Searching for Local Solutions: Making Welfare Policy on the Ground in Ontario

Over recent decades welfare dependency has played a powerful role in defining the welfare “problem” and in passing appropriate “solutions.” One result has been the proliferation of short-term, low-cost employment programs and training programs that have emerged as critical sites for challenging and reforming the attitudes and behaviors of welfare recipients. By exploring work-readiness programs in four communities in Ontario, Canada, we provide insight into how these programs relate to the lived realities of those compelled to attend them. The research shows how dependency discourse informs program rules and content, raising expectations about both the benefits and the immediacy of work. This focus risks individualizing blame and ignoring the structural realities of labor markets and the systemic forces that create poverty and unemployment. Although the particular empirical focus is on Ontario, the approaches used and their outcomes resonate with strategies that are evident wherever neoliberalism has made its mark.     

Factors Associated With Success in Doctoral Social Work Education

Although admission criteria such as GRE scores and undergraduate GPAs (UGPAs) have been shown to moderately predict success in graduate school for students in other academic disciplines and in MSW programs, no published research has examined factors associated with success in social work PhD programs. This article reports the findings of a pilot study in a Midwestern university that examined the relationship between common admissions variables and success in the doctoral program. Results indicate that GRE quantitative score, first-year doctoral GPA (DGPA), and age at admission were associated with successful completion of the doctoral program. Verbal GRE and UGPA were significantly correlated with first-year DGPA. Limitations and implications for admission and retention of students are discussed.     

Foster Parents Speak: Preferred Characteristics of Foster Children and Experiences in the Role of Foster Parent

Foster parents play a pivotal role in the child welfare system. A study that employed focus groups with foster parents was conducted at a private foster care agency with the initial purpose of understanding the characteristics of foster children that foster parents both preferred and not preferred. In the qualitative research tradition, their answers addressed the topic of characteristics and expanded to provide additional data on their experience as foster parents. Using theme analysis, the following themes were generated: foster care as service; foster parents' preferences of foster children's characteristics; foster parents do not feel valued or trusted; increased caseworker and foster parent partnership; problems in the foster care and related systems; and focus group as support. Implications for research and practice are forwarded.     

Perspectives on Independent Living Services Among Resilient Youth

This article describes the results of a qualitative research study of youth who are primarily aging out of foster care and utilizing Independent Living Services. Interviews and focus groups from youth revealed the following four themes: (1) emotional support needed (family support, case manager support), (2) tangible independent living services requested (financial resources, life skills, daycare), (3) communication of program services, and (4) the role of resiliency. A discussion of the themes and recommendations for child welfare agencies that work with this population are forwarded.     

Choosing Family: Meaning and Membership in the Lesbian Family of Choice

SUMMARY

This conceptual/theoretical article uses the psychodynamic Self Psychology model for the development of a vital, harmonious, and cohesive self to describe and understand the psychological importance of family for lesbian women. How can a healthy lesbian self be developed, nurtured, and maintained in an oppressive sexist and homophobic world? Family relationships are shown to fulfill the three fundamental psychological functions that sustain the lesbian self. In the absence of genetic and/or legal criteria, the basis on which someone is considered “family” is explored.     

No One Theory of Suicide: The Experience of a Cancer Patient Who Killed Himself

More than a million people worldwide die by suicide annually, and more than 30,000 of them in the United States. Cancer patients are two to four times more likely to die by suicide than the general population. The purpose of this article is to use the results of a phenomenological psychological autopsy to (1) illustrate the interplay of the interpersonal and intrapersonal circumstances of one colon cancer patient’s struggle and ultimate suicide, and (2) demonstrate that health and mental health practitioners need to use more than one theory of suicide to inform their assessment of risk. The findings present a telling picture of the struggles of the decedent, and the authors recommend how the results inform health and mental health practitioners’ practice, policy, and research related to suicide prevention.     

Juggling Paradoxes Commentary on the Work or Jessica Benjamin

Jessica Benjamin's contributions have exerted an enormous influence on contemporary psychoanalytic thought in general and on me in particular. I consider here some of the concepts basic to her approach that 1 find most helpful: recognition, identification and identificatory love, and gender overinclusiveness. I then point to the ways in which overinclusiveness in retaining certain lines of theorizing poses occasional problems for me.     

Outcasts…Outliers…Oppressed: Civic Advocates in U.S. History Worth Investigating

As de Tocqueville recognized, the U.S. democratic system relies on the advocacy of civic-minded individuals. Although U.S. history is replete with persons using different means to advance one or more democratic principles, VanSledright and Hess argued that secondary history education reinforces a persistent national narrative, one characterized by progress toward achieving national goals, an emphasis on ethnic success stories and avoidance of ethnic struggles and conflicts, and a quest for freedom. Such an approach results in a celebratory story of success, rarely one of struggle or failure. This approach silences those seemingly on the fringes of democratic society, denying students access to a richer, more nuanced narrative and to diverse ways to become civically engaged. To address this situation, we suggest first enabling students to contemplate what influences how individuals become civically engaged, next to apply their thinking to contemporary public policy matters, and finally to compare their decisions to those of historical figures, such as Bayard Rustin, often overlooked in the national narrative.