Social Work Commons^™

Older Blacks' Predictions Of Their Social Support Networks, Brenda Crawley

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Predicting resources for one's later years is risky and evokes feelings of vulnerability. Findings from a study of older blacks reveal that while race and culture may predispose clients to prefer certain resources, such as spouses and children, others realistically expect kin and friends to care for them. The heterogeneous nature of the black elderly suggests an open posture be maintained in assessing support resources for those who face short- or long- term care needs.

The Impact Of Program Centralization On The Utilization Of Social Services: The Case Of The Ssi Program, Yossef Meller, Nancy Mudrick

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

When the Old Age Assistance (OAA), Aid to the Blind (AB), and Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled (APTD) caseloads were converted to SSI in 1974, only cash payments were transferred to the Social Security Administration; social services remained available through public welfare agencies. This paper assesses the extent to which the service utilization of low income aged and disabled persons changed with the social service delivery system changes associated with the implementation of SSI. We found that the proportion of persons receiving social services decreased slightly between the last year of the old programs and the first year …

The Effect Of Changes In The Federal Disability Programs On State And Local General Assistance Programs, Courtney Scherer Petersen, Eric R. Kingson

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Since early 1981, there has been a large-scale removal of persons from the SSI and Social Security disability programs as a result of the Social Security Disability Amendments of 1980. This article reports on the findings of a national survey designed to determine whether the removal of persons from the federal disability programs had an impact on state and local General Assistance programs and the extent to which older recipients of General Assistance are in need of long-term income assistance for health and other reasons.

Some states and jurisdictions have noticed an increase in applications as a result of federal …

Symposium On "Professional Achievement In Social Work", Robert D. Leighninger Jr.

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This Symposium is an experiment. It is an attempt to have an argument over a piece of controversial research in a way that will clarify both the methodological and ideological issues involved.

Comment On "Professional Achievement" In Social Work, Harris Chaiklin

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Anything which would help explain professional achievement in social work would be an important contribution to knowledge. In the present instance poor conceptualization and weak data analyses do not support such a conclusion.

Book Review, Jonathan Rabinowitz

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

BOOK REVIEW BY ARTHUR B. SHOSTAK AND GARY McLOUTH, WITH LYNN SENG

Professional Contacts And Perceived Occupational Prestige, Moshe Sherer

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A random sample of 142 social workers in Israel, were asked to indicate the other professionals whom they meet in the course of their work, and the frequency of these contacts. They were also asked to assess the occupational prestige of social workers relative to that of the other professionals. The findings showed that social workers tended to downgrade their own prestige, the more frequently they met with representatives of occupations which have higher rankings on an objective occupational prestige scale.

The Definition Of Social Problems: Differing Perceptions Of Israeli Social Workers And Women, Varda Muhlbauer, Claire Rabin, Nadine Hollander

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Recent social changes have intensified and created special problems and needs among women. However, social work schools have not included women's studies as part of the overall curriculum. This Israeli study examined the congruence of women's needs as perceived by women clients and as perceived by social workers, to see whether a specialized training program is needed. Fifty low-socioeconomic status women, women selected from the general population, and 16 social workers from the same community were presented with a list of 21 problem areas known to be pertinent to women. The group of 50 women equally represented homemakers, divorced, widowed, …

A Critical Analysis Of The Impact Of Day Care On The Pre-School Child And The Family, John T. Pardeck, Jean A. Pardeck, John W. Murphy

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Maternal employment has increased dramatically over the last two decades. The result of this increase in the number of working mothers is the expanded use of day care programs for children. Examined in this paper are research findings on the impact of day-care on the child and the family. The implications of these findings for policy development are discussed.

