Family, Life Course, and Society Commons^™

Impact – Information Management, Public Access, Community Transformation: Year One Evaluation Report, September 1, 2000 Through August 31, 2001, Oscar Gutierrez, John Mcgah, Donna H. Friedman

Center for Social Policy Publications

The goals of the IMPACT project are “to improve access to and delivery of human services for low-income residents, strengthen community planning and resource allocation, and enhance understanding of how data on homelessness can be gathered and aggregated on local and national levels to accurately capture the scope of the problem and the effectiveness of efforts to ameliorate it.”

The first year of the IMPACT project was one of infrastructure development in a broad sense. It involved primarily the development and modification of innovative information technology tools as well as the identification, selection and deployment of other information systems designed …

The Child Care Problem For Low-Income Working Families, Jean Kimmel

Reports

No abstract provided.

Boys To Men: A Conference Report, Michael Brennan, Al Barthelman, Penny Jordan-Barthelman, Layne Gregory, Phil Hoose, David Vaughan

Children, Youth, & Families

Nearly 350 middle and high school aged boys, fathers and male mentors attended. It was the first such conference to be held in Maine. “Boys to Men” was intended to launch a community dialogue about how schools, families and other institutions can better understand, celebrate and support boys in their journey to manhood. There was a special emphasis on the pressures exerted by popular culture in shaping the behavior of adolescent boys.

Driving In Massachusetts: When To Stop And Who Should Decide?, Nina M. Silverstein, Jenai Murtha

Gerontology Institute Publications

The purpose of this exploratory research was to assess three stakeholders’ perceptions of the locus of responsibility for driving cessation and identify the criteria that should be included in that decision. The stakeholder groups studied were law enforcement officers, physicians, and the general public age 50 years and older. Defining areas of agreement and disagreement across stakeholders will be valuable for informing policy makers who may be considering statewide or national initiatives. Findings will also be useful for public information and training.

Sola No Eres Nada, Juntas Flotamos: El Movimiento Manuela Ramos, Judith Bruce, Debbie Rogow

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This edition of Quality/Calidad/Qualité discusses the Manuela Ramos Movement and its efforts to improve women’s health and well-being through a range of empowerment strategies in rural Peru. A joint project with USAID, named Reprosalud, demonstrates how combining the resources of an international donor with local women’s organizations allows a more organic and multifaceted family planning program to develop. Such programs can produce impressive improvements on a number of indicators, including contraceptive use.

Toward Improved Support For Research On Delivery Of Home- And Community-Based Long-Term Care, Francis G. Caro

Gerontology Institute Publications

Stronger and more consistent support is needed for research on long-term care. A greater investment in research will strengthen the ability of public and private organizations to provide effective and efficient assistance to people with disabilities and their informal caregivers. This paper provides a rationale for stronger research funding for the field and outlines several options to strengthen research.

Providing Low-Cost Assistive Equipment Through Home Care Services: The Massachusetts Assistive Equipment Demonstration, Alison S. Gottlieb, Francis G. Caro

Gerontology Institute Publications

This report describes the Massachusetts Assistive Equipment Demonstration, a collaborative project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson’s Home Care Research Initiative and carried out collaboratively by the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the Executive Office of Elder Affairs (EOEA). The purpose of the demonstration was to systematically encourage the use of low-cost assistive equipment among elderly clients through existing case management resources, thereby extending the effectiveness of the Massachusetts home care program by supplementing formal services with expanded use of assistive equipment.

Life At Grandfamilies House: The First Six Months, Alison S. Gottlieb, Nina M. Silverstein, Laney Bruner-Canhoto, Susan Montgomery

Gerontology Institute Publications

Recent reports cite estimates of more than two million children in the United States who are currently living in kinship care arrangements; 10% or approximately 200,000 of these relationships are children in foster care. Much kinship care is done by midlife and older persons who are finding themselves assuming new responsibilities associated with parenting their grandchildren, typically for a period of two years or more. This is a social phenomenon that cuts across all socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic groups. There are many challenges facing these nontraditional families including healthcare, income security, education, social support, and housing. Public and private partnerships …

