Social Work Commons^™

Social Work Support For Families In Crisis At Our Southern Border, Gil Villagran

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

"What the hell is going on at the U.S.-Mexico border?"Knowing of my 35 years of Child Welfare direct practice social work for the Santa Clara Social Services Agency, and 20 years of teaching social work at San Jose State University, as well as my study of human rights and Latin American history, many of my friends have been asking me, about as our president might ask: "What the hell is going on at the U.S.-Mexico border?"

Immigration And Environment In The U.S.: A Spatial Study Of Air Quality, Guizhen Ma, Erin Trouth Hofmann

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Environmental consequences are frequently cited as a justification for restricting immigration to the United States, but there is little empirical research on the environmental consequences of immigration to support such arguments. The research that does exist shows immigration to be less environmentally harmful than native population growth, but is hampered by small samples and fails to account for spatial autocorrelation of air quality. We use the air quality domain of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Quality Index (EQI) to examine the association between immigrant and native populations and local air quality across all counties in the continental U.S. We employ …

A Workable Balance: Maternity Leave And Female Success In The Workplace In Finland And The United States, Karey J. Murphy

Social Work Doctoral Dissertations

The Family and Medical Leave Act was signed into law in 1993. FMLA, allowing for a few exceptions and criteria, provides unpaid leave for certain health conditions or for the birth or adoption of a child. While the United States offers a gender-neutral policy unlike most other nations, the leave is not required to be paid. This can have enormous impacts on not only a female’s decision to return to work after the birth of a child but her continued decision to pursue leadership roles within the workforce. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between female …

Faculty Perspectives On Financial Capability And Asset Building In Social Work Education: A Research Report, Margaret S. Sherraden, Jin Huang, Lissa Johnson, Peter Dore, Julie Birkenmaier, Vernon Loke, Sally Hageman

Center for Social Development Research

This report is based on a study conducted in collaboration with the Council on Social Work Education. The report presents findings from a national online survey of social work faculty. Results identify financial and economic (F&E) content taught in the current curriculum, gaps in coverage, and strategies for improving the academic preparation of social workers in these areas. Findings will inform financial capability and asset-building curriculum and improve the academic preparation of social workers.

“Older Adults And Their Experiences With Home Care And Assisted Living”, Faith Robinson

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

As the state of Maine and the U.S. population at large continues to age, discussion about future care and living arrangements for older adults has become an increasingly relevant issue. Older adults are often faced with a range of options for housing, including staying in their home in their community while receiving home care services, or moving to an assisted living facility.

Currently a gap in the research exists as to the attitudes, perceptions, and lived experiences of the older adults themselves around these decisions, experiences, and the meaning of “home” in our older years. This study aims to provide …

Socially Isolated Cambodians In The Us: Recommendations For Health Promotion, S. Megan Berthold, Sengly Kong, Jason Ostrander, Seiya Fukuda

School of Social Work Faculty Publications

Cambodian genocide survivors experience health disparities associated with their traumatic experiences. Cambodian community organizations in the United States are severely challenged to serve these survivors. Community leaders have identified a sub-set of community members of particular concern: those at either end of the age spectrum (elders and young people) who are socially isolated. As part of a larger community-based participatory research project, we conducted a focus group with seven Cambodian community leaders from six cities that sought to better understand the phenomenon of social isolation of Cambodian elders and young people in order to inform health promotion efforts. Cambodian leaders …

The Experience Of Volatility In Low- And Moderate-Income Households: Results From A National Survey, Stephen P. Roll, David S. Mitchell, Sam Bufe, Gracie Lynne, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Center for Social Development Research

This is the first in a series of briefs that the Center for Social Development has produced in partnership with the Aspen Institute’s Expanding Prosperity Impact Collaborative (EPIC) and the Intuit Tax and Financial Center. It highlights new data on the prevalence of income and expense volatility in low- and moderate-income households.

