Linking Disaster Preparedness and Organizational Response Effectiveness

An analytical model is developed to specify the relationship between organizational disaster preparedness and effective disaster response. Specifying this relationship clarifies the theoretical significance of the concept of preparedeness. The model shows how the concept of disaster preparedness. The model shows how the concept of disaster preparedenss applies to a broad range of social services when circumstances overwhelm the usual means of responding to problems. The relationship between organizational preparedness and effectiveness has been widely and ambiguously assumed but never actually tested. The viability of the model is illustrated with data from a Key Resource Chapter of the American Red Cross. The paradoxical nature of organizational effectiveness suggests the need for many empirical studies to further sharpen the analytical connection between preparedness and effectiveness.     

Planning to Plan: A Process to Involve Child Welfare Agencies in Disaster Preparedness Planning

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when child welfare officials in Louisiana reported they did not know the whereabouts of all their children in foster care, disaster planning in public child welfare became a new area of concern. This article reports on a process of engaging seven public child welfare agencies in planning for disasters that could affect child safety and service delivery. The Washington Metropolitan Area Disaster Planning Project used a strengths-based approach to help agencies responsible for protecting and serving children in foster care and families at risk of abuse and neglect develop plans to augment and continue service delivery and responsiveness in the aftermath of a natural or man-made disaster. The processes of gathering information on disaster responsiveness, interviewing community and professional informants, developing a template to guide disaster planning within the agencies, and implementing a tabletop exercise are described. As a result of this consultation effort agencies became aware that disaster planning at the state and county levels had proceeded without child welfare at the table, that the increase in need for child welfare services during a disaster was not recognized by disaster professionals, and that practicing disaster responsiveness is necessary to assure readiness.     

Organizing for excellence

Conclusion Perhaps the knowledge base and the process of education which we clinical social workers know to be effective, the professional practice which we know to be sound and to which we are committed, have differentiated us from those who were our peers. We are related to them but no longer the same as them. The direct service advocates and the indirect service adherents, traveling in different directions, relating to diverse goals, and trained in separate methods, have evolved into two different professional entities bearing as many differences as similarities. If this is so, I would like to conceive of our parting not as a schism but as an unfolding of differentiated professionals and professions each having its own validity. Presented at the Seventh Annual Meeting of the California Society for Clinical Social Work, October 16, 1976.     

Organizing for Structural Reform:

Over the course of the past two decades, the New Jersey Tenants Organization (NJTO) has won significant structural reform for tenants. This article examines the history of NJTO's campaigns, organizing strategies, leadership structure, and organizational dynamics. This article also assesses the prospects for the future in today's economic and political climate.     

The Case for Prefigurative Feminist Organizing

Contemporary feminist community organizing is not entirely consistent in practice. Drawing from current and historic examples, as well a feminist literature, this article examines tensions and contradictions between feminist ideas and praxis. The author suggests that contemporary feminist organizing ideas and practices adhere to masculinist models, and do not offer a liberatory and inclusive model for social change. Recommendations for a consistency between the public and private spheres, and processes and outcomes, are discussed.     

Organizing for Intergenerational Learning and Knowledge Sharing

The increased age diversity in society challenges organizations to rethink the purpose and structuring of learning. This article proposes that an intergenerational learning (IL) approach can be useful for addressing the emergent needs, since IL implies a reciprocal process of learning and knowledge development. Taking an IL approach involves a shift from “succession of knowledge” to “co-creation of knowledge” in knowledge-sharing efforts. This shift becomes crucial as the digital generation enters the workforce. This paper presents insights from a case where students and entrepreneurs were engaged in an IL project to learn about business advantages and social media.     

Innovative Organizing Practices

ABSTRACT

The work requirements in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) set the stage for unprecedented expansion of workfare programs across the nation. Shortly after the PRWORA passed, the Los Angeles chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) began a union-style organizing drive of the 25,000 General Relief (GR) recipients in Los Angeles County's workfare program. Over the past four years the de facto union, in coalition with over 75 allied community, labor, and clergy organizations, won numerous substantive progressive policy changes in the workfare program. In a case study format, this paper describes the following innovative organizing practices and how they contributed to the workfare policy changes: (a) combining labor and community organizing strategies, (b) combining conflict tactics with direct service, and (c) developing leadership from the General Relief constituency.     

