Testing Faith

Abstract

The U.S. federal government, through Charitable Choice, has opened public funding for the delivery of social services to faith-based organizations (FBOs) more than ever before. This increased access to governmental funding at all levels has led to a closer examination of the evidence base on the effectiveness of the services provided by FBOs, and the capacity of FBOs to respond to data needs for accountability and program improvement efforts. This paper discusses the current status of evaluation research on FBO services and the emerging data needs among faith-based providers. Promising avenues for enhancing the current understanding of outcomes of FBO services are explored such as (1) adopting outcome measurement practices in use within the current nonprofit sector, and (2) developing more rigorous research designs tailored to the special contexts of faith-based services. The paper suggests an agenda in which FBO operators, funders, and evaluators work together to move forward in improving the evidence base on faith-based services.     

The devil is in the details: Implementing secular outcome measurement methods in faith‐based organizations

Faith‐based organizations (FBOs) are now being encouraged to seek federal funding for the purpose of supporting faith‐based delivery of social services in local communities (that is, the Compassionate Capital Fund). This shift in the federal perspective has resulted in increased attention to the effectiveness of the services provided by FBOs. Though rigorous demonstrations are needed to determine the relative effectiveness of FBO services, other available alternatives offer a viable avenue to aid FBOs in improving their programs and monitoring their success. One such alternative is the use of outcome measurement techniques, such as those that have been infusing the nonprofit sector in the United States since the mid‐1990s, particularly among United Way–funded programs. This chapter discusses how to adapt secular outcomes measurement approaches to faith‐based organizations and their programs and the likely pitfalls that FBOs will face.     

EDITORIAL

Abstract

Many faith-based organizations (FBO) provide services to poor people. A major challenge for these organizations is to determine who is eligible to receive services. Thus, these organizations seek to make sure that that the poor are “truly worthy” and do not take advantage of a particular charity. The purpose of the study is to determine the kinds of barriers to service delivery that confront volunteers as they provide services to the poor. Volunteers possess the motivation to assist; however, many volunteers are given limited training, which may only include a basic understanding of the resources available at the center. We used a combination of qualitative methodologies to observe two FBOs in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. We observed and interviewed a total of 24 volunteers; 12 from each site, over a 3-month period. The two sites were similar in that they were faith-based and relied on volunteers. One site was located in a middle to lower economic area and the other site was located in a more affluent area of the county. Support provided included donations of food and financial assistance for eviction, utilities, and other emergencies. From this qualitative analysis, four working hypotheses emerged: (1) Volunteers expressed a sense of frustration over the limited resources and the increasing number of people in need; (2) Many volunteers expressed frustration that increasing burdens limited their ability to utilize the centers as a place to obtain friendship and social networks; (3) Volunteers expressed concerns and praise for the leadership at the two sites, and (4) Volunteers commented on how their faith influenced their decision to volunteer. The authors explore methods to address these challenges so clients in need can be better served.     

Faith-Based and Community Initiative

Abstract

President Bush's Executive Orders to establish Centers of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives have encouraged the use of faith-based organizations (FBOs) as service providers in a range of federally funded programs. New federal rules and regulations are removing barriers so that FBOs can participate in these programs. Yet, there is no centralized information system that accumulates data related to performance standards or outcome measures. This article analyzes the scope and scale of services provided by FBOs and the diverse approaches to studying the outcomes from these services.     

Comparing the Prevalence and Organizational Distinctiveness of Faith-Based and Secular Development NGOs in Canada

Faith-based development organizations (FBOs) have been argued to deliver more cost-efficient development projects than their secular counterparts through exclusive access to faith networks, which provide predictable decentralized funding, the recruitment of volunteers, low employee salaries, and less overhead and indirect costs. To date, however, comparative analyses of religious and secular organizations have relied on a case-by-case approach, limiting the generalizability of findings. This study addresses this methodological gap by analyzing Registered Charity Information Return filings and organizational websites of 844 Canadian development NGOs to determine the proportion of FBOs and their organizational distinctiveness. The results show that FBOs comprise 40% of the Canadian NGO sector in terms of the number of organizations and their expenditures in developing countries, and are significantly less reliant on federal funding (p?<?.1), pay employees lower salaries (p?<?.01), but do not exhibit a significant difference in their expenditures on overhead and indirect costs. Thus, Canadian FBOs participation in faith networks shapes their organizational modus operandi but does not result in a low overhead alternative to secular NGOs.

     

Technology and School Social Work Services: Introducing Technology in an Alternative School

SUMMARY

The public school system, one of the largest human service institutions in our nation, is continuously engaged in a struggle to balance the needs of a growing and diverse population with continuing threats of budget cuts. Under these conditions, it becomes even more critical that school social workers understand and appreciate the role of technology in delivering and evaluating services. To assess the effectiveness of school social work services, evaluation will have to be planned for, and systems of data collection and processing will have to be conducted on an ongoing basis.

This paper outlines the process whereby school social workers in a local school district proceeded to introduce technology into their service delivery regimen. Secondly, the paper shows how such technology was, and may be, used to evaluate the services provided by school social workers in an alternative school.     

Analysis of social innovation on social networking services

ABSTRACT

Social network services are allowing more social connectivity and making possible sharing information and knowledge of a different nature. This article analyses if social workers related to active social policies from Malaga province (Spain) are using social network services to share information and knowledge and if there is a mirror between online and offline relationships. Since it is an experimental model, through virtual ethnography and through social network analysis methodology, we observed the presence, connectivity and analysed the structure of relationships that keep 235 professionals from 52 organizations in Facebook®. Moreover, the model uses the statistical technique of modularity for detecting online communities, which are compared with distribution of professionals in their organizations. Results show how social network services applied to social intervention are massively and frequently used by professionals. On the other hand, the detected communities reflect existence of analogy between online and offline relationships. The online structure shows a high degree of cohesion and how certain professionals have higher capacity of influence and diffusion depending on position in the online structure. It argues about the opportunity to incorporate social network services towards social intervention as a manner of social innovation to improve cooperation and diffusion of information and knowledge.     

Early African American Social Welfare Pioneer Women

Abstract

This article uses selective aspects of the careers of Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, Lugenia Burns Hope, Elizabeth Ross Haynes and Janie Porter Barrett to provide a critical overview of the ways that African American women addressed the needs of their communities through social welfare services during the early part of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the article also shows how individual and collective forms of empowerment helped to build private social institutions to address the community's needs.     

Sustaining edges: CSR,postmodern play,and SMEs

Globalization challenges organizations to make sustainable connections between enterprise, equity, ethnicity, and the environment. This article contends that to date, the main responses cluster round corporate social responsibility (CSR). It further claims that CSR often results from adverse publicity (and so has been defensive in nature, and reactive rather than proactive); and that its emphasis on corporations marginalizes small to medium enterprises (SMEs), who form a huge part of the world economy. The article illustrates how one SME, Dawnraid Entertainment, from the socio-cultural and geographical edge of Aoteoroa/New Zealand, responds by pioneering community-embedded enterprises.     

A ‘Tripadvisor’ for disability? Social enterprise and ‘digital disruption’ in Australia

ABSTRACT

We explore how social enterprises can use platform technologies to plug ‘informational gaps’ in the provision of disability services. Such gaps are made more apparent by policies promoting self-directed care as a means of giving service users more choice and control. We use a case study of a start-up social enterprise seeking to provide a TripAdvisor style service to examine the potential for social innovation to ‘disrupt’ current models of service. The case study suggests that any disruptive effects of such changes are not due to new digital technology per se, nor to novel platform business models, but rather rest in the manner in which the moral orders which justify current patterns of social disablement can be challenged by social innovation.     

Passing a Mental Health Levy

ABSTRACT

The “devolution revolution” has decreased federal and state roles in the funding of social services and increased the burden on local sources, both public and private. This article describes how a community passed an initially unpopular property tax levy earmarked to support local drug, alcohol and mental health services. The article illustrates how social workers employing specific community practice knowledge provided leadership to the successful campaign. This example of community practice leadership includes building and maintaining coalitions, managing group tension and conflict and demonstrating fundamental social work values.     

Independent Mental Health Advocacy: A Model of Social Work Advocacy?

ABSTRACT

Advocacy has received less attention in social work research than other aspects of social work practice. This paper draws attention to two tensions in social work advocacy; between worker-led advocacy and person-led advocacy, and between individual advocacy and system level advocacy. We argue that human-rights-based social workers must choose a person-led approach over a worker-led approach while advocating with both systems and individuals. This argument is made by drawing on findings of an evaluation of Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA) in Victoria, Australia. It is shown that social work training had not prepared social workers for rights-based, person-led advocacy and that social workers in public mental health services were struggling to maintain the rights of people in their services even with assistance from IMHA.

IMPLICATIONS

• Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA) is a model of advocacy influenced by social work theory and delivered in part by social-work-trained advocates.

• Social work training is not preparing social workers for person-led, human-rights-based advocacy.

• Public mental health social workers are struggling to maintain the rights of people in mental health services even with the support of external advocacy services.

     

Conveying the sense-making corporate persona: The Mobil Oil “Observations” columns, 1975–1980

Since at least the early 20th century, the corporation has arisen in the US as an entity that attempts to help individuals make sense of the world through the use of public relations. Public relations scholarship, however, tends to focus on how corporations primarily articulated their worth through touting how the products and services they offered were constructive to society. This study, however, through a review of Mobil's “Observations” advertorials that ran from 1975 through 1980, reveals how a corporation attempted to build an influential persona by offering a corporate personality, that is an empathetic fellow traveler who is also believable and aspirational. This examination of the presence of the corporate persona points to lingering concerns, especially regarding how well the corporation can realize and communicate its corporate character in a world that is increasingly complicated by the rise of non-traditional information sources (e.g., social media), and interlocking, systemic concerns (e.g., climate change, economic/ecological sustainability). Public relations can assist in better understanding such factors so that the corporate persona can act in ways that benefit stakeholders and society.     

