Social Work

Despite its enormous wealth, the United States leads the industrialized world in poverty. One Nation, Underprivileged unravels this disturbing paradox by offering a different understanding of American poverty. It debunks many of Americans' most common myths about the poor, while at the same time providing a new framework for addressing this enormous social and economic problem. The author shows that the fundamental causes of poverty are to be found in America's economic structure and political policy failures, rather than individual shortcomings or attitudes. He establishes for the first time that a significant percentage of Americans will experience poverty during their adult lifetimes, and firmly demonstrates that poverty is an issue of vital national concern. Ultimately, the author provides the reader with a new paradigm for understanding poverty, and outlines a set of strategies that will reduce the phenomenon in America. One Nation, Underprivileged represents a starting point for rekindling a national focus upon America's most vexing social and economic problem.

This book studies women's poverty over the life course, focusing on the economic condition of single mothers and single elderly women — while also considering partnered women and immigrants — in eight wealthy but diverse countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In an analysis of labor market and social welfare sectors, the author and a team of international contributors conclude that both living-wage employment and government provision of adequate benefits and services are necessary if lone women are to achieve a socially acceptable living standard. Taken together, the chapters extend a feminist critique of welfare state theories and chart nations' disparate progress against poverty; probing, for instance, how Sweden emerged as a leader in the prevention of women's poverty, while the United States continues to lag behind.

Psychoanalysis and Politics is the collective work of an international group of scholars who are all interested in the transnational dimension of psychoanalysis. Joy Damousi and Mariano Ben Plotkin coordinated the group, and they also edited this collection. The essays in Psychoanalysis and Politics developed from a desire to analyze the possibilities for the practice of psychoanalysis under conditions of political authoritarianism and restricted political freedom in Europe and the Americas in the twentieth Century. In doing this, the repressive and emancipatory political possibilities of psychoanalysis are explored in different political, cultural, and historical locations. The book is arranged into three parts, each of them preceded by short introductions and titled: Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Part I––Europe contains chapters on Fascist Italy (Mauro Pasqualini), occupied and Vichy France (Annick Ohayon), Spain (Anne-Cécile Druet), and Hungary under Fascism and Communism (Judit Mészáros). Part II––Latin America focuses on Argentina and Brazil and contains chapters examining Brazil during the Vargas Regime (C. Lucia M. Valladares de Oliveira), Argentina under Peronism (Alejandro Dagfal), the Brazilian dictatorship of the 1960s and 1970s (Jane A. Russo), and the Argentinean military dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s (Mariano Ben Plotkin). Part III––Psychoanalysis in the United States during the Cold War and 1960s contains chapters on the fate of psychoanalysts during the times of Hoover and McCarthy (Elizabeth Ann Danto) and on psychoanalysis and different forms of cultural authoritarianism in the 1960s and 1970s (Eli Zaretsky).

Over the last half a century, technological and medical advances, shifting patterns of employment, the loosening of marital bonds, changing social norms, and the women's rights movement have dramatically altered the landscape of family life. On this new terrain, parents struggle with balancing the demands of work and child care responsibilities, selecting the right schools, and sorting through a bewildering array of medical and psychological nostrums. At the same time, public officials are under increasing pressure to formulate policies that assist parents to meet the challenges of childrearing in contemporary society. This book looks at the troubling concerns of childrearing in modern family life, and raises provocative questions about the benefits and hazards of policy alternatives designed to alleviate these issues. It frames the emerging needs and new risks that impact child rearing, addressing controversial issues such as the roles of schools and government in promoting children's health, the facts and the myths about Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), the family dynamics of balancing work and childcare, and allocating responsibility for care and support of children when family life breaks down. The book analyzes a range of state interventions to assist parents in dealing with these issues. Although these interventions are sometimes seen as a substitute for parental authority, the book explains how they can be framed as efforts to empower parents.

In both Europe and America, the landscape of social policies has undergone fundamental changes in recent decades, especially in endeavors to develop new welfare arrangements. How does this affect citizenship-at-large as defined by the Marshallian triad of personal, democratic, and social rights? Taking nine European countries as case studies, the chapters analyze the ways that citizenship has changed in key areas such as social security, labor market policies, and social services. Other chapters concentrate on the theoretical and conceptual challenges that result from the interrelation of changing social policies with different notions of citizenship. Trends in welfare reform have become harder to interpret. They are no longer about simple reductions in social services and entitlements, or a decline in social citizenship; the terms of debate have shifted. In a postindustrial world, individuals are afforded more mobility, autonomy, and responsibility. Security is being reexamined in light of the new risks stemming from a worldwide knowledge-based economy. Behind the diversity of changes there is a unified agenda taking shape, characterized with concepts like activation, social investments, concerns with inclusion, and the strengthening of links between rights and responsibilities. The chapters in this volume represent an insightful look at the debate between the determination to curb social spending and a new model of an activist state ready to make social investments.

