Showing papers in "Social Service Review in 2000"

Social Support, Negative Social Interactions, and Psychological Well‐Being

Abstract: Research examining the relationship between social support and psychological well-being has largely ignored the negative side of social interactions. However, empirical evidence suggests that negative interactions can potentially be more harmful than social support is helpful. This article critically reviews the literature investigating the relationship between social support and negative social interactions and their simultaneous effect on psychological well-being. A review of 28 studies revealed that there are conceptual, theoretical, and methodological limitations associated with this body of research. In order to unravel some of these limitations, studies are grouped according to three conceptual models: the additive effects model, the moderator model, and the domain-specific model. Finally, the article discusses directions social work practice research should take to tackle and fully appreciate the complexities of the relationship between social support and psychological well-being.

Organizational Forms as Moral Practices: The Case of Welfare Departments

Abstract: Human service organizations that aim to change behavior inevitably do moral work. As institutionalized organizations, they enact in their structure and practices dominant moral systems. Moral systems and rules within them emanate from several sources, including nationally powerful interest groups and organizations, local constituencies, and organizational and street‐level moral entrepreneurs. By studying the historical transformation of welfare departments, I show how changes in the moral assumptions about poor single mothers have transformed the organizational forms and practices of these offices. In doing so, these forms and practices enact and enforce these moral rules on the clients.

A Multilevel Model of Client Participation in Intensive Family Preservation Services

Abstract: We identify two distinct components of parent participation in intensive family preservation services: collaboration in treatment planning and compliance with program expectations. Using hierarchical linear models, we explore influences on collaboration and compliance at the case, worker, and program levels. Effects of cross‐level interactions are also examined. Parental substance abuse, mental health problems, minority status, and lack of extended family support predict lower levels of participation. Workers' perceptions of their clients and of their own working conditions appear to influence client participation. Program factors matter as well, although some operate in tandem with case characteristics and worker perceptions.

Reading the Case Record: The Oral and Written Narratives of Social Workers

Abstract: Historians and sociologists often use written case records to critique social work practice. This article uses ethnography to analyze the limits of reading the written texts of practitioners. By concatenating written, oral, and ethnographic data, a new narrative of case management is produced. I show how case managers' oral narratives about consumers of mental health services perform different work with different languages. In addition, I demonstrate the limitations of using written texts to understand social work practice.

Predicting the Time Children Spend in State Custody

Abstract: This exploratory study identifies factors that predict the time children spend in state custody. We follow a sample of 700 children from 28 urban and rural counties for a period of up to 3 years from the first day the children enter custody in Tennessee. We use event‐history analysis to examine the effects of child, family, and service characteristics on the probability of exiting state custody. Children with mental health problems, minority children, children with disabilities, sexually abused children, children in custody for dependency and neglect, and children from rural communities all have lower probabilities of exiting custody.

Unraveling “Tacit Knowledge”: What Social Workers Do and Why They Do It

Abstract: Many scholars have claimed that social work practice relies on tacit knowledge. However, tacit knowledge or “practice wisdom” cannot be critically examined in and of itself. In this article, we hope to make explicit the interventions and outcomes resulting from social workers' tacit knowledge. We used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to map interventions in relation to outcomes. Data for the study were derived from a sample of 69 social workers in six family agencies who treated 141 clients within the framework of Systematic Planned Practice. The results demonstrate the viability of practice wisdom for generating testable interventive hypotheses and the usefulness of combining methodologies in practice research.

The Relational Paradigm in Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Toward a Psychodynamically Informed Social Work Perspective

Abstract: The social work literature rarely considers critiques and reformulations of psychoanalytic theory, even if these have brought about major shifts in contemporary understanding. I describe the emergence of the relational paradigm and show how overlapping perspectives deepen conceptions of personality development; problems in living; health, well‐being, and the good life; and the therapeutic endeavor. I consider the strengths and limits of the relational paradigm and its relevance for social work theory, research, and practice. I emphasize the need to establish critical perspectives that guide evaluation of constructs in view of the fundamental concerns of the profession.