Currently in the United States, over 50 percent of mothers work outside the home; this figure is expected to rise to 75 percent by 1990. The fastest growing segment of the working mother population is among those with children under two …

Journal Of Sociology & Social Welfare Vol. 13, No. 4 (December 1986)

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Table of Contents

• The Definition of Social Problems: Differing Perceptions of Israeli Social Workers and Women - VARDA MUHLBAUEP, CLAIRE RABIU, NADINE HOLLANDER - pp. 701
• Professional Contacts and Perceived Occupational Prestige - MOSHE SHERER - pp. 721
• Social Worker's Satisfactions: Methodological Notes and Substantive Findings - Y. MELLER, D. MACAROV - pp. 740
• Social Service Needs of Migrants in Limbo; Israelis in New York - JOSEF KORAZIM - pp. 762
• Holidays as Multiple Realities: Experiencing Good Times and Bad Times after a Disabling Injury - MARY JO DEEGAN - pp. 786
• Assessing the Needs of Mothers With Mentally Retarded …

Assessing The Needs Of Mothers With Mentally Retarded Offspring: An Empirical Approach, Jonathan Rabinowitz

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This exploratory study assesses the needs of mothers with retarded offspring living at home. Previous studies have focused on meeting those parental needs which would benefit their retarded offspring. This study does not limit parental needs to those needs, which if met would benefit the retarded child, and defines parents as an independent group with special needs.

Measuring Domestic Violence In An Alcoholic Population, Larry R. Livingston

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A survey of 107 adults receiving residential treatment for substance abuse was conducted, to determine characteristics of domestic violence in relationships. The survey incorporated instruments to measure the degree of substance abuse (the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test or MAST) as well as types and frequencies of domestic violence (the Conflict Tactics Scale or CTS-N). Findings are then compared to a national study of 2143 normals (Straus, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980) to ascertain differences in domestic violence.

Findings indicate that 83% of alcoholic subjects behaved violently in past relationships, compared to 28% of the normal population. Fifty-five percent of the alcoholics …

A Few Parting Words, Norman N. Goroff

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The publication of this issue brings to an end thirteen years of my involvement with this Journal as Managing Editor, Publisher, and Editor. Ralph Segalman and I put the first issue together in the backyard of my house in West Hartford in 1972. The issue was printed in 1973 and marked the beginning of an adventure that has lasted all these years. We advanced the money to pay for the printing of that first issue. The subscriptions that came in enabled us to pay back the advances and to be self-supporting.

Social Workers' Satisfactions: Methodological Notes And Substantive Findings, Y. Meller, D. Macarov

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The use of instruments derived from industrial research to investigate the work satisfactions of social workers can lead to distortion of results. Responses from ninety-one social workers in nine agencies indicates sources of satisfactions and dissatisfactions not present in industrial settings, and -- in contradistinction to the "dual-factor" or "bipolarity" theory -- both satisfactions and dissatisfactions arising from the same source in some cases.

The most important factors affecting workers' satisfactions were the ability to achieve results, their relationships with clients, their relationship with members of multidisciplinary staffs, and presence or absence of sufficient time and resources.

The "higher order" …

Social Service Needs Of Migrants In Limbo: Israelis In New York, Josef Korazim

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This is an exploratory study about the social service needs of Israeli migrants in New York City. A structured, face to face interview schedule was administered by the author to a sample of 86 intact families. The families were found to be mostly undecided regarding their stay in the United States. Their state of "limbo" was reflected in specific patterns of utilization of general and ethnic social services, and in six major areas of concern and needs: (1) a sense of social isolation; (2) the wives' low level of adjustment; (3) emotional stress due to the families' hesitancy to stay …

Holidays As Multiple Realities: Experiencing Good Times And Bad Times After A Disabling Injury, Mary Jo Deegan

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Holidays are idealized as times of celebration. They are embedded in cultural symbols, family patterns, and lived experience. Because all holidays are not good times, however, the lived experience of holidays is considerably more complex than its symbolization. This ambivalence is dramatically deepened for recently disabled adults who view holidays as a specially strained time of remembrance. Past holidays are often idealized in a new way as one's biography is placed into a new embodied reality. Simultaneously, holidays remain days when one is supposed to celebrate, and often denote some celebration for the injured. The resulting experience is a melange …