Developmental social work, which is also known as the social development approach to social work, emphasizes the role of social investment in professional practice. These investments meet the material needs of social work’s clients and facilitate their full integration into the social and economic life of the community. Developmental social workers believe that client strengths and capabilities need to be augmented with public resources and services if those served by the profession are to live productive and fulfilling lives. Although developmental social work is inspired by international innovations, particularly in the developing countries, the book shows that it also has relevance to the United States and other Western nations. It also contends that developmental social work practice is not confined to community organization or other macro-practice interventions, and that developmental ideas can be implemented in mainstream fields of social work practice such as child welfare, mental health, aging, social assistance and correctional social work. The editors and contributors to this book (most of whom are associated with the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley) offer a highly original exposition of developmental social work theory and practice. They draw widely on innovative examples from the United States and other countries to show how developmental ideas can be implemented in everyday social work practice.

There is a profound crisis in the United States’ foster care system according to this book. No state has passed the federally mandated Child and Family Service Review; two-thirds of the state systems have faced class-action lawsuits demanding change; and most tellingly, almost half of all children who enter foster care never go home. The field of child welfare has lost its way and is neglecting its fundamental responsibility to the most vulnerable children and families in America. The family stories this book weaves throughout the chapters provide a backdrop for the statistics presented. Amanda, raised in foster care, began having children of her own while still a teen and lost them to the system when she became addicted to drugs. Tracy, brought up by her schizophrenic single mother, gave birth to the first of eight children at age fourteen and saw them all shuffled through foster care as she dealt drugs and went to prison. Both they and the other individuals that are featured in the book spent years without adequate support from social workers or the government before finally achieving a healthier life; many people never do. But despite the clear crisis in child welfare, most calls for reform have focused on unproven prevention methods, not on improving the situation for those already caught in the system. The book argues that real child welfare reform will only occur when the centerpiece of child welfare — reunification, permanency, and foster care — is reaffirmed.

America's social welfare commitments, including retirement and disability payments, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, the State Child Health Insurance Program, Supplemental Security Income, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, face mounting pressures as economic and social challenges escalate. It was originally created in 1935 to mitigate the personal economic hardships of the Great Depression on future cohorts of Americans. Many social welfare policy experts fail to grasp the intricacy and complexity of America's obligations as they are woven together under the authority of the Social Security Act. While frequently examined for their separate distinguishing characteristics, the many programs of the Act are linked to one another so that modification to one program creates the need for change in other programs. An incremental development of America's social welfare commitments through the Social Security Act over the past 75 years has produced a confusing manifestation of social welfare undertakings, often making it difficult to comprehend and/or modify any single program without a comprehensive overview of the policy and program dynamics of America's complete social welfare commitments. The present economic recession highlights the necessity of the Social Security Act on the one hand, but also uncovers 21st century social welfare issues that cry for changes in those programs authorized by the Act. Still, the Social Security Act provides the only coherent policy framework for understanding America's effort to meet her social welfare commitments, and provides guidance for the changes in America's social welfare programs necessary in today's unique social and economic environment.

Since the advent of the European Union, politicians have increasingly emphasized the notion of a European social model as an alternative to the American form of market capitalism, which is seen as promoting economic growth without regard for solidarity and social progress. As this political discourse has advanced, social scientists and academic policy analysts have raised questions concerning the extent to which the EU and US social models exist outside the minds of diplomats and politicians seeking to stitch together a common identity. How much unity is there still within Europe after the Eastern enlargements have considerably increased economic and cultural diversity? To whatever extent one might discern a distinct set of commonalities that represent the core of a European approach, how different are the European characteristics of social, economic, and political life from those of America? Addressing these issues, this book systematically analyzes how much European countries and the United States have in common, and how much variation we find within the enlarged European Union in eight central spheres of socio-economic and political life: employment, equality/mobility, educational opportunity, integration of immigrants, democratic functioning, political participation, rights to welfare, and levels of public spending. Drawing on empirical analyses by US and European scholars who represent multi-disciplinary backgrounds, each of these topics is put under scrutiny. The results of this study illuminate points of convergence and divergence as seen from the perspectives of scholars from both sides of the Atlantic.

According to the United Nations' latest data, the United States has more children living in poverty than any other industrialized nation in the world. More than a fifth of all children grow up in poverty. The poverty rates for African American and Latino children often exceed 40 percent. Furthermore, the United States — a country that once pioneered strategies to prevent child abuse and which now spends more money fighting child abuse than any other industrialized country — also has the highest rate of child abuse in the industrialized world. Against this background, the author, an authority on child welfare, takes a critical look at the current welfare system. He traces the transformation of child welfare into child protective services, arguing that the current focus on abuse has produced a system which is designed to protect children from physical and sexual abuse, and therefore functions as a last resort for only the worst and most dramatic cases in child welfare. In a close analysis of the process of investigating child abuse, the author finds that there is no evidence that the transformation into protective services has reduced child abuse fatalities or that it has provided a safer environment for children. He makes an argument for the criminal justice system to assume responsibility for the problem of child abuse in order for the child welfare system to be able to adequately address the wellbeing of a much larger number of children now growing up in poverty. This new edition of The Welfare of Children takes into account a major legislative change since the publication of the first edition: the welfare reform legislation of 1996. This legislation has fundamentally altered the public child welfare system as broadly understood, and the author of this book examines its implications on policy and practice, refuting the claim that welfare reform has actually reduced child poverty. The Welfare of Children, 2nd Edition is a blueprint for the comprehensive reform of the current child welfare system to one that administers to the economic security of the larger number of disadvantaged and impoverished children.