Homeless Spell Exits and Returns: Substantive and Methodological Elaborations on Recent Studies

Abstract: This article builds upon a series of recent studies that have examined exits from and returns to homelessness. The data come from a three‐wave panel study of homeless persons. The article's major substantive concern is the relationship between the type of housing situations to which homeless persons move upon exiting homeless spells and their likelihood of becoming homeless again. The issue of selection bias due to sample attrition, a serious methodological problem common to longitudinal research, is also addressed.

Welfare Receipt, Financial Strain, and African‐American Adolescent Functioning

Abstract: Using a random sample of African‐American adolescent girls in impoverished urban neighborhoods in Chicago, we consider income‐related predictors (poverty, financial strain, welfare receipt, and welfare exposure) of adolescents' job preparation and nonmarital childbearing risk. Maternal financial strain is the most consistent predictor, linked to poor school performance and greater sexual experience. Maternal welfare receipt predicts higher school grades in youth, but welfare exposure from broader social networks is related to lower grades and greater pregnancy experience. We discuss the implications for families as federal welfare reforms alter the income sources and financial situations of many poor families.

Time Limits and Welfare Reform: New Estimates of the Number and Characteristics of Affected Families

Abstract: 0Using Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data, we estimate the number and characteristics of recipient families likely to be affected by the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Act's 60‐month time limit. We find that approximately 40 percent of the current caseload is likely to hit the 60‐month limit on total receipt. In the case of states with a 24‐month time limit, the fraction of those likely to hit the time limits increases to two‐thirds.

The Bleak Prospect for Public Child Welfare

Abstract: In this commentary I provide a rapid review of the twentieth‐century development of public child welfare, identifying blows that degraded the system from the 1960s on. I assess the steps that were taken to reform the system moderately (administrative restructuring, permanency planning, family preservation, case management) as well as the more radical reform proposals. All this leads to my prediction of a bleak prospect for public child welfare, although I note some possible hopeful developments and strategies.

Guardians of Virtue: The Social Reformers and the “Girl Problem,” 1890‐1920

Abstract: Responding to escalating rates of divorce, illegitimacy, and prostitution, the Progressive Era ushered in a wave of cultural anxiety concerning sexual morality. Progressive reformers implemented a variety of state interventions to monitor and correct sexual “misconduct” among working‐class and immigrant young women. This article focuses on the leading social reformers from Chicago's Hull House Settlement and investigates their paradoxical thinking concerning the “girl problem.” Primary source analysis reveals that the social reformers' stance as “guardians of virtue” for working‐class young women's sexuality was integrally tied to larger concerns about human welfare and progress in twentieth‐century industrial America.

Public or Private Children's Services? Privatization in Retrospect

Abstract: In this article, I document the changing relations of the public and private child welfare sectors culminating in the 1960s and 1970s, when Social Security Act amendments greatly changed their relationship. Although the financially strapped voluntary service sector was divided ideologically about seeking increased public funding, it quickly accepted new funds once they became available. This inquiry into the history of privatization questions whether the voluntary sector actively pursued changes in federal legislation in the 1950s and 1960s and illuminates the debates likely to arise if the government increases its reliance on religiously affiliated agencies for providing social services.

From Social Darwinism to Self‐Organization: Implications for Social Change Theory

Abstract: This article reviews the impact of evolutionary thought on social change theory. It argues that social Darwinist assumptions underlie many of the efforts to understand social change. Partly for this reason, social change theory has languished in recent years. Recently, however, nonequilibrium theories have generated a new interest in the notion of emergence, specifically, self‐organization. Theories of self‐organization are now being used by post‐Darwinian evolutionary theorists, and they provide a promising alternative to the traditional view that social change arises primarily through external conflict and selection.