Women And Poverty, Carlos Ani

Trotter Review

The issue regarding relationships between the status of women, economic health for all people, and social justice is a challenge in every society today. Until fairly recently, poverty and under development were assumed to put all members of affected households - men, women, and children - at an equal disadvantage. "Households" were regarded as static entities where labor and resources are pooled and equally shared. The implicit conclusion was that changes thought of as beneficial for development would be neutral in their effects on the different members of the households. Empirical evidence reveals, however, that the costs and benefits of …

Adolescent Girls' Livelihoods. Essential Questions, Essential Tools: A Report On A Workshop [Arabic], Carey Meyers

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This report, co-published by the Population Council and the International Center for Research on Women, describes a workshop convened in Cairo in 1999 to learn more about the nature of both younger and older adolescents' work experience, differentiate the particular needs and potentials of adolescent girls, and identify programs and policies that might have promise for supporting them.

Cracking The Foundational Myths: Independence, Autonomy, And Self-Sufficiency, Martha Albertson Fineman

Faculty Articles

In this Article, I will bring into view the family, or more explicitly, the dependency hidden within the assumed family. Policy development and social theory considerations should center on assessing the appropriateness of the aspirations and expectations we have for the family. This assessment is crucial to one of the most compelling problems facing society at the end of the Twentieth Century-the increasing inequitable and unequal distribution of societal resources and the corresponding poverty of women and children.

Family Values And Presidential Elections: The Use And Abuse Of The Family And Medical Leave Act In The 1992 And 1996 Campaigns, Steven K. Wisensale

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article explores how and why the debate on family leave policy became intertwined with the discussion of family values during the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns. It covers the emergence of family values in political debates in general and in election-year strategies in particular, the developmental history of family leave policy, including important benchmarks that occurred at both the state and federal levels. It also considers the role played by family values and family leave during the 1992 election and how the family leave bill and at least two other legislative proposals became important components of the discussions about …

A Comparative Assessment Of The Status, Structure And Process Utilized By Nevada's Family Support And Preservation Consortia To Achieve Collaboration, Marlys A. Morton

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This paper presents a framework for understanding inter-organizational collaboration and describes and analyzes how collaboration was used as a method to build new service networks, the characteristics of the consortia, and the status of the collaborative processes.

Although the literature on inter-organizational collaboration in the human services is increasing, little is known about how regional consortia view the process of working together towards a common purpose. The results reported in this paper are intended to help fill that gap.

The findings reported in this study are based on a survey process using a standardized questionnaire to study the collaborative status. …

Nursing Home Ownership And Public Policy: An Historical Analysis, K. R. Kaffenberger

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

In the early days of the United States, care of the disabled elderly outside the home meant the public almshouse. By the 1920s, private, nonprofit homes for the aged were prevalent. More recently, private, for-profit facilities have grown to dominate the field.

For-profit ownership has been controversial. Underlying the controversy is the concern that quality might be lowered in order to enhance profit.

This study asks why most nursing homes are privately owned and why most privately owned nursing homes are operated for profit. It does so with reference to The Nonprofit Economy, in which Burton Weisbrod describes a …

A Policy Brief: Massachusetts (T)Afdc Case Closings, October 1993-August 1997, Donna Friedman, Emily Douglas, Michelle Hayes, Mary Ann Allard

Center for Social Policy Publications

When a DTA (Department of Transitional Assistance) worker assesses whether a family's (T)AFDC (Temporary Aid to Families with Dependent Children) case will be closed, s/he decides which one of 67 different codes best describes the reason cash benefits for the household will be stopped. To carry out the analyses, we sorted all of the 67 codes into clusters of codes that logically grouped together: Cluster I, Increased Income; Cluster H, Sanctions; Cluster III, Eligible Persons Moved; Cluster IV, Fraud; Cluster V, Client Request; Cluster VI, No Longer Eligible; Cluster VII, Other or Multiple Meanings. The Appendix displays a description of …

A Snapshot Of Individuals And Families Accessing Boston's Emergency Homeless Shelters, 1997, Donna Friedman, Michelle Hayes, John Mcgah, Anthony Roman