A Perspective On Differential Services In Counseling: Altruism And Likeness, James Latimore

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In this exploratory study using a small sample, an attempt is made to understand the differential services provided by vocational counselors in a non-profit agency, a setting in which a strong identification with clients is encouraged. The services are measured and the unequal measures of service are related to the degree to which the client is seen as an image of the counselor in certain respects. Counseling is viewed as an altruistic occupation and the differential services are analyzed in this context. In general, it is suggested that the differential counseling and psycho-therapeutic services noted by other writers all reflect …

Restraint Economics And The New Right: A Structural Analysis Of The Political Economy Of Social Services Cutbacks, John Butcher

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Restraint by government in the area of social service spending in the 1980's has become an issue of grave concern for social service practitioners, planners, and administrators. The emergence in North America of neo-conservative economic policies has engendered a body of critical and provocative literature which examines the effects of "restraint economics".

Recent work in geography has sought to locate the supply-side trend within a framework of macro-level processes. These suggest that a declining public commitment to maintaining the social safety net is linked to broader structural changes in the workplace and spatial shifts of capital and industry (Dear & …

Children's Violence To Single Mothers, Larry R. Livingston

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A survey of 151 mothers to determine characteristics of violence experienced from their children. The survey assessed the length of time they had been single parents, the age and sex of their children, the frequency and types of violence they experienced, and the influence of violent adult modeling upon the children's violence.

Findings indicate that 29% of the mothers had been assaulted by their children. The violent families contained more children than the nonviolent families, and the violent children's ages were more closely-spaced. Battered mothers also reported greater modeling of violence (the children seeing an adult striking their mother) than …

Journal Of Sociology & Social Welfare Vol. 13, No. 3 (September 1986)

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Symposium on Community Organization

MICHAEL REISCH, STANLEY WENOCUR - Co-Editors

• Introduction - MICHAEL REISCH, STANLEY WENOCUR - pp. 445
• Community Empowerment As A Non-Problem - JOHN L. RUSSELL-ERLICH, FELIX G. RIVERA - pp. 451
• Community Work Practice and Client Empowerment Under Conservative Conditions: From Observed Practice to A Theory of Societal Context - RALPH E. WOEHLE - pp. 466
• Community Organization: A Survival Strategy For Community-Based Empowerment-Oriented Programs - STEPHEN M. ROSE - pp. 491
• Recruitment and Retention of Organizational Participants: What's Happening Out There Now? - JACQUELINE B. MONDROS, SCOTT M. WILSON - pp. 507
• People Learning To Help …

Introduction, Michael Reisch, Stanley Wenocur

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

One of the few promising developments within social work during the current era of Reaganomics has been the revival of interest in community organizing strategies and methods. During he 1970s, most of the vitality in the community organizing field came from outside social work--from the grassroots community groups Harry Boyte described in THE BACKYARD REVOLUTION, from raining schools like the Midwest Academy and the Industrial Areas foundation, and from social movement organizations among women, minorities, gays, the elderly and the disabled. Now, in response o the pressures of severe resource cutbacks, shifts in national ideology and culture, and a less …

Community Empowerment As A Non-Problem, John L. Russel-Erlich

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

It is not much fun to be a radical any more -- as a student, a teacher or a community activist. Often it seems as if there are too many battles and not enough time to begin to fight them. The privileged position in which many on the left found themselves in years past has given way to the treatment usually accorded persons with serious contagious diseases. Feeling unappreciated, unneeded and unwanted, we have tended to become a bit cranky and hypercritical. In our frustration, we have fallen prey to an isolation that encourages us to think only of people …

Community Organization: A Survival Strategy For Community-Based, Empowerment-Oriented Programs, Stephen M. Rose

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Social work as a profession and social workers as individual professionals often labor within the constraints of structural ambiguity. The historical emergence and location of the profession within the structure of a political economy whose normal functioning simultaneously creates the miseries of the profession's clients and the funds to serve them, poses a series of contradictions internal to the field and to most of its practitioners. The central expression of this conflict is hidden or mystified in social work education, thus preserving the legitimacy of the social structure while delegitimating or invalidating its oppressed populations. This process occurs through the …

