Enhancing parental power and flexibility in the transition from welfare to work

Recent welfare reforms in the United States shifted the emphasis from income maintenance to preparation for employment. Many families receiving welfare benefits have members with disabilities, which can complicate the process of transition into the workforce. Rehabilitation professionals have a unique set of skills, expertise and experiences which could enhance work transition outcomes for welfare recipients. This purpose of this article is to (a) familiarize rehabilitation professionals with welfare reform changes in the United States, (b) summarize the experiences of families affected by those changes who participated in a recent study, and (c) present a service delivery model to enhance parental power and flexibility based on rehabilitation principles.     

The Tyranny of the Customer and the Cost of Consumerism: An Analysis Using Systems and Psychoanalytic Approaches to Groups and Society

This paper argues that an organizationaldiscourse on consumerism is replacing a prior discourseof dependency. This discourse encourages, and isencouraged by, economic rationales for behavior and ismarked by the collapse of many complex societal rolesinto the simpler category of customer.Moreover, practices emergent from consumerism andeconomic rationalism often act as organizational andsocial defences against anxieties about theuncertainties and changes occurring in a worldincreasingly dominated by global markets where thecustomer is sovereign. Six workinghypotheses are proposed to explain the operation of these new socialdefences. Evidence in support of these hypotheses comesfrom collaborative action research projects in which theauthor is involved. The argument moves toward a consideration of the new consumerprovider pair which, it is proposed, has becomea major signifier within the consumer discourse andwhich might be considered as a transitional pair indealing with widespread organizationalchange.     

Readiness for Career Choices: Planning,Exploring, and Deciding

One of Super's most important contributions has been in explicating those developmental tasks that involve planning, exploring, and deciding, processes known collectively as readiness for career choices. The authors review existing means of conceptualizing and operationalizing the various aspects of readiness, as well as innovative practice applications that have emerged from this work. Next, selected elaborations and extensions of the readiness construct are described. Finally, future directions for theory and research on readiness are presented with a particular emphasis on the promise of considering contextual issues, motivational factors, and an expanded measurement perspective in subsequent inquiry and practice.     

AIDS funding and the rhetoric of scarcity

This article describes the “rhetoric of scarcity,” a viewpoint that focuses on the inadequate past support for and the uncertain future of AIDS funding. This view is at variance with the consistent rise in financial support for AIDS and with the criticism from some quarters that AIDS is being overfunded relative to other diseases. The rhetoric of scarcity expressed by members of the AIDS community is distinctive but not unique to HIV/AIDS and can be traced to qualities of the epidemic and the ways in which nonprofit organizations obtain their funds.     

Use of maternal health services in rural China

We use data from the nationally representative 1997 Demographic and Reproductive Health Survey to examine use of maternity services in rural China. The data indicate that roughly 60 per cent of women had at least one prenatal visit, while 40 per cent had a professionally assisted birth over the period 1988-97. Despite China's shift from a more socialist to a more privatized health care system, use of maternity services increased over this period. These increases are consistent with the push toward integration of reproductive health into family planning that emerged after the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development and the 1995 Fourth World Women's Conference held in Beijing. At the same time, we find indirect evidence that the target-based population policy may well have exerted downward pressure on use of maternity services; differences by parity are marked and multilevel models predicting use of maternity services indicate underdispersion at the individual level.     

Factors Contributing to Parents’ Preparation For Special-Needs Adoption

Three hundred and sixty-eight parents shared their perceptions of special-needs adoption preparation. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data to determine and understand what factors contribute to preparation, this study found that 12 child, family, and agency variables were correlated with perceived preparation, and that parents perceived level of preparation was predicted by the childs ability to attach, by the parents relationship with the agency, by the duration of the adoption, and by the parents ages at the time of adoption. Implications of these findings are discussed, as they relate to supporting parents, children, and families in special-needs adoptive placements.     

Beyond termination: length of stay and predictors of permanency for legally free children

Despite growing awareness of the complex needs of legally free children in child welfare care, relatively little empirical investigation has been done of these children and their experiences. This article reports the results of a study of length of stay and predictors of permanency in a sample of 1,366 legally free children in state custody in Washington state. A Cox proportional-hazards event history model was developed to explore the effects of gender, race, and ethnicity, and age at initial placement, on the likelihood of achieving legalized adoption or guardianship. Results indicate that older children, boys, and African American children were all significantly less likely to achieve a permanent outcome than were Caucasian children. Hispanic children, in the other hand, were significantly more likely to achieve a permanent outcome. The implications of these findings for permanency planning practice and policy development are discussed.     

Physical exercise and improvements in mental health

1. Walking groups provide activity and support for their members. 2. Exercise competes with anxiety and depression and may diminish these negative affects. 3. Most YMCAs provide financial aid by reducing fees for people with disabilities.     

Voice and Identity in a Bicultural/Bilingual Environment

Researchers have noted that with the onset of adolescence, girls' voices become muted and school achievement drops. Girls learn that the expression of strong feelings leads to distance from others, and that full use of their bodies and minds cause others discomfort. Self-esteem suffers and girls become at risk for destructive behaviors. Most studies have been done with middle class Caucasian girls. Those few studies done with young girls of color speak of girls on the margin who seem to resist losing their voices and their self-esteem. This article describes a study involving 5th–8th grade girls participating in an Advisory group program at a grammar school in a predominantly Mexican community of a large city. Group sessions were taped and analyzed for common themes including voice and self-esteem. Focus was directed to the influence of the bicultural/bilingual environment in analysis of group content. Implications for practice are included.