Organizing Multiple Vision

In a factory that produces large quantities of precision metal parts through the use of computer-controlled lathes, workers from different divisions of labor such as lathe operators, inspectors, and managers organize multiple vision to make cutting processes and the quality of products visible. The first part of this article investigates how the lathe operators juxtapose a range of different kinds of documents and artifacts to both program their lathes and build a perceptual field where relevant events in the process become visible. In the second part of the article, particular attention is paid to a standard plan as a boundary object. A common standard plan is used in different ways in different sections of the plant to accomplish its practice. A standard plan organizes multiple, perspectival vision of the "same" events in different sections while simultaneously becoming a tool for coordinating different divisions of labor.     

Organizing the poor

Conclusion Piven and Cloward aimed to be provocative, but they did so by badly overstating their argument. They are too fair-minded to ignore completely the contribution and courage of organizers in these movements. In spite of their thesis, they pay occasional obeisance to movement organizers and exemplars. There were nevertheless organizers in these [labor] struggles, they acknowledge. Some of these organizers were insurgents from the rank and file; others were radicals whose vision of an alternative future helped to account for their exemplary courage. Wherever these organizers came from, their vision helped goad workers into protest, and their courage gave workers heart and determination (148).Nor can they ignore the role of organizational activists in the civil-rights movement. They seek exemption from the implications of this activity by noting that these organizations were not much concerned with building formal membership and were cadre organizations. But the idea of cadre organizations doesn't appear in the index, is introduced in an ad hoc manner to preserve their argument, and is never developed. When Poor People's Movements goes from general thesis to specific case analysis, the argument becomes less provocative but more reasonable. Apparently, it is not every organization that discourages insurgency, aspires to create a mass membership and hierarchical bureaucracy, and is willing to sell its birthright for a mess of elite pottage. Some movement organizations' stimulate anger and defiance, and escalate the momentum of the people's protests. Some use their communication networks to spread disruptive forms of collective action and their organizational planning to chart strategy and timing, and to increase the effectiveness of collective action. Some institutionalize their dependence on their own constituency rather than come to rely on elite resources for survival. If some militant organizations later become tame and abandon their oppositional politics, other formerly docile organizations sometimes become centers of militancy - as the black churches and colleges did in the Southern civil rights movement.The intellectual task becomes the more exacting one of figuring out what types of organization are likely to facilitate insurgency or abandon their oppositional politics under different historical conditions. Poor People's Movements might be interpreted as providing one kind of answer to this question, an argument against mass-membership organizations. This is certainly a much less dramatic and provocative thesis. But in the end, an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of organization is a great deal more useful to students of social movements than the anti-organizational phillipic that the authors offer us.

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Teaching Community Organizing

Abstract

In this article, our experiences as professor and students will form the basis of reflection on the use of innovative teaching methods in a community organizing course. Based on student evaluations and participant observation, we discuss the role of creativity in enhancing the learning experience in a case example of this one course. Findings indicate that reliance on innovative teaching methods provides students with the opportunity to exercise their creativity. In turn, this creativity has a potentially positive impact on community practice.     

Training for Disaster Recovery

Abstract

This paper describes a range of training programs for social workers and other recovery workers following the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004. These programs were developed and implemented by the author in Singapore, and with collaboration from Indonesian colleagues, in Indonesia. The content is outlined and the rationale behind the development of the programs is presented. The theoretical bases for the diversity of interventions are argued. A course module for both undergraduate and postgraduate social work education is also described, as inclusion of crisis and disaster recovery management in professional courses is necessary to prepare practitioners for their inevitable involvement in responding to emergencies.     

Organizing Self-Help Groups for Empowerment and Social Change

Abstract

Empirical research has shown that self-help groups are not purely about individual change and intra-personal empowerment, but also about policy change and collective empowerment. In North America and Europe, such groups have been in the forefront of social change, and self-help represents a new political potential. However, findings of this study of self-help groups in Hong Kong indicate that social change has never been their common objective. In addition, members of the Hong Kong groups feel unable to impact social policies that affect their lives, despite wanting to do so. It is contended in this paper that this feeling of powerlessness among members might be related to the nature, size and length of existence of the self-help groups. It is further argued that self-help groups should form coalitions and seek professional assistance in order to effect social change and to strengthen and broaden their power base.     

