Social Work Commons^™

Let The Church Rise: The Acceptance Of Government Funding By The Religious Community In New Orleans Post-Katrina, Jaime Collins Hilton

LSU Master's Theses

This research presents themes which generate insight about why religious organizations in New Orleans accept or decline government funding for disaster relief and rebuilding. A total of eight in-depth interviews were conducted with church representatives to explore opinions regarding churches’ stance on obtaining federal funding for emergency aid provided to survivors of Hurricane Katrina and also for rebuilding purposes. Furthermore, quantitative results were obtained in collaboration with the LSU Public Policy Research Lab as part of a cross-sectional, exploratory study. The Public Policy Research Lab contacted an additional total of 54 churches (N=62) in the New Orleans metropolitan area were …

A Study Of Elementary School Children At Risk For Truancy: Exploring Gender Differences, Services Offered, And Other Factors Related To Truancy, Alice Joseph

LSU Master's Theses

This cross sectional, exploratory study examined the characteristics of elementary school children at risk for truancy. Furthermore, the study explored if there were any significant gender differences in the number of children referred to the TASC program. The current study also sought to answer if there were any gender differences in common problem areas reported to have an impact on truancy. Finally, any differences between children identified as low risk and high risk were also investigated. This study used secondary data analysis. Elementary school children (N = 23,459), grades Kindergarten through 4th grade who participated in the TASC program of …

An Exploratory Study Of Social Work Supervisors' Supervisory Styles, Motivations, And Evaluative Processes, Michelle Elise Chevallier

LSU Master's Theses

While many factors influence the quality of social work supervision, the purpose of this qualitative study was to explore social work supervisors’ supervisory styles, motivations, and evaluative processes and its impact on the social work profession. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered from 10 Board Approved Clinical Supervisors (BACSs) during a one-time session in which a questionnaire on supervisory styles was administered and an interview covering supervisory styles, motivations, and evaluative processes was conducted. This project was undertaken to better understand some of the perceptions, values, beliefs, and problems involved in the supervisory process and its impact on the profession. …

Distance As A Barrier To Child And Adolescent Mental Health Service Access In Post-Katrina Orleans Parish, Rob Harrison

LSU Master's Theses

Socially vulnerable populations are more susceptible to the impacts of natural disasters than other groups. An aspect of social vulnerability is lack of access to resources following a disaster. Distance is one barrier that prevents socially vulnerable populations from accessing services. Using 2000 U.S. Census Bureau data and current outpatient child and adolescent mental health facilities in post-Katrina Orleans Parish, Louisiana, this thesis seek to understand if those facilities are located farther from block groups with higher percentages of demographically disadvantaged residents than from block groups with lower percentages of demographically disadvantaged residents. Block group demographic disadvantage is defined in …

Breast Health Behavior Among Lesbians: The Role Of Health Beliefs, Heterosexism, And Homophobia, Dana Dehart

Faculty and Staff Publications

The Health Belief Model was used as a conceptual framework for exploring how health beliefs and perceptions of heterosexism and homophobia in health care relate to lesbians' breast health behaviors, including use of breast exams and mammograms, visits to health care providers, and use of complementary/alternative care. A total of 173 exclusively homosexual women completed survey measures assessing health beliefs, experiences of heterosexism/homophobia, and health maintenance behaviors as these related to breast health. Findings indicated that women perceived heterosexism and homophobia from providers to influence the amount of discussion they had with providers and, to a lesser extent, care received, …

Social Impact: Green Dream: Environmental Justice Is Emerging From The Shadows., Rick Skwiot

Social Impact Publication

"We have been slow to engage as a profession," Rogge says of social work's inclusion of the natural environment in research, teaching, and practice—a criticism shared by others interviewed here. She knows of no existing specialization or concentration in the United States or Canada for environmental social work or social work in natural environment, as she prefers to call it. But indicators suggest that may soon change.

Social Impact: Social Work Reaches Out To Returning Veterans, Researches Ways To Help., Susan Thompson

Social Impact Publication

It has become a truism that this new global war on terror is a different kind of war, open-ended in time and place. But all wars are different, and as this snapshot of today's returnees from Afghanistan and Iraq shows, so are the men and women who come home from them.