Trading Diamonds Responsibly: Institutional Explanations for Corporate Social Responsibility

This article identifies factors that led to a comprehensive regulatory regime for the global diamond trade, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), established through negotiations among NGOs, states, and the industry. The conflict diamonds case provides important insights into the processes by which global norms redefine how corporations are expected to conduct business. First, we show that global corporate social responsibility (CSR) norms rooted in the construct of world citizenship facilitated the rapid progress of the conflict diamonds campaign. Second, we detail how these norms became institutionalized in the KPCS, stressing the importance of the legitimacy of NGOs as bearers of corporate world citizenship models and the role of moral leaders within the diamond industry itself. We consider two theoretical perspectives on CSR development: management theories, which are strong on practitioner issues but mute regarding the content and authority of CSR ideology, and institutional theories, which offer better frameworks for understanding the impact of cultural and institutional environments on company responses to the moral claims advanced by NGOs. We use the conflict diamonds case to draw conclusions about how NGOs can effectively define new social responsibilities that companies come to see as obligations they must heed as responsible world citizens.     

Social Enterprise in Mental Health: An Overview

ABSTRACT

This article provides an overview of the models and concepts of social enterprise utilized for and by people with serious mental illness histories. Although social enterprise in mental health is not new, the naming of it as social enterprise and the attention these efforts have garnered is new. This article will provide a brief history of social enterprise in formal social services; review some conceptual issues and differences between social enterprise in Europe and North America—the two major current centers of its activity; and conclude with some observations of the ways in which mental health social enterprises are developing.     

Social Exclusion in the European Union

Abstract

This article reviews the development of social policy in the European Union since the mid-1980s. It describes the origins and evolution of the concept of social exclusion, the dominant paradigm for social welfare policy-making in the European Union and its member states. Case examples from Great Britain and Wales provide indications of the impacts for direct services.     

State Policy Restrictions on Abortion

Abstract

Although abortion remains legal and available to women, access to services is limited by restrictive factors such as parental consent and notification laws, mandatory delay requirements, insurance regulations/bans, and postviability testing requirements. This study employed a hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) with all states over a six-year period 1988-2000. It found the variable parental consent statistically significant. Consistent with its focus on social justice, social workers should be aware of and informed about social policies that appear to discriminate against oppressed populations such as young women, low-income women, and women of color.     

Building on Mutual Goals

ABSTRACT

In this era of diminishing federal and state funds for social services, greater attention has been directed toward how social work and the religious sector can cooperate in providing services. This article suggests that social workers should move beyond this focus and begin to identify and join in collective action with local congregations or faith-based organizations, which take an activist approach toward community needs. The author uses a case study of an activist central city church to illustrate how churches can be involved in community change. Social workers are encouraged to consider all methods of collaboration with the religious sector that would lead to the mutual goal of community betterment.     

Working for God and Sustainability: The Activities of Faith-Based Organizations in Kenya

Faith-based organizations (FBOs) have long played a role in international development, and are increasingly involved in environmental sustainability initiatives. Despite these contributions they have, until recently, been largely ignored in scholarship and by secular agencies. This article adds to the growing recognition of FBOs, exploring the identity and function of FBOs doing environmental and development work in Kenya through document review, qualitative questionnaires and participant observation. A diverse group of FBOs with varied identities and engaged in a broad range of activities revealed several strengths and challenges of faith-based environmental and development work. Of particular note is the key role churches and faith-based agencies can play in effecting sustainable and holistic change in Global South countries, due to their rootedness in the community, the social capital they help to produce, and the respect they receive from the people.     

Young people and social networking sites: exploring the views and training opportunities of CAMHS social workers in Ireland

ABSTRACT

Social Networking Sites (SNS) (e.g. Facebook, Instagram) have become a fundamental part of the daily lives of many young people. SNS engagement has been associated with a number of risks and benefits, some of which are particularly relevant to young people who access child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). Consequently, understanding how and why young people engage with SNS, and the associated risks and benefits, may become an increasingly important part of CAMHS social work.

This small-scale study (n = 15) utilised an online survey to explore the importance that a sample of Irish CAMHS social workers attribute to maintaining an awareness of how young people use SNS, whether they, in their professional lives, have been offered the opportunity to learn about SNS engagement among young people, and whether they have taken it upon themselves to learn about this topic.

Findings suggest that participants consider an understanding of SNS to be an important part of CAMHS practice. However, participants report that they do not feel sufficiently aware of SNS trends among young people, suggesting that there is scope for SNS-focused training/learning opportunities among this sample of CAMHS social workers. Implications for practice and suggestions for future research are outlined.