Social Work Commons^™

Interorganizational Collaboration: An Examination Of Factors That Influence The Motivation For Participation In A Collaborative Partnership Of Homeless Service Providers, Jan Marva Ivery

Theses and Dissertations

This project was a mixed methods study that examined the collaboration dimensions of Homeward's planning process and the factors that motivate organizations to participate. The study examined the collaborative strategy used by an organization called Homeward located in Richmond, Virginia. Homeward is a broker organization (Chaskin, Brown, Venkatesh, & Vidal, 2001) that was created in 1998 to mediate and nurture relationships among partnering organizations in order to facilitate the collaborative process required by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to receive Continuum of Care funding. During the quantitative component of the study, a survey was sent …

Evaluating A Day Treatment Program For Children With Serious Emotional Disorders, Nicole Lynn Lee

Theses and Dissertations

The current study used a longitudinal design to evaluate a day treatment program for children with serious emotional disorder located in Richmond, Virginia (N = 101). Child and Adolescent Functional Assessment Scale (Hodges, 1984, 1999) results were analyzed from children who had attended the program for at least six months. Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance tests indicated that children attending YDT for nine months improved their overall functioning F(2, 217) = 26.23, p = .01 as well as their functioning at school F(3,279)= 10.822, p =.01, home F(3, 244) = 6.120, p = .01, and in the community F(3, 238) …

A Qualitative Study Of The Lived Experience Of Single, Gay Adoptive Fathers, John Daryl Matthews

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study expands the existing literature on fatherhood, single parents, and gay and lesbian adoption to include the unique experiences of single, gay men who became adoptive parents after "coming out", or establishing a gay identity. To illustrate these unique and common experiences, individual ethnographic interviews were conducted with 16 fathers residing throughout the United States, as well as internationally. Specifically, this study explored the participants' experiences through their reflections of the adoption process, and through their experiences after the family was established. The participants had experiences to those found in previous studies on gay and lesbian adoption and …

Utilizing A Structuration Perspective To Examine Perceptions Of Labor Market Opportunities & Constraints In A Distressed Urban Neighborhood, Sharon M. Mcdonald

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to understand how members of an urban extreme poverty neighborhood experience the labor market and how they perceive the role of social policies and institutions that attempt to facilitate or mediate employment opportunities.

Residents of extreme poverty neighborhoods have been the subject of numerous public policy efforts designed to ameliorate the geographic concentration of poverty as well as strategies to promote work participation based on existing theoretical models of how work participation can be induced. It is argued that the predominant theoretical models that shape inquiry and the development of policy recommendations are incomplete …