People Learning To Help Themselves, Carl Tjerandsen

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

When the preparation of a final report of the Emil Schwarzhaupt Foundation was first envisaged, it was assumed that it would deal primarily with education for citizenship and, hence, would be primarily of interest to civic educators. However, because so much of its grant program involved efforts to form community organizations or to use other kinds of groups (e.g. 4-H club groups or boys clubs) as vehicles within which certain behaviors might be changed, it became evident that other kinds of professionals such as social workers or community health educators might find the experiences of its grantees to be useful. …

Recruitment And Retention Of Organizational Participants: What's Happening Out There Now?, Jacqueline B. Mondros, Scott M. Wilson

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This is a study on some initial research relating literature to actual practice in social action organizations. Our concern is to learn what are social action organizations of the 198 0s doing to recruit and maintain their membership and how this relates to the literature on recruitment and retention. We will review the literature, describe the methodology and report the findings, and then attempt to connect the findings and the literature.

Revival Of Welfare Reform, Seung Ja Doe

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

It is a well known fact that poverty is prevalent among single mothers and children. Currently, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program fails to provide for all children and single mothers in need of public assistance. Previous attempts to "reform" the welfare system have been unsuccessful. However, in the time when the poor's right for social welfare is increasingly threatened, ideas for welfare reform need to be revived. The author advocates for a threedimensional agenda for welfare reform: universal assistance to families with children, reinforced support for children with absent parents, and targeted employment programs for single …

Collective Mobility And Fragmentation: A Model Of Social Work History, David Wagner

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The author utilizes recent sociological approaches to professionalism in order to develop a dynamic conceptual model of the history of Social Work. Professionalization is understood as a social movement or "collective mobility project" of the lower middle class which has been the dominant force in Social Work for a century. This social movement seeks control and expansion of professional markets for services and recognition and sanction from elites. In each period of history, however, Social Work professionalizers have had to struggle against popular unrest and elite criticism aimed at the field. Challenges to Social Work professionalizers and their basic paradigms …

Community Work Practice And Client Empowerment Under Conservative Conditions: From Observed Practice To A Theory Of Societal Context, Ralph E. Woehle

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The thesis of this paper is that community work can be understood in relation to the larger structure of society. Community work is seen in terms of observations on cases previously reported. These observations suggest a political model of community work. In that model, goals are short term task goals of program development aimed at social problem or disadvantaged groups. The model assumes conflict among groups which can be dealt with politically. Client systems are different than constituent systems in that model, and clients are weak participants in community work. Non-client voluntary associations can nonetheless influence program decisions. These model …

Examination Of The Basque Collectives: Lessons From One Of The World's Most Successful Community Organization Efforts, Charles H. Frost

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The system of Basque collectives is recognized as the world's most effective worker owned system (Henk & Logan, 1982). It is a direct result of the community organization effort of Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarreta, who created an extremely progressive agenda under Spain's repressive Franco regime. Father Jose Maria's work will be explored in this paper and principles extracted that are important lessons for community organization teachers and practitioners.

The potential values of worker ownership have long been recognized; the ability of community organizers, however, to realize this potential has generally fallen far short. The worker owned enterprises in the Basque …

Experiences Of Women Activists: Implications For Community Organizing Theory And Practice, Cheryl Hyde

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The field of community organizing would be wise to heed the words of Abigail Adams to her revolutionary husband, John. Contributions of women activists have been virtually ignored by the field of social work. Consequently, social work has a diminished knowledge base and has alienated large numbers of talented women. Ironically, both the past and the future of community organizing are tied intimately with the action of women. Foremothers include Jane Addams, Dorothea Dix and Lillian Wald. Current trends suggest that "women's issues," such as poverty, the family and reproductive rights, will be on national, state and local agendas for …