The First Special Issue Of Dignity, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

The Surgeon General's Facing Addiction Report: An Historic Document For Healthcare, S. Levy, J. P. Seale, Victoria A. Osborne, K. L. Kraemer, D. P. Alford, J. Baxter, D. S. Finnell, H. Kunins, A. Y. Walley, D. C. Lewis, D. Maclane-Baeder, A. J. Gordon

School of Social Work Faculty Publications

The publication of Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General's Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health presents an historic moment not only for the field of addiction medicine, but also for the United States as a nation. The Board of Directors of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse (AMERSA), on behalf of our organization, would like to express our appreciation of the efforts of Dr. Vivek Murthy and the Surgeon General's Office to publish the first surgeon general's report covering substance misuse and substance use disorders.

Home Delinquency Rates Are Lower Among Aca Marketplace Households: Evidence From A Natural Experiment, Emily A. Gallagher, Radhakrishnan Gopalon, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Stephen P. Roll, Genevieve Davison

Center for Social Development Research

This brief uses administrative income tax data coupled with survey responses from roughly 5,000 households living near the poverty line to estimate how access to the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance Marketplaces have affected households’ experiences of extreme illiquidity, which is measured by delinquencies on home payments. To estimate this relationship, we exploit a natural experiment underway in states that did not expand Medicaid and created by the eligibility rules for Marketplace subsidies. Results suggest that insured households living near the poverty line are better able to make timely rent and mortgage payments compared with similar, uninsured households. Given housing …

Leveraging Tax Time To Build Financial Capability: Research Evidence And Policy Directions, Meredith Covington, Jane E. Oliphant, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Center for Social Development Research

Over the past decade, a variety of initiatives have been implemented in the United States to facilitate saving and build financial security at tax time, including national experiments, pilot programs, and federal and state policies. Much progress has been made in encouraging tax filers, especially low- to moderate-income (LMI) tax filers, to save a portion of their refund. To expand upon the “golden moment” of saving at tax time, policymakers, practitioners, and researchers must now seek ways in which the lump sum of saving at tax time can serve to render tax filers capable of confidently managing their financial lives. …

Financial Outcomes In Seed For Oklahoma Kids, Margaret M. Clancy, Sondra G. Beverly, Michael Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

The SEED for Oklahoma Kids (SEED OK) experiment is a large-scale policy test of universal, automatic, and progressive Child Development Accounts (CDAs). This fact sheet highlights selected SEED OK financial outcomes measured between 2007 and 2014. Because of SEED OK’s automatic account opening and initial deposits, the CDA has especially large impacts on OK 529 savings among disadvantaged children. Advantaged children are more likely than disadvantaged children to have individual savings in OK 529 accounts, and average individual savings are higher for advantaged children. But, the CDA increases the likelihood that disadvantaged children have OK 529 accounts opened by their …

The Burden Of Student Debt: Findings From A Survey Of Low- And Moderate-Income Households, Mathieu R. Despard, Samuel H. Taylor, Dana C. Perantie, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Center for Social Development Research

Completing a college degree continues to offer a pathway for enjoying greater earnings. Yet tuition has risen sharply and state higher-education funding has declined in recent years, shifting the burden of paying for college to students and their families. As a result, most students (70%) depend on loans to help pay for college and student debt is now greater than credit card debt in the United States. Student debt is increasingly difficult to manage, as debt-to-income ratios, loan default rates, and delinquency rates are on the rise. This brief utilizes data from the 2014 Refund to Savings study to examine …

A Cross-National Validation Of The Short Employment Hope Scale (Ehs-14) In The United States And South Korea, Philip Young P. Hong

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

The Short Employment Hope Scale (EHS-14) has been developed in the United States to assess an individual's level of psychological self-sufficiency—a complementary measure to the widely used economic self-sufficiency in workforce development programs. This study examined the comparability of the EHS-14 between U.S. and South Korean low-income job seeker groups. A multisample confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and a series of invariance tests were conducted to validate EHS-14 using two independent samples. A latent means analysis (LMA) was used to test the latent mean difference between the two samples. The results indicate that CFAs on both U.S. and South Korean samples …

Support For A Tax-Time Savings Policy: Interest In Deferring Tax Refunds With Matched Incentives, Dana C. Perantie, Jane E. Oliphant, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Center for Social Development Research

Support for a Tax-Time Savings Policy: Interest in Deferring Tax Refunds With Matched Incentives

Deconstructing Latinx Racial Paradigms : Cross-Cultural Constructions Of Race And Their Impact On Dominican-American Racial Identity, Jacqueline I. Cosse

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

Conversations in the United States around Latinx populations often discuss Latinx racial identity as a singular entity. Though Latinx is a gender-neutral term for Latino and Hispanic populations, the terms “Hispanic” and “Latino” have slowly become umbrella terms for the racial and ethnic identities of people from over 20 different countries and cultural backgrounds. The amalgamation of these varying cultures and communities into a singular racial categorization results in a reductive framework: one that limits individualization within Latinx-American racial identity. These limitations were looked at via qualitative research with specific reference to Dominican populations: a community whose racial categories reference …

Prescription Drug Diversion: Predictors Of Illicit Acquisition And Redistribution In Three U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Shana Harris, Valentina Nikulina, Camila Gelpi-Acosta, Cory Morton, Valerie Newsome, Alana Gunn, Heidi Hoefinger, Ross Aikins, Vivian Smith, Victoria Barry, Martin J. Downing Jr.

Publications and Research

Objective: Prescription drug diversion, the transfer of prescription drugs from lawful to unlawful channels for distribution or use, is a problem in the United States. Despite the pervasiveness of diversion, there are gaps in the literature regarding characteristics of individuals who participate in the illicit trade of prescription drugs. This study examines a range of predictors (e.g., demographics, prescription insurance coverage, perceived risk associated with prescription drug diversion) of membership in three distinct diverter groups: individuals who illicitly acquire prescription drugs, those who redistribute them, and those who engage in both behaviors.

Methods: Data were drawn from a cross-sectional Internet …

Use Of Alternative Financial Services Among Low- And Moderate-Income Households: Findings From A Large-Scale National Household Financial Survey, Mathieu R. Despard, Dana C. Perantie, Lingzi Luo, Jane Oliphant, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Center for Social Development Research

Use of Alternative Financial Services Among Low- and Moderate-Income Households: Findings From a Large-Scale National Household Financial Survey

Residential Mobility During Adolescence: Even "Upward" Moves Predict High School Dropout, Molly W. Metzger, Patrick J. Fowler, Bennett Kelberman

Center for Social Development Research

Racial and economic segregation have long endured as systemic challenges in U.S. metropolitan areas. To combat the inequalities of segregation, two broad policy approaches have emerged: (1) preservation stresses investment in low-income neighborhoods, and (2) mobility stresses moving households in low-income areas to more affluent areas. Our recent study reveals some possible unintended consequences of the latter approach, particularly for adolescents. We find that moving during adolescence is associated with decreased odds of graduating from high school, even when moving to significantly higher income neighborhoods.

The Seed For Oklahoma Kids Child Development Account Experiment: Accounts, Assets, Earnings, And Savings, Sondra G. Beverly, Margaret M. Clancy, Jin Huang, Michael Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

This brief presents the latest results from SEED for Oklahoma Kids, a pathbreaking randomized experiment to test the effects of automatic, universal, and progressive Child Development Accounts (CDAs) in a statewide sample. Key features of the CDA are automatic opening of a 529 account and an automatic initial $1,000 deposit. The results show that CDAs with automatic deposits invested in a 529 plan may enable children to accumulate meaningful levels of assets over time, even if their families do not contribute to the accounts. As the brief indicates, the new results also have key implications for public policy.