Prenatal Cocaine Exposure: Long-Run Effects and Policy Implications

Abstract: In this article, we review the literature regarding prenatal cocaine exposure and child development. We then reexamine current child welfare policies in light of that literature, paying particular attention to laws that mandate reporting substance-exposed newborns and substance use during pregnancy as well as policies that view such reports as prima facie evidence of child maltreatment. Finally, we reassess the utility of such policies, given our current knowledge of the long-term effects of prenatal exposure, and consider alternative approaches to protecting children who are born to parents who are using crack cocaine. The ‘‘crack epidemic’’ that began in the mid-1980s has been associated with an increase in the number of children exposed to cocaine in utero. The Office of the Inspector General estimates that 100,000 children are born prenatally exposed to crack cocaine each year (Hawley et al. 1995); others have estimated this figure to be somewhere between 40,000 and 375,000 (Mayes and Bornstein 1995). 1 Widespread use of the drug has also resulted in an increased number of children in the child welfare system (Besharov 1990; National Association of Public Welfare Administrators [NAPCWA] 1991; Barth 1994; Sabol 1994). Following decreases in the early 1980s, the number of children in foster care rose sharply in the late 1980s. Studies of several large states have indicated that drug use by parents was a leading reason for the increase in placements; studies have also found a direct relationship between cocaine use and prenatal exposure and reports to child protec

Policy Experiments and Poverty Politics

Abstract: Policy making has increasingly turned to controlled analysis, in the form of demonstration projects and experiments, to test social policies before they are legislated nationwide. Reviewing the history of three hallmark welfare experiments, we examine how controlled analysis became a “shadow institution” — an alternative to more visible and highly contested legislative channels for policy conflict. Applying a political‐institutional lens, we explore what kind of channel this is and how it structures conflicts over poverty policy. We find that controlled analysis may be more apt to reiterate than to challenge conventional wisdom about poverty and the poor.

The Legacy of Hull House and the Children's Bureau in the American Mortality Transition

Abstract: The major advances in American life expectancy achieved during the twentieth century began with the remarkable decline in infant mortality between 1910 and 1930. Until the 1990s, explanations of this demographic event centered on improvements in nutrition, public health, and medical science. Recent causal reappraisals emphasize the importance of changes in household‐level health behaviors in reducing infant deaths, changes that are consistent with the maternal education campaigns engineered by Progressive Era reformers at the U.S. Children's Bureau. Through qualitative and quantitative analyses of bureau reports and Public Use Micro Sample census data, we link the reformers' philosophy and science to new evidence and conclusions about early improvements in infant survival.

Changing Policies, Changing Impacts: Employment and Earnings of Child‐Care Subsidy Recipients in the Era of Welfare Reform

Abstract: We examine the impact of increased child‐care funding on the employment and earnings of 4,399 current and former welfare families in Miami‐Dade County. We find that the dramatic increase in funding for child care during the early stages of welfare reform significantly increased the likelihood of employment for these welfare clients, even those with substantial barriers to employment. Our results also indicate that very low co‐payment rates may have no significant effect on earnings, but higher rates can lead to a significant decline in the earnings of those making the transition from welfare to work.

Blocking Her Exclusion: A Contextually Sensitive Model of Intervention for Handling Female Abuse

Abstract: This article presents an alternative model of intervention to deal with cases of female sexual abuse. The model is predicated on the principle that Western models of intervention, if applied in collective, non‐Western societies, could lead to the exclusion of the victim from normal social participation. It offers features designed to ensure the safety and welfare of the victim and to preclude her exclusion from future normal social participation.Adetailed description of the model is presented along with the theoretical assumptions on which it was constructed.

Hating Hate: Policy Implications of Hate Crime Legislation

Abstract: Hate crimes are receiving increased attention in both the media and policy arenas. Legislation to document and punish hate crimes has been enacted at the federal, state, and local levels. A thorough analysis of these social regulatory policies is essential. Hate crime policy has engendered controversies and unintended consequences. Two sides of the debate have emerged, with one side arguing that hate crimes are a socially constructed category leading to the “Balkanization” of America and the other responding that hate crime policy is necessary to promote racial and religious harmony and equality. Criminalizing hate is a complex issue that social workers must become knowledgeable about in order to be active participants in shaping policy and conducting research.

