Local Labor Markets and Caseload Decline in Louisiana in the 1990s*

Abstract Efforts to explain declines in welfare caseloads in the 1990s focus on three factors (economic opportunity, welfare policy, and demographic characteristics) and produce mixed results. Although several recent studies consider state differences, few consider local differences within states. Failure to control for caseload persistence and within‐state variation in program implementation may be one reason why studies produce contradictory results regarding the effect of economic conditions on caseload decline. Using data for Louisiana parishes from 1991 to 1998, we analyze local caseload decline. Our results support other researchers' finding of a “threat effect” before 1996 welfare reform; they indicate that, all else being equal, reducing caseloads will be most difficult in nonadjacent nonmetropolitan parishes and easiest in adjacent nonmetropolitan parishes.     

Fostering Neighborhood Involvement in Workforce Development

ABSTRACT

One of the challenges in welfare reform implementation is to provide neighborhood outreach and assistance to unemployed individuals. This case study tells the story of three neighborhoods as they implemented a public-private neighborhood jobs pilot initiative (NJPI). The Rockefeller Foundation, in partnership with Alameda County Social Services Agency, supplied seed money for the NJPI to develop “one-stop” employment resource centers. The article describes how the neighborhoods implemented the NJPI, as well as common strengths and challenges, and lessons learned from the NJPI experience.     

When the Spirit Blooms: Acquiring Higher Education in the Context of Welfare Reform

ABSTRACT

Established within a political context greatly influenced by stereotypical assumptions of impoverished women of color, welfare reform codified a work-first philosophy meant to attack perceived “dependency” and spur “self-sufficiency.” This article describes the shortcomings of the work-first approach and highlights the importance of higher education for helping women, and especially women of color, achieve economic well-being. It then reports key findings from a study that examines the impact of higher education on the lives of welfare participants in California. Utilizing a mix of surveys, focus groups, and personal interviews, this study finds that despite the challenges associated with balancing parenthood, college-level coursework, and the bureaucratic demands of welfare reform, the stereotypical notions of the “welfare queen” do not apply. Instead, study participants exhibited a high level of ambition, persistence, determination, and hard work in pursuit of their educational ambitions; and in the process, improved their lives and the lives of their children.     

Welfare Reform and Immigrant Participation in Welfare Programs

This article examines the impact of the 1996 welfare reform legislation on welfare use in immigrant households. Although the data indicate that the welfare participation rate of immigrants declined relative to that of natives at the national level, this national trend is entirely attributable to the trends in welfare participation in California. Immigrants living in California experienced a precipitous drop in their welfare participation rate (relative to natives). Immigrants living outside California experienced roughly the same decline in participation rates as natives. The potential impact of welfare reform on immigrants residing outside California was neutralized because many state governments responded to the federal legislation by offering state‐funded programs to their immigrant populations and because the immigrants themselves responded by becoming naturalized citizens. The very steep decline of immigrant welfare participation in California is harder to understand, but could be a by‐product of the changed political and social environment following the enactment of Proposition 187.

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The Implementation of a “Work First” Welfare-to-Work Program in a Changing Environment

ABSTRACT

Current welfare-to-work programs grapple with the issue of putting welfare recipients to work immediately or investing in long-term education and training. Because of the 1996 welfare reform time limits, “work first” approaches are predominating. This paper examines the innovative program developed by Goodwill Industries of Southern California, which meets the challenges of implementing a work first model with a low-skill Spanish-speaking population, while also providing services to overcome barriers to employment. This is accomplished in the context of a unique profit-generating business enterprise, which makes program participants both clients and employees.     

The Christmas Box House: Developing a Best Practice Model for Emergency Shelter Care and Assessment

ABSTRACT

In many states, emergency shelter care facilities are the main point of entry into the child welfare system. Despite this important “gatekeeping” role, emergency or crisis shelters serving abused and neglected children have been overlooked as research settings, and little has been written about them in the child welfare literature. This article describes the evolution, design, and implementation of the Christmas Box House, a new model for shelter care in the State of Utah. Emphasis is placed on the public-private partnerships that not only spurred the development of the Christmas Box House model, but will now be critical to the success of planned research efforts.     