Social Impact: Perspectives With Melissa Jonson-Reid And Brett Drake: Changing The Role Of Child Welfare, Betsy Rogers, Geoff Story

Social Impact Publication

"A public health approach would help move child welfare from assessing and preventing an action to thinking about how to support healthy families..."

Social Impact, Edward F. Lawler, Tonya E. Edmonds, Enola K. Proctor, Ellen Rostand, Julie Kennedy, Jessica Martin, Toky Branding + Design, Donna Boyd, A.J. Boyd

Social Impact Publication

From the Dean: Remember the Past. Imagine the Future. Celebrate Today.;

Perspectives: Temperature Rising: Health Care Reform is Back;

Bookshelf: From Incentives to Intuition: What Faculty and Staff are Reading.;

Perspectives with Melissa Jonson-Reid & Brett Drake: Changing the Role of Child Welfare; Perspectives: SEED for Oklahoma Kids.;

Interview: Q&A with Julian Le Grand;

Connecting Individual Health with Public Health: New interdisciplinary approaches are needed to solve today's health care challenges. The solution lies at the nexus of social work, public health, and medicine.;

The Green Dream: The social work profession has been slow to engage the issue of environmental …

Television Violence Prevention Versus Juvenile Violence Prevention: Any Connections In Parental Control?, Sharlette Kellum

Contemporary Issues in Juvenile Justice

Animated features, like children's cartoons, are considered by some to be the most violent shows on televi-sion, with approximately 25 to 50 acts of violence per hour (Dietz and Strasburger, 1991). Cartoons, unlike other shows that portray violence, present instances of violence to children in an "acceptable" way, which teaches children from zero to 17 years of age that hurting people is tolerable. Television violence has been linked to juvenile aggression, which has been linked to juvenile violence. In researching several studies, the author found that many of the preventions mentioned in the television violence studies were also mentioned in …

Urban Sprawl, Patrick G. Donnelly

Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Faculty Publications

In the early 21st century, urban sprawl continues to be a source of considerable controversy and political debate, yet many Americans quietly accept sprawl. They express their acceptance by moving farther away from central cities into housing and business developments on land that was formerly rural and undeveloped. While a significant number of suburban communities have existed in the United States since the late 19th century, the greatest growth in suburbs occurred after World War II.

At the dawn of the 20th century, the suburban population represented less than 12 percent of the total U.S. population. By 1950, that figure …

Psychosocial Aspects Of The 2008 End-Stage Renal Disease Conditions For Coverage, Teri Browne

Faculty and Staff Publications

On October 14, 2008, practices and policies in every dialysis unit in the United States and its territories will besignificantly changed with the implementation of the 2008 Conditions for Coverage (CfCs) for End-Stage RenalDisease Facilities (Office of the Federal Register, 2008). These CfCs mark the first wholesale change in the regulationsfor dialysis units in more than 30 years, and the Council of Nephrology Social Workers (CNSW) is makingevery effort to provide its members with the tools and resources they need to adapt to and adopt these new CfCs.This special issue of The Journal of Nephrology Social Work is intended to …

Early Resident Experiences At A New Mixed-Income Development In Chicago, Mark L. Joseph

Faculty Scholarship

Mixed-income development is an increasingly popular poverty deconcentration strategy in the United States but there have been few in-depth studies about the experiences of residents once they move in to the new housing developments. This article explores the early experiences of residents of all income levels who have moved into a new mixed-income development on the south side of Chicago. In-depth interviews have been conducted with 46 residents of the development, including 23 former public housing residents. Interviews were also conducted with a comparison group of 69 public housing residents who did not move to the development. I find that …

Supporting Families Including Children With Disabilities: A Curriculum Module On Community Integration, Eileen M. Brennan, Julie M. Rosenzweig, Lisa Maureen Stewart

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

PDF version of a presentation given at the Annual Program Meeting of the Council on Social Work Education, Philadelphia, PA, Oct. 2008.

Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation: A Developing Profession, Mary Dallas Allen, Eileen M. Brennan, Beth L. Green, Kathy S. Hepburn, Roxane K. Kaufmann

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

As a career path, early childhood mental health consultation MHC is an emerging and growing work force opportunity. In keeping with the vision of an effective transformed service system expressed in the final report of the Presidents' New Freedom Commission, and communities are expanding capacity to meet the mental health needs of young children and caregivers through mental health sultation. ECMHC supports children in naturalistic community and avoids the excessively ^"expert^" tude⁹ and works through collaboration with families and other providers who care for them. In addition, is growing experience and research evidence to suggest that ECMHC …

The Role Of Interagency Collaboration For Substance- Abusing Families Involved With Child Welfare, Beth L. Green, Anna Rockhill, Scott Burns

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Meeting the needs of families involved with the child welfare system because of a substance abuse issue remains a challenge for child welfare practitioners. In order to improve services to these families, there has been an increasing focus on improving collaboration between child welfare, treatment providers, and the court systems. This paper presents the results from qualitative interviews with 104 representatives of these three systems that explore how the collaborative process works to benefit families, as well as the barriers and supports for building successful collaborations. Results indicate that collaboration has at least three major functions: building shared value systems, …

Increased Hiv Risk Associated With Criminal Justice Involvement Among Men On Methadone, Matthew Epperson, Nabila El-Bassel, Louisa Gilbert, E. Roberto Orellana, Mingway Chang

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper examines the relationship between HIV risk and criminal justice involvement among a random sample of 356 men enrolled in methadone maintenance treatment programs in New York City. Bivariate and logistic regression analyses were performed to estimate the associations between measures of criminal justice involvement and participant HIV risk, controlling for socio-demographic variables. A lifetime history of incarceration was significantly associated with being HIV positive (Adjusted OR = 5.08). Recent arrest was associated with unprotected vaginal sex and having multiple female sexual partners. Sex trading was associated with both arrest and incarceration, and the strongest association was found between …

Rewards And Concerns: Marital Role Quality And Child Mental Health Disorders, Anna M. Malsch, Julie M. Rosenzweig, Eileen M. Brennan, Lisa Maureen Stewart, John Conley

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

PDF version of a presentation given at the 88th Annual Convention of the Western Psychological Association. Irvine, CA, April 2008.

Corporate Social Responsibility For Solving The Housing Problem For The Poor In South Africa, Ayman Ahmed Ezzat Othman, Basheera Mia

Architectural Engineering

No abstract provided.

An American's Guide To Cultural Brokering, Jessica Anna Sauer

Honors Program Theses

The United States is the world's largest refugee host, welcoming almost 3 million people in the last 30 years, according to the January 16th, 2007 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to refugees, the United States accepted 1,266,264 immigrants in 2006, as stated in the Office of Immigration Statistics 2006 Yearbook of Statistics. Furthermore, the Kids Count Data Center reports that one out of every five children lives in an immigrant family. Clearly, these numbers show that immigrants compose a significant part of our communities.

While the US strives to welcome newcomers, many immigrants are left in the …

Geographic Patterns, Patrick G. Donnelly

Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Faculty Publications

Criminologists, law enforcement officials, and city planners have long been interested in the relationship between geography and crime. Some of the earliest empirical studies of crime were conducted in the 1830s and 1840s by Andre Michel Guerry and Adolphe Quetelet, who plotted recorded crimes on maps and showed considerable variation in the numbers of crimes across geographic areas. As part of the Chicago ecological school of the 1920s and 1930s, Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay examined rates of delinquency in reference to the concentric zones in urban areas. The development of social area analysis and factor analytic techniques in the …

Review Of Sociology In America: A History. Craig Calhoun, Editor. Reviewed By Richard Caputo., Richard Caputo

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Book review of Craig Calhoun (Ed.). Sociology in America: A History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. $85.00 hardcover, $30.00 papercover.

