Race,Gender, and Social Support: A Study of Networks in a Financial Services Organization

A wealth of research indicates that social support improves employees' well-being and job performance. What is not well understood is how employees' race and gender influence the receipt of this type of support. I analyze qualitative and quantitative data to understand how race and gender influence the social support that workers receive. The results suggest that neither structural nor relational factors explain why blacks receive social support from fewer network members than whites. There is some evidence that relational factors contribute to gender differences in the receipt of social support, however. Interviews with workers suggest that gender schemata, the sex-typing of networks, reactions to racial discrimination, and differences in the value placed on social support contribute to race and gender differences in social support.     

Borderline Personality Disorder and Access to Services: A Crucial Social Justice Issue

A diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) can significantly affect access to services. Two Australian approaches to addressing this crucial social justice issue are compared: Project AIR (Affect Integration and Recovery), exemplifying changes within the existing psychiatric paradigm; and Adults Surviving Child Abuse's Practice Guidelines for Treatment of Complex Trauma and Trauma Informed Care and Service Delivery. Changes within the existing paradigm do not address stigma and fragmented services that create barriers to service. By comparison, the Guidelines represent a trauma informed perspective that recognises underlying complex trauma for most with the BPD diagnosis. Implications for services are discussed.     

Leadership in Social Work Education and the Social Change Model of Leadership

Leadership is a topic of international debate in both social work education and practice. Questions remain, however, regarding what specific models of leadership should be emphasized and how leadership content should be infused within the social work curriculum. This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the infusion of leadership within social work education. Specifically, this paper shares the design and development of a graduate-level social work course in program evaluation that infused education around the social change model of leadership (SCM) and then explores qualitatively how 39 graduate students interpreted and applied this model of leadership through an experiential community-based evaluation project. Findings of this study suggest that students utilized the values identified in the SCM in a range of ways to understand and interpret their leadership experience both in their collaborative groups and in their partnerships with community-based organizations. Community organizations also reported benefiting from the experience in partnership with the students. Implications are discussed in relation to the potential value and impact of this model for social work education.     

Women,Organizational Crisis,and Access to Leadership in International Organizations

Women who successfully break the glass ceiling have historically done so in the context of crises. Crises offer unique windows of opportunity for women because they either legitimize women as suitable candidates or create “glass cliffs” that make positions unattractive to men. This article examines four elections in the World Health Organization (WHO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), applying findings from the national to the international. First access to executive office international organizations—the breaking of the glass ceiling—is facilitated by organizational crisis; however, once broken, the importance of crises diminishes. Organizations become regendered or women become seen as acceptable candidates.     

Meta-Power,Social Organization,and the Shaping of Social Action

Interactionist analyses of social organization stimulate examination of how social situations and collective activity are shaped. Meta-power, the creation and control of distal situations, and organization as a structuration of meta-power are used as tools for exploring the shaping of situations. Five meta-power processes are presented: strategic agency, rules and conventions, structuring situations, culture construction, and empowering delegates. These processes illustrate how situations are created or altered. This paper offers a view of social organization that emphasizes relations among situations, linkages between consequences and conditions, and networks of collective activity across space and time. The conclusion calls for additional research to make more explicit the nature of social organization and its social conditions.     

Migrant Children,Social Capital and Access to Services Post‐Migration: Transitions,Negotiations and Complex Agencies

For migrant children, moving to a new country is marked by excitement, anxiety and practical challenges in managing this significant transition. This paper draws upon the concepts of social capital and social networks to examine migrant children's access to services post‐migration. Using data from a qualitative study with Eastern European families in Scotland, we identify a range of cumulative barriers that limit children's access to services and illustrate how their experiences are shaped by ethnicity, social class and place. The study shows that migrant children are often disadvantaged post‐migration and develop their own mechanisms to mitigate the impact of migration on their lives. We argue that migrant children's own social networks are relevant and they need to be analysed through a more individualised approach.     

The Prevalence of Elder Abuse and Neglect of Older Adults Who Access Health and Social Services in London,Ontario, Canada

It is anticipated that older adults who seek professional intervention may be more at risk of abuse and neglect. This paper reports a prevalence study that focused on older adults who accessed health and social service organizations over a three month period. Respondents ranged from 55 to 100 with a mean age of 73.8 years. Over a quarter of the sample reported at least one form of violence during their lifespan. Higher prevalence rates than in the general population were found. Attempted material abuse was most frequent, followed by verbal abuse, physical abuse, unintentional neglect, actual material abuse, and intentional neglect.     

Interactionism,Social Organization,and Social Processes: Looking Back and Moving Ahead

With its roots in American pragmatism, symbolic interactionism has created a distinctive perspective and produced numerous important contributions and now offers significant prospects for the future. In this article, I review my intellectual journey with this perspective over forty years. This journey was initiated within the American society, sociology, and symbolic interaction of circa 1960. I note many of the contributions made by interactionists since that time, with particular focus on those who have contributed to the study of social organization and social process. I offer an agenda for the future based on currently underdeveloped areas that have potential. These are inequality orders, institutional analysis, collective action across space and time, and the integration of temporal and spatial orders. The article concludes with calls for further efforts at cross‐perspective dialogues, more attention to feminist scholars, and an elaborated critical pragmatism.     

Linking Housing,Social Services and Family Well-Being

Abstract

Securing adequate housing is a key component in achieving family well-being and a decent quality of life. It is expected that as many as twenty percent of the families currently on welfare, many of whom are disproportionately female and African American, may not be employable by the end of their lifetime benefit. These families, classified as “hard-to-serve” or “hard-to-employ,” are headed by an adult who may be struggling with substance abuse, physical or mental health problems, as well as low literacy and social competency issues that inhibit achieving self-sufficiency. This author will examine existing literature on welfare-dependent households coping with substance abuse and mental health problems, and how the lack of affordable housing impacts their ability to achieve self-sufficiency. This article presents a case study     

Leadership in Children’s Services

This paper examines the different contexts for leadership in children’s services with a particular focus on integrated working. It reviews contemporary theories that appear to offer relevant frameworks for thinking about children’s service leadership. It is argued that children’s services require leadership at all levels to enable a dynamic, interactive service on the front line. Multi‐professional team leadership is a crucial and much underestimated role in integrated services, which should be thinking in terms of leadership capacity throughout the organisation rather than focusing predominantly on the most senior roles in the hierarchy.     

Leadership in Social Movements*

Two types of leadership styles in social movements are constructed on the basis of closed or open access to the source of legitimacy. Several predictions about structural consequences of the open or closed access are then made. The types are applied to four cases: the Nazis, the Manson Family, the Millerites and Women's Liberation. The hypotheses are confirmed.     

社会组织创新研究述评

公民社会部门的出现是20世纪最重要的社会创新,是一场深刻的“全球结社革命”。社会组织研究国外源远流长,著述丰硕,影响深远;国内在社会管理体制创新的推动下,社会组织创新日渐吸引眼球。整体来看,研究的学科、研究的领域、研究的成员在不断增多,研究趋势渐从社会组织管理创新的思想观念、创新路径、管理体制、困境与出路等方面,逐渐转向推进社会管理创新的政治和社会层面,以期促进各种认同的和谐共生关系的形成。     

Spirituality and Faith-Based Social Services

Abstract

Spiritual aspects of faith-based social services are rarely addressed in discussions of policy initiatives encouraging greater involvement of faith-based providers in service delivery. This article reports findings of a qualitative study of the values, beliefs, and practices of non-congregational faith-based service providers. Twenty-two providers in Midwestern and northwestern regions of the U.S. were asked about the spiritual bases of their programs, spiritual dimensions of service relationships, distinctions between service communities and programs, and distinctions between service ministries and social work. Implications for collaborations among providers with different beliefs are discussed.     

Community Solidarity,Political Competitiveness,and Social Rigidity: Relationships With Social and Health Services1

Previous work suggests that solidarity, political competitiveness, and rigidity influence the nature of social and economic change. Hypotheses that these three phenomena affect social well-being at the institutional level of the community beyond the effects of basic socioeconomic and population characteristics are examined in this study. Using data from a sample of North Carolina county-seat communities, a regression analysis with six controls indicates positive relationships of community solidarity and political competitiveness with social and health services. However, there is little indication that social rigidity has any effect on such services. Contrary to theories claiming the relative unimportance of communities, results indicate that community populations with high levels of solidarity and political competitiveness can have a positive influence on institutional growth and structural change.     

Research,A Basic Ingredient in the Study of Social Policy and Social Services

The course model described in this paper has four components: first, a systems base for understanding family structure, including intergenerational themes, taboos, toxic issues, triangulated relationships, and attitudes toward ethnic or racial heritage; second, utilization of research skills, including cataloging sources, constructing topical and autobiographical interviews and questionnaires, determining credibility of sources, and assessing style and form as well as content of correspondence; third, structural adaptations that students' families made over three generations in response to immigration, natural disasters, military mobilization, economic depression, long-distance relocations, and discriminatory actions; and fourth, public review of each student's research, elaborating on the similarities and differences in the experiences of each ethnic or racial group and in the structural accommodations of family systems to these experiences.     

Health Services Utilization Among Graduate Students: Patterns of Use,Access, and Satisfaction

Abstract

Utilization of health services by graduate students has been a neglected area of college health research. This paper describes the access problems and utilization patterns of a systematic random sample of the graduate student population at the University of Mississippi.

Survey methodology was used to assess sociodemographic, health status, and attitudinal characteristics of the study sample. In addition to type and number of visits for various health services, other utilization-related items included access to and satisfaction with care, and information received about these health services.

The results indicated that graduate students and their dependents were reliant to a large degree on local health care. Inadequacy of information was viewed as a major problem relating to access. Satisfaction with care appeared to be a function of the quality of care received.     

Gertrude Stein,Opium Queen: Notes on a Mistaken Embrace

Gertrude Stein was not only a fairly open lesbian but also Jewish, expatriate, and androgynous—all attributes that often retarded mass-market success. Why then was she so popular? The article offers original research highlighting how Stein was constructed as a kind of “opium queen” in the popular American press, and the ways that this decadent, bohemian celebrity persona allowed her to operate as “broadly queer” rather than “specifically gay” in the American cultural imaginary—a negotiation that accounts for the mass-market success rather than censure of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas despite the unparalleled visibility of its lesbian erotics.