Reproductive And Sexual Healthcare Needs Among Adults With Disabilities As Perceived By Social Workers, Kristen Faye Linton, Heidi Adams Rueda, Lela Rankin Williams, Alex Sandoval, Sharon J. Bolin

Social Work Faculty Publications

People with disabilities often experience unique gynecological and reproductive healthcare needs, which may be exacerbated by their experience of sexual victimization. Previous research on adolescents with disabilities found that social workers held beneficial roles in supporting their clients to make empowered decisions concerning sexual healthcare, pregnancy, and parenting. This study aimed to assess the reproductive and sexual health needs of adults with various disabilities from the perspectives of their social workers. Eleven social workers working primarily with adults with various disabilities were interviewed using a phenomenological study design to offer their perspectives of the sexual and reproductive health needs of …

Coming To America: An Examination Of The U.S. Immigration Debate In Its Historical Context, Julie R. Davidson

Kaleidoscope

The United States is considered a country of immigrants, but a historical tension has existed between new arrivals and the “native” population. Policies regarding immigration have frequently mirrored the nativist fervor that is created in opposition to large influxes of immigrants. The debate about revamping immigration policy, that has been a key issue in Congress in 2006, is not surprising in an historical context. The concern about large numbers, the fear of draining social services, dilution of American culture, loss of American jobs, and the compromising of national security are all concerns that have been voiced recently, and are almost …

Social And Emotional Learning And Social Work In Middle School: A Case Study In Community Partnership, Anne S. Robertson, Amanda Moore Mcbride, Saras Chung, Allison Williams, Victoria May

Center for Social Development Research

Social and emotional learning is increasingly being recognized for its role in urban school reform despite current school improvement efforts focused on academic outcomes. This paper presents a case study in community partnership between a middle school, a community-based organization, and a research university, to implement a social and emotional program in seventh grade social studies. Highlighted is the importance of trust and communication among all partners—including administrators, researchers, front-line staff, teachers, and students. It also suggests a framework to expand school partnerships to include schools of social work, especially when the focus is on social and emotional learning.

Working With Passion, Effecting Change In A Context Of Uncertainty, Sandra M. Moore

Center for Social Development Research

This CSD Perspective has been adapted from a commencement address given by Sandra M. Moore on May 14, 2015, before the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University.

An Exploration Of Barriers Among Gamblers Who Seek Recovery Programs In Spanish, Alicia Rodriguez Marenco

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Gambling in the United States has been in existence since the 1800’s. For over two hundred years, gambling has brought in revenue and entertainment for consumers in the United States. As the population has diversified and the technology has advanced, the access to gambling has grown to be convenient and accessible for the consumer to enjoy. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the barriers and motivators from gamblers who sought recovery programs in Spanish. Fourteen current members of Spanish Gamblers Anonymous group were interviewed in small focus groups. The findings indicated that those who sought Spanish recovery …

Head Start Family Financial Capability: 2013–2014 Annual Report Of The Asset Project, Jami Curley, Anne S. Robertson

Center for Social Development Research

Head Start Family Financial Capability: 2013–2014 Annual Report of the Asset Project

Does Unsecured Debt Decrease Savings? Evidence From The Refund To Savings Initiative, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Jane Oliphant, Blair D. Russell, Ray Boshara

Center for Social Development Research

Does Unsecured Debt Decrease Savings? Evidence From the Refund to Savings Initiative

Community Partner Perspectives Of Dukeengage: 2011–2013, Sarita Barton, Amanda Moore Mcbride, Jaclyn Demarse Purtell

Center for Social Development Research

Community Partner Perspectives of Dukeengage: 2011–2013

Refund To Savings 2013: Comprehensive Report On A Large-Scale Tax-Time Saving Program, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Dana C. Perantie, Blair D. Russell, Krista Comer, Samuel H. Taylor, Lingzi Luo, Clinton Key, Dan Ariely

Center for Social Development Research

Refund to Savings 2013: Comprehensive Report on a Large-Scale Tax-Time Saving Program

Closing The Racial Wealth Gap: Innovative Solutions For Change, Southern Regional Asset Building Coalition

Center for Social Development Research

Closing the Racial Wealth Gap: Innovative Solutions for Change