Center for Social Policy Publications

This document summarizes key findings from a survey conducted on March 19, 1997 with 338 homeless individuals and 94 families sheltered or served by 33 of 40 shelter programs in the City of Boston. The data presented in this report were collected at one point in time. Point in time data results in an overrepresentation of the "longer term" homeless, and offers limited insight regarding the structural dynamics underlying movement from homelessness to residential stability (Culhane, Lee, Wachter, 1996; White, 1996). However, it does provide a snapshot of the men, women, and children who were spending the night in a …

Supporting The Employment Of Mothers: Policy Variation Across Fourteen Welfare States, Janet C. Gornick, Marcia K. Meyers, Katherin E. Ross

Sociology - All Scholarship

Despite their broadly similar political and economic systems, the rates and patterns of mothers' employment vary considerably across industrialized countries. This variation raises questions about the role played by government policies in enabling mothers to choose employment and, in turn, in shaping both gender equality and family economic well-being. This paper compares fourteen OECD countries, as of the middle-to-late 1980s, with respect to their provision of policies that support mothers' employment: parental leave, child care, and the scheduling of public education. Newly gathered data on eighteen policy indicators are presented; these indicators were chosen to capture support for maternal employment, …

Doing More With Less: The Marie Stopes Clinics In Sierra Leone, Nahid Toubia, Grace Ebun Delano

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This edition of Quality/Calidad/Qualité reports on the Marie Stopes Sierra Leone (MSSL) organization which pursues its goals with compassion and ambition, despite seemingly insurmountable economic hardships. MSSL has established a service model that many programs in richer countries should try to imitate. Several particularly important lessons emerged, including: creative, skillful management, well-organized and flexible financial administration, and human motivation and perseverance can enable an organization to overcome financial difficulties; family planning is an integral part of people's reproductive and general health concerns and can dovetail with concern for development in useful and practical ways; men appreciate being involved in the …

The Older Population In Massachusetts, 1980-1990, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Gerontology Institute Publications

Massachusetts and the nation are aging! People 65 and older are growing in numbers more rapidly than other younger segments of the population, and the unprecedented growth of this group has created new demands on and new opportunities for every major sector of American life. But if we are to make constructive plans for an aging society, we must have sound information on the major changes in the make-up of the population.

This report shows how the older populations in Massachusetts and in the United States have changed in the decade between 1980 and 1990. It is designed to serve …

Policy Shifts In The Massachusetts Response To Family Homelessness, Margaret A. Leonard, Stacy Randell

New England Journal of Public Policy

Massachusetts's response to the tragedy of family homelessness during a period of economic prosperity (1983-1987) is contrasted to a period of economic decline (1988-1992). The article describes the movement toward a structural response in the boom years and its dismantling with the emergence of a "blame the victim" response in the decline years. The roles of state government, advocacy groups, human service providers, private funding sources, academic institutions, and the media, as they influence these responses, are outlined. Interviews with key actors in these groups, group interviews with formerly homeless women, a review of the literature, and the authors' direct …

The Last Thing We Need Is Another Shelter, Jessica Segré

New England Journal of Public Policy

Segre suggests that family homelessness is merely the latest and most devastating example of America's lack of commitment to children and families. The history of human services for children is presented to show that, both at the community and at the policy levels, this population and its needs have been neglected, subjected to fragmentation, and consistently downgraded on our lists of priorities. The societal values that have led to this situation are discussed and revealed as still reflecting an individualistic, frontier outlook, which is, however, becoming an anachronism. The need for a child/family policy is stressed, as is the urgency …

The Kindred Bonds Of Mentally Ill Homeless Persons, Richard C. Tessler, Gail M. Gamache, Peter H. Rossi, Anthony F. Lehman, Howard H. Goldman

New England Journal of Public Policy

While the unraveling of the kinship bond has long been suspected to play a role in the epidemiology of homelessness, the connection between kinship and homelessness has been little studied. Based on a normative analysis of the role of family structure in response to adversity, this article explores the impact of the amount and quality of kinship ties on episodes of homelessness experienced by discharged psychiatric patients in Ohio. Survey data derived from personal interviews with both former patients and their kin indicate more strain in relations with kin of the homeless than the nonhomeless. The strain in the kinship …