Did the AFDC Program Succeed in Keeping Mothers and Young Children Living Together

Abstract: Critics of welfare reform claim that children will leave their mother's care in states that restrict benefits because mothers will lack sufficient income to raise children. This article investigates these claims and the relationship between the generosity of welfare benefits and children's living arrangements. I found that mother‐child separations were lower in states with higher welfare benefits, suggesting that higher welfare benefits lower the cost to single mothers of raising children. Given reluctance among states to provide income support for families, this suggests that policies designed to reduce welfare dependence may raise rates of mother‐child separations.

Standing for the Whole: The Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation on Identity and Mexican‐American Politics

Abstract: Historically, Mexican‐American political organizations have constructed political identities from a combination of race, class, and culture, but there are important exceptions that enrich our picture of ethnic political organizations and organizing. One is the Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). When organizing inMexican‐Americanneighborhoods, the IAF uses an identity based on the Judeo‐Christian religious tradition and not on ethnic norms. By rejecting racial and class identities, the IAF hopes to avoid sectarianism, forge broad‐based alliances, and expand the level of political participation. I contend that the IAF's religiously based political identity is an innovative tool for mobilizing the poor, but one that neglects class‐based conflict. Further analysis reveals that the IAF's prescription for social change is predicated on the assumption that religious identities have the power to overcome those formed by economic and social privilege.

Personal and Social Functioning: A Pilot Study

Abstract: This article describes a nonexperimental study that seeks to determine the extent to which nine psychometrically sound measures of problems with social functioning account for seven different reliable and valid measures of problems with personal functioning. This study is based on a single predictive or explanatory model in which predictor variables are entered and tested in the same order through the use of hierarchical regression. The strong psychometric characteristics of the measures used make it possible to examine comprehensive predictive models, and this provides insight into the ways that the social environment affects personal adjustment.

Shaping Poor Relief for the Sick‐Poor in Indiana's Pioneering Era, Tippecanoe County, Indiana, 1826‐1846

Abstract: Poor relief practices in rural Tippecanoe County first involved boarding the sick‐poor in the community and later broadened to include institutional care. Local officials implemented these changes not to achieve social control of an increasing and more diverse population but, at first, to consolidate the costs of caring for the chronically ill. Although the farm was not cost effective, it continued and expanded to include some acutely ill. County officials' pragmatic attention to local conditions, personal needs, and attitudes toward poverty and health informed their actions, shaping the county's relief program—a program that served only a minority of the sick‐poor.

Welfare, History, and the Framing of Twenty‐First‐Century Social Policy

Abstract: Historians will have a difficult time making sense of twentieth-century American social policy. In the 1990s, for instance, Bill Clinton, a Democratic president who initially campaigned for universal health care during a recession, ended up working with a Republican Congress to abolish welfare as a federal entitlement while the economy soared. This dramatic reversal of fortune, which saw the welfare state contract during a time of national prosperity, raised difficult questions about how to explain the timing and significance of fundamental changes in American social policy, especially with respect to the nation’s dependent children and their families. In welfare’s wake, as part of the process of understanding its unexpected passing, scholars turned their attention to its origins, continuing an area of research that had developed in late 1980s and early 1990s out of a convergence of interest in gender analysis and state formation. Monumental studies, such as Theda Skocpol’s (1992) and Linda Gordon’s (1994), published before welfare reform, not only highlighted gender analysis but also reemphasized the importance of the Progressive Era

City and Region: Reinventing Spatial Community

Abstract: To the surprise of many, the American city appears to be at the center of the past decade’s prosperity. Particularly in the last 5 years, most cities have enjoyed strong growth, increases in downtown residence, lower crime rates, and considerable revitalization in neighborhoods near central business districts. There is an apparent preference for urban living among increasing numbers of the middle and upper classes. The traditional economic advantages of cities (size, density, heterogeneity, capacity for innovation) once again encourage certain businesses to cluster near the core. There also seems to be a growing receptivity to the traditional virtues of the urban environment. Nearly 40 years after Jane Jacobs’s critique of modernist planning and bulldozer renewal, the principles of ‘‘new urbanist’’ design—an emphasis on pedestrianism and street life, the mixing of residential and commercial activity into multiuse neighborhoods, the advantages of public transportation, the functions of public buildings, and green space in centering local districts—are very much in vogue ( Jacobs 1961; for neourbanism, see Calthorpe 1933; and Katz 1994).1 Of course, if this new kind of urbanism is any cause for celebration (to use a word that the Disney Corporation has taken for the name of its own neourbanist town in Florida), not everyone may be in a party mood. More urban residents work now than several years ago, but signifi-

Book ReviewsReading Foucault for Social Work. Edited by Adrienne Chambon, Allan Irving, and Laura Epstein. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Pp. 292. $49.50 (cloth); $19.50 (paper).

Abstract: Combining qualitative and quantitative research strategies is an increasingly popular, albeit still unusual, trend in social science circles. By considering the basic strengths and weaknesses of each methodology, it is easy to see the draw in attempting to integrate and combine them. Qualitative or ethnographic data lend depth, rich description, and the sorts of detail that grab a reader and make the art of science seem real and relevant. Yet one may be left questioning the generalizability of the findings, wondering whether the small number of families or individuals chosen were especially engaging, particularly successful at their slice of life, or perhaps the most compellingly needy. Or one might consider how the views or personal style of the ethnographer influenced the information shared and the aspects of life opened to scrutiny. Quantitative research such as survey studies, however, has the ability to take a representative group of people and share some aspects of their lives. One can learn about the demographic characteristics of a particular group, their average levels of functioning, and the range in their views. Surveys can cover a broad array of topics, and the level of subjectiveness derived from respondent selection and interviewer technique can be minimized to what most (but not all) consider acceptable levels through scientific sampling procedures and standardized instruments. However, these strengths are often confused with the ability to draw causal connections from correlational data, and the presentation of results often leaves something to be desired regarding comprehension and relevance. How can one take regression beta weights and translate them into information to help policy makers or parents? How can one really care about individuals described by means and standard deviations? By combining quantitative and qualitative methods, one can hope to minimize the weaknesses and capitalize on the strengths of each. However, the melding of two very distinct and disparate methods of data collection, analysis, and writing is a daunting task. This task has been undertaken and completed with striking grace by Frank Furstenberg and his colleagues in their Philadelphia study and resulting book, Managing to Make It: Urban Families and Adolescent Success. Moreover, the research team has combined these two research techniques not concurrently but, rather, sequentially and in an embedded fashion (the qualitative fielding was undertaken 2– 4 years after the survey with a subset of the survey respondents), giving the added bonus of incorporating a longitudinal view into

Book ReviewsTeaching in America: The Slow Revolution. By Gerald Grant and Christine E. Murray. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1999. Pp.280.$26.00(cloth).

Abstract: Teaching in America should be a valuable resource for anyone, scholar or lay reader, seeking to understand the contemporary school reform movement in the United States. That it won a recently established annual prize from Harvard University Press for an outstanding publication about education and society is not surprising, given its strength of scholarship, originality of interpretation, and readable style. Yet, like many books that are ambitious in scope, this volume is uneven in its achievements. Some of the book’s most interesting scholarship seems less than essential to its thesis, while the analysis most essential to the thesis comes late in the book and deserves further development. Gerald Grant and Christine E. Murray offer an intriguing thesis: public school teaching today is in the midst of a ‘‘slow revolution,’’ one that can best be understood in comparison to the ‘‘academic revolution’’ that established distinctive status, rewards, and conditions of work for college in the first half of the twentieth century. Although the ultimate outcome of this ‘‘slow revolution’’ cannot be predicted, say the authors, it will not likely be stopped because ‘‘teachers will not give up the gains they have made’’ (p. 215). These gains may be described as increases in teachers’ education, social, and professional consciousness, and voice in educational decision making. As Grant and Murray write, ‘‘The conviction is growing among teachers that the kinds of outcomes that are being demanded for children—that all of them become competent problem-solvers and critical thinkers—can’t be achieved if the teachers themselves are not similarly empowered to inquire into the nature of their own practice, and to have the ability to change its course’’ (p. 215). While these passages sound a note of optimism that the slow revolution is likely to continue, the analysis of the book cautions against any early celebrations. An ultimately successful revolution in teacher autonomy, status, rewards, and student learning is presented as only one possible outcome of current trends, and two other scenarios are made equally plausible. One of these is that the current developments in teacher professionalism will not seriously challenge the hierarchical power structures of school systems, and the year 2020 will find teachers still shut out from the most fundamental decisions about the nature, purposes, and structures of schooling. Still another scenario is even less optimistic: that the work of teachers and professors will indeed be more similar in the future but not because the nature of school teaching will have improved. Rather, the status and

Book ReviewsManaging to Make It: Urban Families and Adolescent Success. By Frank F. Fur‐stenberg, Jr., Thomas D. Cook, Jacquelynne Eccles, Glen H. Elder, Jr., and Arnold Sameroff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Pp. 305. $32.50 (cloth).

Abstract: Joseph Levine is deeply puzzled by phenomenal consciousness, and in this book he explains why. On the one hand, he is convinced that phenomenal consciousness must be a purely physical phenomenon, since only if it is so regarded can it plausibly be credited with the causal role in the production of physical effects that we ordinarily take it to possess (Chapter 1). And he rejects even the most sophisticated of recent conceivability arguments intended to show that phenomenal consciousness is not physical (Chapter 2). On the other hand, he Ž nds it entirely baf ing how phenomenal consciousness could be a purely physical phenomenon (Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6). But he is not one of those philosophers who ofŽ cially Ž nd phenomenal consciousness baf ing, but who unofŽ cially Ž nd it non-physical. For at the end of the book he claims that “the problem goes even deeper than materialism” (p. 173), and that “it isn’t really physicality that presents the problem” (p. 177). So what does? Despite the exemplary candor and straightforwardness of Levine’s writing, the answer to this question never became perfectly clear to me. But the reason for this lies in the subject matter: Levine strives to articulate intuitive disquiets that, for all their obscurity, are very in uential psychologically in discouraging philosophers from physicalism about phenomenal consciousness. He is right, however, to make the attempt, and we should be grateful to him for it, even if we go on to carp at its possible deŽ ciencies. Levine succeeds wonderfully in bringing out just how much theorizing remains to be done by physicalists in regard to our introspective thoughts about phenomenal consciousness. Physicalists have typically offered just enough of an account of introspective thoughts about phenomenal consciousness to fend off potentially decisive objections to physicalism; Levine has convinced me, though, that they must do more. In what follows I shall focus exclusively upon Levine’s central positive thesis, though there is much else in the book that is also worthy of discussion. According to this thesis, phenomenal consciousness exhibits two features that “both resist explanatory reduction to the physical: subjectivity and qualitative character” (p. 175). Let us start with qualitative character. Suppose that I am currently in the neural state which, as a brain scientist might put it, is the “neural basis” of red sensations in the sense that, whenever someone is in that state, he or she reliably occupies an internal state which seems to its owner to exhibit phenomenal redness. We can ask why my being in that neural state should mean that I am in a state which exhibits phenomenal redness. Why phenomenal redness and not phenomenal greenness or blueness—or just nothing at all? Nothing in the nature of the neural basis of red sensations seems to ensure that phenomenal redness must be its concomitant. Now Levine is well aware that this demand for a reductive explanation of phenomenal redness in physical terms can be met. It is true that nothing in the nature of the neural basis of red sensations seems to ensure that phenomenal redness must be its concomitant; but that is just to say either that there is no a priori connection between the concept of the neural basis of red sensations and the concept of phenomenal redness, or that our current and no doubt incomplete grasp of the nature of the neural basis of red sensations and the nature of phenomenal redness reveals no necessary connection between them. But if, as the physicalist anticipates, we learn more of the nature of phenomenal redness, and if in particular we make the empirical discovery that enjoying phenomenal redness is one and the same thing as being in such-and-such neural state, or one and the same thing as being in such-and-such physically-realized functional state, then, given that I am in the right neural state, I cannot fail to enjoy phenomenal redness—just as my cup cannot fail to contain water given that in fact it contains H2O. So attention must be redirected to the alleged phenomenal/physical (or phenomenal/functional)