Mental Health Professional in a Male Correctional Setting - CHERYL E. BIEMER - p. 882
• Women in Communications - JANICE L. BOOKER - p. 888 …

Public Affairs, Community Service And Personal Care: The Three Faces Of Social Work, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper was written for a faculty seminar at the School of Social Work, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where at the time the author was an Assistant Professor. It makes the case that contemporary social work at the time was an uneasy mix of three very different approaches: A public affairs perspective addressing broad social policy issues; a community services perspective extending to agency management, planning and financing; and a personal care perspective built on psychotherapy, social casework and group work. At the time, many schools of social work were struggling with a legacy of strong support for the personal …

Cpacs Happenings (April 1977 Newsletter), College Of Public Affairs And Community Service, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

CPACS Newsletters

The College of Public Affairs and Community Service (CPACS) newsletter that reported on the news, collaborations, events, and general happenings of the UNO College of Public Affairs and Community Service. This newsletter has had many names and variations over the years including SPACS Newsletter (1973); Newsletter of the College of Public Affairs and Community Service (1973-1974): Happenings (1974-1980s); and the current e-newsletter titled the CPACS Collective (2021-)

A Disarmed World: Problems In Imaging The Future, Elise Boulding

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

One of the major handicaps to scholars, activists and would-be policy makers associated with the post-World War II peace research and peace action movements has been the inability to construct coherent and believable images of a post military industrial United States society. Even at the height of the economics of disarmament studies in the 1960s the most that economists could demonstrate was that disarmament could take place without severe economic dislocations, and that resources released from arms could be used for improving the global standard of living. The new peace research movement was also producing books in the sixties showing …

Government Spending And Welfare Employment, Martin D. Lowenthal

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

One of the persistent issues which welfare policy makers and analysts confront in western industrial nations, particularly in the United States, is the appropriate relationship between public assistance payments and employment. There is a great deal of debate over whether welfare recipients should work or be required to take jobs and whether the government should emphasize training or placement services or create jobs directly. Relatively little concern and attention have been given to the 'roblem of the number of jobs that are actually available in the private sector for recipients who want to work. Although the federal government will plan …

A Moment Of Truth In The Warfare-Welfare Debate: The Transfer Amendment, Elizabeth Holtzman

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The controversy over the budget is much more than a debate about how much should be spent in 1977 on the military, or social programs. It is more than a struggle between two branches of the federal government--the legislative and the executive-- over which body should determine the national priorities. Ultimately questions are raised about the viability of the democratic planning process in the warfare/welfare state, and how the people--the governed--can be adequately represented in the process. All of these issues are touched on explicitly or implicitly by Congresswoman Holtzman in the debate (although, to be sure, she was most …

Forward To Our Origins: Social Work Skills And Political Action In The Current Crisis, Bertram A. Weinert

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The last decade of the 19th century and the years prior to World War I was an exciting and fruitful period in United States history. It was a time of unrest, but characterized by vigorous discontent, not cynicism or despair. There was an aggressive optimism that fostered confidence in social action, even to the belief that poverty could be abolished. The failure to achieve that goal remains our burden today, but to have begun the struggle then was a significant step. It was the developing profession of social work that initiated that battle against poverty.

Influencing Welfare/Warfare Priorities Through The New Budgetary Process, Ann Blalock

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In the previous article, Weinert challenged social workers, and other professionals in the area of social welfare, to commit themselves to greater collective political action in the interest of substantial social change. He suggested that there are many options for movement in that direction. This article briefly discusses one incremental option within the established political system, intervention within the new Congressional budgetary process. This is not an insignificant strategy. Its purpose is to influence the way the national budget is constructed. The budget incorporates to an important degree the society's prevailing definition of its priorities. Furthermore, future policy alternatives are …