The Effects Of Children's Perceptions Of Attachment Security And Emotion Regulation On School Disengagement Among Elementary School Truants, Heeyoung Kim

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The major focus of this study was to examine how children’s perceptions of attachment security and children’s emotion regulation predict school disengagement among elementary school truants. This study utilized an exploratory, cross-sectional survey design. Data collection was accomplished with four standardized survey instruments, completed by 74 truants (ages 7 to 12 years) and their parents and teachers, and secondary data collected by the East Baton Rouge (EBR) Truancy Assessment and Services Center (TASC), Louisiana during the 2006-2007 academic years. The school disengagement model was tested with three latent variables (children’s perception of emotional bonds, emotion regulation, and school disengagement) using …

Motivational Interviewing: Does It Increase Clients’ Retention In Intensive Outpatient Treatment?, David A. Patterson Silver Wolf (Adelv Unegv Waya) Phd

Brown School Faculty Publications

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a clinical technique that has received considerable attention in the addictions arena over the past decade. In the present pilot study, the impact of providing up to five MI sessions during the first two weeks of intensive outpatient treatment (IOP), relative to the treatment as usual was addressed. The participants were 106 IOP patients, and a post-test design was utilized. Results showed that adding MI sessions during the first two weeks of IOP did not increase the number of days in treatment nor was there an increase in treatment completion. It is possible that the MI …

Towards A More Deeply Child-Centered Approach To Child Poverty, Katherine Tyson Mccrea

Social Work: School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

A Delicate Dance: Identity Issues In A Religious Nonprofit Umbrella Organization, Edward J. Gumz

Social Work: School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Other Works

Religious nonprofit social service and health organizations provide care to a large number of people in American communities. To enhance the services that these organizations provide, religious denominations have formed national nonprofit umbrella organizations. Little has been written about these umbrella organizations, their identity, and their functions. Using archival sources and interviews, this article explores the history and development of Lutheran Services in America (LSA), a large, Protestant, national nonprofit umbrella organization. Elements of this organization’s identity are examined—its ongoing efforts to affirm its religious values and goals, its efforts to meet economic needs, and its serving as a forum …

Spirituality And Aging In Social Work: State Of The Art And Future Possibilities, Holly Nelson-Becker, Edward R. Canda

Social Work: School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article identifies the unique contributions social work has made to the study of spirituality and religion in relation to aging, based on respect for their diverse expressions. Definitions of religion and spirituality that particularly relate to late life are provided. The study of spirituality and aging is situated in four historical phases ranging from sectarian origins (1890s to 1920), to professionalization and secularization (1920s-1970s), to renewed interest (1980s to mid 1990s), to the current phase characterized by transcending boundaries. Interdisciplinary research by social workers is prevalent. Topics of study include a wide range of religious and nonreligious spiritual perspectives, …

The Effects Of Family, School And Peer Support On The Achievement Outcomes Of African American Adolescents, M. Annette Clayton

Theses and Dissertations

This study used survey design to explore the relationship between protective influences (support from parents, teachers and peers, social capital assets, and social support use), contextual risks, and two achievement outcomes in a representative sample of male and female African American high school seniors (N=317). Responses to two questionnaires, weighted cumulative grade point averages, and eleventh grade Virginia English Reading Standards of Learning test scores were analyzed. Multiple regression analysis revealed that some support variables were predictive of better achievement outcomes and others were associated with poorer outcomes. Three of the parent support predictors were associated with poorer achievement outcomes, …

Informal Caregivers Of Advanced Cancer Patients: The Impact Of Geographic Proximity On Social Support And Bereavement Adjustment, John Garland Cagle

Theses and Dissertations

This research explored the social and psychological needs of caregivers of advanced cancer patients, and their subsequent bereavement adjustment. The study focuses exclusively on informal caregivers who provide assistance to patients receiving hospice care for end-stage cancer. Those individuals living furthest from the dying care recipient, the long distance caregivers, were of particular interest. This study used a prospective design to explore how a caregiver's geographic proximity impacted their social support and bereavement adjustment. A 2 x 3 repeated measures design was used to gather data from caregivers before a patient's death (using a pre-death questionnaire) as well as after …

Faith-Based Organizations And Legislative Advocacy: A Qualitative Inquiry, M. Lori Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

Since the early 1990s, religion and matters of faith and spirituality have become a focal point in numerous arenas beyond the individual and traditionally sacred. With President George W. Bush's White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives of 2001, the Charitable Choice provision of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act that preceded it in 1996, and the myriad of legal challenges that followed, matters of religion have become paramount in political discourse regarding social welfare. The viability of faith-based social service provision and the organizations providing the direct services have been the focus of speculation, debate, and …