A Qualitative Sociological Approach to Address Issues of Diversity for Social Work

ABSTRACT

This article identifies prevailing conceptual approaches employed to formulate issues of diversity for social work research and practice. It argues that the notions of “welfare” and “diversity” are customarily defined within unduly narrow realms. “Welfare” is normally defined from the ideological perspective of modern mainstream society, even though competing minority ideologies of “welfare” are both possible and evident. “Diversity” is normally organized around the central concept of “ethnicity,” even though the universality of this notion is questionable. In response a research approach to address these limitations is proposed which employs a sociological perspective and qualitative methodology to discern appropriate conceptual frameworks.     

Managing Out

ABSTRACT

With the advent of welfare reform and managed care, the nature of managerial practice has increasingly shifted from a primary focus on internal operations to a more external, community focus which involves actively monitoring and managing the boundary between the external environment and internal organizational arrangements. This article explores the boundary spanning aspects of community practice, the related theories of inter-organizational relations, and the process of “managing out” by those in top management and middle management positions in human service organizations.     

Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression (2nd edn)

Abstract

In the present context of “get tough on crime” and “back to criminal justice” campaigns that continue to dominate political agendas throughout Australia, critics point to the inadequacy of “welfarist” or reformist criminological and sociological theories that have informed interventions in the past and reinforce the need for “retributive justice” models of penal policy. The present paper examines historical evidence on the role of the human sciences in juvenile justice administration during the 1940s, a formative time when psychiatric, psychological, and social work expertise came together in the form of the Children's Court Clinic in Victoria. It suggests that contemporary critiques about the failure of the welfare model of juvenile justice inadequately capture the historical functioning of expertise in justice administration and the real extent to which the welfare model as “actual rehabilitative intervention” was ever implemented.     

Post-Welfare Reform, Low-Income Families and the Dissolution of the Safety Net

There has been a great deal of discussion around the fact that lifting individuals and families out of poverty was not a goal of the 1996 welfare reform legislation. The implementation of welfare reform since 1996 has demonstrated the consequences of caseload reduction as a primary goal. This paper addresses the hardships that can result when lifting people out of poverty is not addressed.     

The Planets Aligned: Is Child Protection Policy Reform Good Luck or Good Management?

Abstract

Governments across Australia are struggling to address escalating child protection notifications, a marked increase in the number of children in State care, a decrease in the number of foster carers and chronic workforce shortages in child welfare services. This paper explores the reform process that culminated in the proclamation of the Victorian Children, Youth and Families Act, 2005 and represents an aspect of the response in Victoria to these wider issues. It explores the history of the reform from the perspective of key actors from government, non-government sectors and academics who participated in the process. The paper explores the “ingredients of social policy reform” and how the change process was managed in Victoria. It does not seek to evaluate the reform but rather to understand the complex processes through which a propitious moment for reform was both seized and constructed.     

The Policy Transfer Model

ABSTRACT

“New” social welfare policies are often actually policies borrowed from other states or nations. This paper reviews the recent theoretical developments in understanding the processes of policy transfer and presents a “policy transfer” model that can be a useful heuristic tool for social workers engaged in policy making. It discusses how the field of social work can benefit from understanding the factors underlying successful and unsuccessful policy transfer, and argues for the inclusion of the study of policy transfer in social welfare policy courses.     