New Professionals' Preparedness for Clinical Social Work: Supervisors' Perspectives

The fit between the preparation of a sample of recent M.S.W. graduates and the demands of their clinical assignments was investigated by collecting the ratings of their supervisors. These new clinicians were viewed as fully meeting the valid expectations for their work, but needing some further development in the areas of knowledge and clinical skills. The supervisors evaluated these new professionals very favorably.     

Student to Practitioner: A Study of Preparedness for Social Work Practice

Abstract

Australian social work graduates face an increasingly complex work environment where the role of the social worker is often overlooked or misunderstood. In order to examine the anticipated and concrete practice reality for social workers, this qualitative study examined the expectations of social work students preparing to enter the workforce (n=29) and the experiences of new social work graduates in the workplace (n=9). Findings suggest that undergraduates have a realistic understanding of the challenges they would encounter in practice, including anticipated value and ethical conflicts, and allied professions' conceptions of the social work role. They did not anticipate the busyness of the workplace or the level of supervision offered.     

Youth-Adult Partnership in Community Organizing

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of a campaign developed around sexuality education policy by a national youth-focused organization, Advocates for Youth, and its network of youth activists. The paper provides an overview of the national sexuality education debate and the specific strategies youth and adults use in partnership to advocate for a comprehensive approach to the education. The case study of the My Voice Counts!Campaign provides insight into the creation and evolution of a youth-adult partnership approach to community organizing, beginning with an online activism campaign and resulting in local youth-led projects to improve sex education policies and curricula. Following an analysis of the Campaign's accomplishments, the paper lays out recommendations for action and research to demonstrate the positive effects of this form of community practice.     

Psychiatric Services: Organizing Impossibility

This paper explores the proposition thatelements of the work of psychiatric services areimpossible. The notion of impossibility is consideredfrom three perspectives: societal, interpersonal, andorganizational.Organizational elements of impossibility areevidenced in attempts to work with madness, a phenomenonthat defies clear definition. Resultant confusion inrole and task boundaries is exacerbated by madinterpersonal interactions. The situation iscompounded by societal conflicts between the mad and thesane. Attempts to house and treat the mad over the past200 years are reviewed, and recent illustrativecase material is presented from two communitytreatment teams. It is argued that primarilysolution-focused approaches to madness have limitedsuccess. To acknowledge impossible elements of the workmay enable psychiatric institutions to be designedin ways that help make individual and collective madnessmore bearable rather than something to be controlled andor denied.     

The Suffering Mother and the Miserable Son: Organizing Women and Organizing Women's Writing

This paper examines the contribution of the writing of Julia Kristeva (1941– ) to post‐structuralist ideas about gender in organizations. In particular, it deals with the relationship between her writing and the disciplining of text and, by a parallel movement, with her writings about the body and the regulation of the body. However, it must be said that her writings are ‘extremely difficult and complex, and certainly intimidating and inaccessible to the non‐specialist’ (Lechte 1990, p. 2) but, despite this, Kristeva has come to be considered one of the foremost contemporary French thinkers and her writings have exerted a significant influence on both feminism and postmodernist ideas. Ironically, Kristeva is neither French by birth nor a feminist in the sense that the term is generally understood. Indeed, she has been highly critical of those feminists whom she regards as seeking ‘phallic power’ (Kristeva 1980, p. 208).     

Organizing Cyberspace: Strategies for Teaching About Community Practice and Technology

Summary

The coming millennium will bring new challenges and opportunities to those who struggle for the survival of communities. The incorporation of information technology is important to the conduct and teaching of community practice. This paper discusses how technology is changing community practice and considers the implications for social work education. The paper has three parts. First, it will consider the role of information technology in changing the context for community practice. Second, it will examine the incorporation of information technology into current and emergent community practice interventions. Finally, the paper will explore ways that these issues can be taught within the community practice curriculum.