O mundo atual passa por uma revolução na produção industrial de animais, busca-se atender as exigências do mercado focando na qualidade do produto final e nos sistemas de produção. A partir da preocupação pública com a melhoria do bemestar de animais de produção e o maior controle da cadeia produtiva, protocolos internacionais com recomendações de boas práticas de produção foram desenvolvidos, a fim de simplificar e esclarecer os princípios de bem-estar animal (BEA) para o setor produtivo. No Brasil, os sistemas existentes e as pesquisas direcionadas ainda estão na fase de avaliar os gargalos tecnológicos, oriundos de sistemas de produção com diferenças em relação às escalas de produção. Nesse contexto, há a necessidade de avaliar cada sistema brasileiro de produção, suas particularidades e comparar aos sistemas europeus e americanos. O Brasil é um país de destaque na produção de proteína animal, e deve estabelecer suas próprias condições de qualidade frente à sua escala e a suas particularidades de produção. Não há como simplesmente aderir às exigências internacionais, sem atentar para a realidade nacional seja ela de produção, de nível tecnológico e de exigências/dificuldades dos produtores rurais. Baseando-se na necessidade do estabelecimento de padrões para o sistema brasileiro de produção de leite em pasto, conforme Instrução Normativa 56/2008, do Ministério da Agricultura Pecuária e Abastecimento (MAPA), esse estudo propôs uma adaptação do sistema de avaliação do protocolo Welfare Quality® Assessment protocol for cattle - applied to dairy cows (2009) para avaliação do bem-estar de vacas leiteiras em sistema de pastejo. A aplicação do protocolo Welfare Quality adaptado para o sistema de pastejo possibilitou a avaliação e a classificação de forma quantitativa e qualitativa em relação ao bem-estar geral do rebanho, e consequentemente da propriedade leiteira. / The current world is going through a revolution in the industrial livestock production, so it is important to meet market demands by focusing on product quality and farming systems. Based on public concern regarding farm animal welfare improvement and greater control of the productive chain, international protocols with good production practices recommendations were developed in order to simplify and clarify animal welfare principles to the productive sector. In Brazil, the existing systems and targeted researches are still at the stage of assessing technologic bottlenecks, arising from production systems with differences related to production scales. In this context, there is a need to assess each Brazilian production system, their peculiarities and to compare European and American systems. Brazil is a country of prominence in animal protein production and shall establish its own quality conditions ahead of its scale and its production particularities. There is no simply meeting international requirements without considering the national reality of production, technological level and farmers\' demands/difficulties. Relying on the need to establish standards for Brazilian system of milk production in pasture, according to Normative Instruction n° 56/2008, from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA), the present paper proposed an adapted evaluation system from Welfare Quality Protocol® -Assessment protocol for cattle - applied to dairy cows (2009) to assess the welfare of dairy cows raised in pasture. The implementation of the WQ adapted protocol allowed the evaluation and classification of the farms quantitative and qualitatively in relation to general animal welfare, and consequently the production facility.

College course enrollment operates as a market under supply cap. Because of the limited number of seats available for any given course some students who have a higher demand for a course are unable to enroll. The current registration system at the Claremont Colleges functions as a random draw system with added time costs. The lack of price signalling in the markets leads to a loss in overall welfare of the student body. By running data through simulated demand curves I am able to determine, on average, how much welfare is being lost by a random draw system. The percent of maximum welfare achieved compared to maximum possible ranges from forty-nine to eighty percent and largely depends on the proportion of enrolled students to the sum of enrolled + enroll requests as well as the demand function type. With price signalling, the student body would be able to reach the maximum achievable welfare.

This dissertation consists of three empirical studies that address questions regarding state welfare policy making in the post-welfare reform era. The first empirical study pays close attention to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) as a federal block grant program, which is a big departure from most previous TANF studies, to ask why American states differ in their decisions to allocate federal block grants across specific programs. Drawing on research on fiscal federalism and state and cross-national welfare politics, the study uses cross-sectional time-series data covering 50 states over the fiscal years 2004-2016 to examine factors that have an impact on state child care spending under the TANF block grant. The results show that several political factors and one socio-economic factor impact states’ TANF child care spending in the hypothesized direction. Most importantly, the study finds that a specific state government’s TANF policy designed to encourage work matters in an interesting way. States’ emphasis on work of TANF recipients, measured by the existence of the TANF job-search rule, exerts a positive, independent effect on the percentage of state TANF child care spending, but the positive marginal effect of implementing the job-search rule becomes negative as the percentage of female state legislators passes 28%. The study shed lights on our general understanding of the factors that influence state allocations of federal block grants for an understudied but increasingly important policy program in the American states—child care. The second empirical study examines whether the selection of indicators of welfare policy commitment makes any difference for the findings in studies of the determinants of state welfare policy. If so, what difference does it make? While scholars of state welfare politics have long been making efforts to find better explanations for variation in welfare policy across American states, the literature as a whole has paid little attention to how differently scholars operationalize state welfare policy even though they examine a variety of welfare policy measures. To address these questions, I estimate a series of different panel data models with different measures of state welfare commitment for the period after the welfare reform of 1996. Comparing the results across these models shows that the choice of dependent variable measures affects the estimation results, thereby suggesting that empirical findings are dependent upon the measure we use. This finding not only shows that scholars need to be cautious in interpreting their results but also opens up a new puzzle as to why a factor affects a particular welfare measure but not others. The last empirical study addresses the question: do the effects of party politics differ across welfare policies? In answering this question, the study draws on the literature on deservingness and social construction of target populations and hypothesizes that party politics would play a differential role in explaining the generosity of different welfare policies depending on the perceived deservingness of target populations. To test this hypothesis, I estimate three models each for TANF, Supplemental Security Income-State Supplements (SSI-S), and Medicaid generosity covering the period after the welfare reform. I find that party politics still remains as an important predictor of state welfare generosity, especially where welfare policy for the deserving poor and mixed population in terms of its deservingness is concerned. Also, there are differential effects of party politics across the welfare policies examined, but sometimes in an unexpected direction. This study provides a valuable addition to the literature in that it updates and enriches our understanding of welfare politics.