State behavioral health agency website references to evidence-based program registers

PurposeEvidence-based program registers (EBPRs) are important tools for facilitating the use of evidence-based practices or programs (EBPs) by state statutory agencies responsible for behavioral healthcare, broadly defined as substance misuse, mental health, HIV/AIDS prevention, child welfare, and offender rehabilitation. There are currently no data on the purposes for which such state agencies reference EBPRs on their official websites.MethodA webscraping method was used to identify and classify relevant “hits”, defined as a state behavioral health webpage with single or multiple references to a study EBPR. A total of 778 hits (unique combinations of webpage and register) were coded. Up to three codes were applied to each hit for the “reasons for the EBPR reference” (EBPR use) dimension, one code was applied to each hit for the “purpose of the EBPR reference” and “intended audience of the webpage containing the hit” dimensions, and up to two codes were applied to each hit for the "funding mentions” dimension.ResultsThree EBPRs out of 28 accounted for 73.6% of the hits. The most frequent reason for referencing EBPRs were as a resource for selecting EBPs or validating existing programs and practices. The references tended to appear in reports from the state, in training materials, or guidelines. The references tended to address broad groups of behavioral healthcare professionals. EBPRs were frequently referenced in the context of federal block grants or other federal funding.ConclusionsIncreasing state agencies’ awareness and use of the entire range of existing EBPRs may improve implementation of EBPs nationally.     

The Relationship Between the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 and Innovative Welfare Practices on a Local Level

SUMMARY

Part of the intention of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) was to encourage the development of innovative welfare programs on a state and local level. The Act removed stringent federal regulations regarding the design and implementation of cash welfare programs. The freer programmatic environment was to assist local offices in addressing the unique needs of their particular clients as they moved from welfare to work within a time limited setting. In an attempt to examine if this intended piece of the policy was implemented, qualitative data were collected from a statewide sample of local Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) offices in Georgia. The findings indicate that a minority of local offices engaged in innovative behaviors that were significantly different from their pre-PRWORA behaviors. Implications for welfare policy implementation and program development are discussed.     

Workfare Oz-Style

Summary

Traditional approaches to the promotion of welfare have disappeared in Australia, replaced by a new institutional order represented by welfare-cum-workfare. This has impacted on social work—both as a collective entity and as a set of practices. This paper maps the shift to workfare in Australia and examines its impacts on and implications for social work. We briefly discuss the Australian model of social protection, illustrating our own brand of “exceptionalism,” and lay out what we have termed “Workfare Oz-style.” Drawing upon neo-institutional theory, we review and analyze two key contexts where “Workfare Oz-style” is operationalized—the Job Network and Centrelink. Some tentative conclusions are given and the dimensions of a research agenda, which will put any emerging propositions to empirical test, are proposed.     

Internet Technology Makes Clinical Data Systems Technically and Economically Practical: Are They Politically Feasible?

SUMMARY

The creation of data systems capable of tracking health service inputs and outcomes were a major thrust of health reform. It proved neither technically nor politically feasible. Recent advances in software, communication technologies and measurement tools suggest integrated information systems, reliable at the individual case level, are now practical. This paper explores one possible model of a clinical information system for behavioral health services and asks, “Is implementation of such a model now politically feasible?”     

Listening to Clients

Abstract

Qualitative research can be used to influence policy development, implementation, and evaluation. Three focus group studies dealing with implementation of a county's welfare reform programs are presented to illustrate the ways that qualitative research can be used. The paper discusses results of the studies and presents strategies for exertinginfluence. Processes used to develop and change policy are explicated.     

Big Data in Social Welfare: The Development of a Critical Perspective on Social Work's Latest “Electronic Turn”

ABSTRACT

“Big data” initiatives that aim to bring together and mine data from multiple databases across government and non-government agencies promise new insights into the delivery of social services. However, as debates in other disciplines have shown, big data poses challenges as well as opportunities. This article provides an overview of the ethical issues in relation to big data, which extends into an examination of the practice issues for big data applied to the social welfare sector. In particular, the claims for objectivity made for big data are problematised through an exploration of what data are available in social welfare and the processes of big data collection and analysis, which are different from, but related to, data integrity. The aim is to stimulate debate within the sector in order to contribute to the development of a critical, cautious, but open approach to social work's latest “electronic turn”.