It'll Take More Than A Miracle: Income In Single-Mother Families In Massachusetts, 1979-1987, Chris Tilly, Randy Albelda

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

Through the 1980s, the Massachusetts economy grew rapidly. Most Massachusetts families benefited from this economic boom, and saw their incomes rise much more rapidly than the U.S. average. But Massachusetts single mothers and their children, who started out with lower incomes than other families, experienced only minimal income growth, and fell further behind other families in the Bay State. In this paper, we analyze income differences among family types in Massachusetts. We pay special attention to the problems of single mothers, and offer a set of policy recommendations to address these problems.

In order to undertake this analysis, we classify …

Medicare Supplemental Insurance: Today's Crisis, Health Care For All, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Gerontology Institute Publications

The purpose of health insurance is to spread risk. The system works under the assumption that, at any given point in time, only a percentage of the people in a given group will be sick. Regardless of health status, all members of the group will be paying premiums in order to cover the cost of care for those who need it.

As a group, however, seniors represent a high-risk population. They are more likely than younger people to need health care services and tend to require longer hospital stays. Yet, while their expenses are greater, their financial resources are generally …

Norfolk Resource Mothers Program Evaluation, Margaret Moore Konefal

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Management

This study uses the post-test only design to assess the preliminary effects of a community-based policy initiative, the Norfolk State University Resource Mothers Program (RMP), on the gestational ages, birth weights, and survival rates of infants born to participating adolescent mothers.

The RMP uses experienced mothers or paraprofessionals similar in race and socio-economic status to the participating teenagers. These persons are trained to assist pregnant adolescents and teen parents with nonmedical dimensions of pregnancy and child care. They recruit teens into the RMP, encouraging them to get early prenatal care. Resource Mothers provide teen mothers and their families with practical …

Negotiations Of Violence In The Marshallese Household, Laurence Marshall Carucci

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

The Gerontology Institute: The First Years, 1984-1987, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Gerontology Institute Publications

During the first years of its existence, the Gerontology Institute has worked with older people to convert "retirement years" into opportunities for continuous growth and learning, while simultaneously seeking to re-examine social, political, and economic roles for elders in society. It is hoped that through such engagement of older individuals, the Institute has inspired a more positive attitude in society towards its aging population.

Recent Trends In The Economic Status Of Boston's Aged: Determinants And Policy Implications, William H. Crown

New England Journal of Public Policy

The economic status of the older population has improved significantly since the early 1970s. Yet poverty rates among certain groups of elderly, especially older minorities, have declined very little. To understand the reasons for these seemingly contradictory trends, changes in the income composition of the elderly in Boston are compared to changes in income for the elderly in the United States. This analysis suggests that low-income older persons were largely bypassed by one of the major factors in income growth among the older population — growth in pension income.

Despite the persistence of poverty among significant segments of the older …

Exposure Of Young Welfare Recipients To Family And Peer Receipt Of Welfare And Unemployment Benefits, Viola E. Shuart, John H. Lewko

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The current study examined exposure to family and peer receipt of unemployment and general welfare benefits for a sample of 262 unemployed youth between 16 and 24 years of age who were in receipt of social assistance. The findings reveal that exposure to receipt of benefits was most pervasive through peers, with moderate exposure via siblings and minimal exposure via parents. The findings are discussed in relation to existing explanations which suggested that the receipt of benefits is intergenerationally transmitted. It is recommended that future investigations of the cultural transmission of poverty and receipt of benefits include the influence of …

Serving The Elderly: Need Versus Policy, Wornie L. Reed

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

Medicare was established in 1965 under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act. It was originally meant to eliminate the financial barriers to medical care for the aged. It has been called a form of national health insurance for persons age 65 and over. But it was deliberately designed in a manner to avoid modification of the fee-for-services system that is the basis of American Medical Care (Estes, 1979). As a result, inflation in the cost of care has seriously reduced financial benefits to the beneficiaries and in turn limited the access to medical care by the elderly.