In this project a four week computer-based career assessment program was developed to equip employable welfare recipients in San Bernardino with the necessary tools to explore, seek, obtain, and maintain employment that is self-sustaining. The first three weeks of the curriculum addresses major areas of career development, while the last week focuses on job searching.

The purpose of this study was to examine child welfare social workers’ attitudes, awareness, and understanding of the needs of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ) youth while in out-of-home placement. This study used quantitative data collection methods of social workers in three Southern California counties regarding these issues, and 27 such workers participated. It was found that only half of the child welfare social workers had received training on issues involving LGBTQ foster youth, but that the majority of those workers who received training were interested in learning more about the topic. It was also found that many workers had family, fiends, or colleagues who belonged to the LGBTQ community, and that this personal connection reduced the endorsement of heterocentristic views. Political orientation was also influential with liberal social workers being less inclined to endorse the idea that the world’s inhabitants should be heterosexual. The results found that many social workers either had none or were not aware of the presence of any LGBTQ foster youth on their caseloads. This was explained with a combination of the worker not enquiring or feeling that it was not appropriate to do so. Of those who indicated that they were aware of such youth, all stated that the youth shared their identities after being asked about it or after some time had passed in working with them. Also, those who acknowledged the presence of LGBTQ youth were more cognizant of identity development issues of LGBTQ youth, were more liberal politically, and had friends in the LGBTQ community. The limitations, recommendations for social work practice, policy, and suggested further research is also discussed.

Adoption is a common occurrence within the field of social work, yet adoptees and their adoptive parents grapple with a multitude of challenges unique to this population. The needs of these children and families are continually scrutinized by social service professionals prior to adoption, but less is known of the needs and services available to this population after adoption is finalized. This study addressed the question: Does adoptive families’ use of post-adoptive resources increase positive adoption outcomes? Ten adoptive parents participated in semi-structured interviews as part of this study. Most participants felt they had access to adequate services, and struggled with issues common to all types of parenthood, adoptive or biological. Two issues which parents identified as needs, and which provide direction for social work practice, were: normalizing their families’ experiences; and navigating conversations regarding adoption and birth families with their children.

Child welfare agencies are responsible for the overall care and custody of children removed from their caregivers due to substantiated child abuse allegations. After the children are removed it is standard department procedure to offer court mandated reunification services. The only exception of this is when parent’s rights are terminated. Both the parents and children are ordered services based on the needs of the family. These services include but are not limited to parenting classes, drug treatment, and therapeutic services. The purpose of this study is to examine whether families in different geographic areas, who are referred to different therapeutic providers, experience different reunification rates. The agency that provided the data for this study presumed that families in more affluent zip codes are more likely to be served by licensed therapists, while families in less affluent zip codes are more likely to be served by interns or unlicensed professionals, and that this difference in providers would lead to greater reunification rates in the more affluent zip code. The study used data collected from client case files at a local child welfare agency. This data included clients from two distinct zip codes - one more affluent and one less affluent - as well as basic demographic and outcome information on the client’s case. After data was gathered a chi square test was utilized to compare the outcomes for clients in the two zip codes. It was initially presumed that families in lower socioeconomic areas were referred to non-licensed therapeutic providers such as interns and this may have impacted their reunification. However, the analysis revealed that families in the less affluent area were more likely to reunify than families in the more affluent area. These results were statistically significant and support the first part of the agency’s hypothesis, that families in different zip codes experience different reunification rates. However, these findings do not support the agency’s hypothesis that families in more affluent zip codes have higher reunification rates. Rather this study found the opposite: that families in the less affluent zip code had higher reunification rates. Implications for social work practice and research are discussed.

This paper will focus upon the value positions underlying two social work models: the traditional or psychodynamic and that of behavior modification. It is recognized that there are areas in which those two approaches do not seem far removed, e.g., with some neo-behaviorists and/or some ego psychologists. However, to the extent that the lines become very blurred, so does the clarity of position or practice. Like many practitioners who claim to be “eclectic,” it becomes extremely difficult to find out where they are and what they do value at a given point in time. Why do social workers become so caught up in treatment facts? Because they have not clearly defined what they value and where those values lead them. In order to demonstrate that the profession of social work has moved from position to position, this paper will first sketch briefly the early history of social casework. Second, the paper will focus upon some of the basic dangers involved in "borrowing" from the knowledge of other disciplines. Finally, two major practice models, the traditional model and the behavior modification model will be described both in terms of their nature and development and in terms of their conflictual value positions. Social workers need to be cautious not only to identify the values from which they are operating, but also to be certain that their positions are not too narrow or simplistic for the effective dealing with life.

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu