Abudayya, M. The right to aid and homeless need for a fair standard of living.Degree project in Social work 15 högskolepoäng. Malmö University: Faculty ofHealth and Society, Department of Social Work, 2020.The purpose of the study is to examine the Social Secretary assessments ofhousing assistance and social secretary perceptions of the concept of reasonablestandard of living in relation to different accommodation solutions available inMalmö. Furthermore, the study aims to investigate the social secretary challengesassociated with making their assessments of housing assistance. To answer thestudy questions, I used qualitative methods in the form of semi-structuredinterviews. For my study, I interviewed seven informants workingaccommodation caseworkers and accommodations investigators in Malmö.Coding and thematization used to conduct my analysis. Empirical data analyzerbasis of knowledge and theory. Two theories were used in the study of legal andorganizational power. Results and analysis showed that accommodationscaseworkers and accommodations investigators do their assessments of housingassistance on the basis of Malmö's guidelines that distinguish between homelessgroups in the assessment of eligibility. It turned out that the City of Malmö'sguidelines do not resemble the National Board of Health and Welfare guidelines(Socialstyrelsens riktlinjer). There is uncertainty among case workers to definereasonable living standard of accommodation assistance. There are also differentviews on how accommodations solutions in Malmö cater to homeless people needdecent standard of living. Accommodation caseworkers also had differentchallenges in the assessment of aid. There were various challenges thataccommodation caseworkers and accommodations invistigators experienced suchMalmö's new guidelines, lack of time, workload, autonomy and powerlessness.

People with mental illness and histories of homelessness represent a vulnerable and marginalized population for whom a wide range of health, social, and community services have been developed. Despite the array of services, their role in the lives of currently and formerly homeless people with mental illness is not fully understood. Three studies were conducted that addressed two research questions: [1] How do patterns of service use differ during transitions from homelessness to housing compared to those from housing to homelessness among people with mental illness? and [2] What is role of services in enhancing the lives of housed and homeless people with mental illness? The first research question was addressed in Study 1, which involved secondary data analysis from a multisite randomized controlled trial of Housing First in Canada known as the At Home/Chez Soi demonstration project. The study explored how service use patterns over 24 months differed among people who achieved housing stability compared to those who remained unstably housed or re-experienced housing instability during the second year of the study. Findings showed that, as homeless people with mental illness transition into stable housing, their service use patterns change, with less time being spent in psychiatric hospitals, prison, and emergency shelters. Housing First minimally affected the changes in service use patterns, indicating that housing stability is the key factor in producing the changes as people transition out of homelessness. Study 2 also used data from the At Home/Chez Soi demonstration project to examine predictors of recovery among homeless people with mental illness at baseline and 24 months. Findings showed that health and community factors most strongly predicted mental health recovery at baseline. The housing and service use block of predictors was also significantly associated with most components of recovery, though the effect sizes were small. At 24 months, the model, which included receipt of Housing First, did not significantly predict residual changes in recovery from baseline. Study 3 of this dissertation qualitatively explored how currently and formerly homeless people with mental illness view services in their lives using two theoretical frameworks: recovery (Part 1) and the capabilities approach (Part 2). In-depth interviews were conducted with 52 participants living in Ottawa, Ontario. Participants perceived services to have a range of positive and negative impacts of their recovery and capabilities. However, the limits of service helpfulness in helping people to move forward with their lives was also highlighted. Overall, the findings of this dissertation indicate that the health, social, and community services used by homeless people with mental illness change as people become stably housed yet are limited in their impacts on recovery and capabilities. Implications for transformative change, service delivery, and future research are discussed.

Cette étude a pour objectif de cerner les enjeux psychiques et culturels de la période périnatale à l'épreuve des ruptures générées par l’absence de domicile fixe chez des femmes migrantes originaires d’Afrique subsaharienne. Notre première hypothèse suppose que, durant la période prénatale, l’absence de domicile fixe réactiverait fortement le vécu de ruptures et de pertes associé à l’expérience migratoire et entrainerait une mise en suspens des capacités élaboratives rendant la femme peu disponible aux changements spécifiques de la grossesse. Notre deuxième hypothèse suppose que, durant la période post-natale, on observerait une redynamisation des processus psychiques puisque la naissance de l’enfant favoriserait l’inscription physique et psychique de la femme dans le pays d’accueil. Cette naissance permettrait à la femme de donner du sens à son histoire mais aussi de créer du lien entre le pays d’origine et le pays d’accueil ainsi qu’entre le passé et le présent. Sur le plan méthodologique, nous avons utilisé le complémentarisme de l’éthnopsychiatrie et construit deux grilles d’entretien. L’Entretien Transculturel pour les Représentations Maternelles pendant la Grossesse (ETRG) que nous avons utilisé auprès de dix femmes africaines enceintes de plus de sept mois de grossesse sans domicile fixe et l’Entretien Transculturel pour les Représentations Maternelles après la Naissance (ETRN) que nous avons utilisé auprès de sept de ces femmes entre les deux et quatre mois de leur enfant. L’analyse de nos entretiens a mis évidence que le travail psychique propre à la maternité se trouve complexifié par les contraintes générées par les conditions matérielles et affectives dans lesquelles vivent ces femmes migrantes. Cette recherche souligne la nécessité de mettre en place des solutions de mise à l’abri pérennes tout autant que des actions préventives en direction de ces femmes et de leurs enfants. Par-delà, cette étude permet de définir des modalités d’accompagnement spécifiques à ce public ainsi que de nouvelles perspectives de recherches transversales et longitudinales. Il s’agit de concevoir un soutien pour ces familles qui ne soit pas seulement matériel ou financier mais qui intègre la dimension sociale, psychologique et culturelle. / This study aims to identify psychological and cultural issues in the perinatal period in the event of disruptions generated by homelessness among migrant women in sub-Saharan Africa. Our first assumption is that, during the prenatal period, the homelessness reactivates the highly experienced disruptions and losses associated with the migration experience and would result in an interruption of the thought process. The consequence would then be that these women won’t feel available and disposed to experience the specific changes of pregnancy. Our second assumption is that during the postnatal period, there would be a revival of psychic processes thanks to the birth of their child, which will enable these women to anchor themselves physically and mentally in the host country. This birth would allow them to make a sense out of their own history but also to create a link between their country of origin and the host country, as well as between the past and the present. On the methodological level, we used the complementarism of ethnopsychiatry and built two interview grids. The Transcultural Care for Maternal representations during pregnancy (ETRG) that we used with ten homeless African women being at more than seven months of pregnancy and Interview of Transcultural Representations Nursery after Death (ETRN) that we used for seven women with children between two and four months’ old. The analysis of the interviews has highlighted that the psychological work related to maternity is complicated by the constraints generated by the material and emotional environment in which migrant women live. This research highlights the need to develop solutions to shelter these women and their children as well as to develop perennial preventive actions towards them. Beyond, this study defines the specific terms and conditions to support this public, as well as new research perspective both transversal and longitudinal. It is about designing a support for those families that will not only be financial or material, but which will integrate the social, psychological and cultural dimensions.

Homelessness has been a problem in New York City (NYC) for decades. Part of the problem is children who grew up in the shelter system and then returned as adults, a phenomenon known as 2nd-generation homelessness. Literature indicates that no researchers have interviewed second-generation homeless adults about their experiences. The purpose of this study was to explore the experience of 2nd-generation homelessness from the perspective of homeless adults returning to the shelter system. The sample included 1 second-generation homeless adult and 10 case managers at Tier II homeless shelters. Interviews were conducted and data were analyzed using hand coding to uncover themes amongst the interviews. The themes found were: lack of information and resources, generational homelessness is passed down, people should learn from their parents' mistakes, comfort in the homeless shelter system, money, parental abuse and neglect, the role of the case manager, taking advantage of the shelter system, and mental health. The other topics that were discussed on multiple occasions but did not fit into larger categories are: education, drugs and alcohol, lack of family assistance, and activities of daily living. Findings from this study inform social change by indicating a clear need for input from homeless families and case managers when developing interventions to address second-generation homelessness. Future policymakers should include staff and clients when developing ways to address homelessness in New York City. The views and opinions expressed in this manuscript reflect the personal views of the researcher and interviewees; they do not represent the views of NYC Department of Homeless Services or its providers.

The homeless population in Anchorage, Alaska faces many unique challenges. Over the past several winters, a number of homeless individuals have succumbed to the effects of exposure despite available cold weather services. This study investigated individual experiences within the homeless population of Anchorage, Alaska during times of inclement winter weather. Self-determination theory was used to explore motivations of behaviors of the population and to uncover the reasons why this population does not use cold weather services offered by the Municipality of Anchorage. The research questions addressed participant awareness of available cold weather services, survival strategies during inclement winter weather, and barriers to cold weather service use. This phenomenological study examined those lived experiences. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit eligible individuals (n = 14) at a local soup kitchen, and participants engaged in semistructured interviews. Data analysis procedures used McCormack's lenses and horizontalization to reveal emerging themes. Key findings included a lack of knowledge of emergency services, various survival strategies, and self-imposed barriers to services. The implications of these emerging revelations may positively influence public health providers to modify education delivery methods and interventions used to reach the homeless population in Anchorage, Alaska, with the ultimate goal of preventing wintertime mortalities.

While researchers have identified the Housing First model of putting homeless persons into permanent housing as the best means of improving the quality of life for chronically homeless individuals, few studies have examined the perceptions of shelter staff workers on the barriers the homeless face in obtaining and maintaining long-term housing. This case study of 2 homeless shelters in New Jersey examined the relationship that fair and just democratic processes play in supporting or undermining Housing First. Data came from New Jersey's annual Point in Time counts of the number of homeless individuals and families and the causes and service needs of the homeless. Government reports were also analyzed, as well as from semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews with a purposive sample of 14 homeless shelter staff workers. The polarities of democracy model as described by Benet helped identify whether democracy was being served rightly and justly within these homeless communities. Information was analyzed by inductive coding and by identifying themes and patterns that emerged from the interviews. The primary finding of this study was that lack of available housing, lack of resources to gain access to housing, and lack of knowledge of resources that are available for housing acquisition and maintenance plays a role in causing individuals to become and remain chronically homeless. Social change implications include policy recommendations to local, state, and federal legislators to increase accountability in the allocation of funding for housing support and the development of a volunteer case management force to meet the service needs of the chronically homeless.

La présence de personnes sans-abri dans l’espace public est un problème social ancien auquel depuis longtemps l’État cherche à remédier. À partir des années 1990, et plus encore après la promulgation, en juillet 1998, de la loi de lutte contre les exclusions, l’action publique s’incarne dans des dispositifs dits de « veille sociale » dont la mise en œuvre est majoritairement confiée, par délégation de service, au monde associatif. Parmi ces dispositifs, les « maraudes » désignent l’action d’équipes mobiles dont la mission est d’aller à la rencontre des sans-abri directement dans la rue. Les maraudes constituent l’objet empirique de cette thèse dont l’objectif est d’étudier cette activité en tenant compte à la fois de la pluralité de ses opérateurs – particulièrement des associations – et de la diversité de ses intervenants salariés et bénévoles, professionnels (notamment du travail social) ou non-professionnels. À partir d’une enquête ethnographique menée à Paris dans trois associations de solidarité et combinant observation participante et entretiens biographiques, l’enjeu est d’éclairer les tensions inhérentes à cette situation de coprésence d’acteurs collectifs et individuels en analysant conjointement les maraudes comme un monde du travail et comme un espace d’engagement. Par ces entrées analytiques, il s’agit plus généralement de contribuer à la compréhension des dynamiques de frontières dans un secteur – celui de l’urgence sociale – où persistent des ambiguïtés entre travail social et bénévolat, entre action publique et secours privé, entre valorisation de la professionnalité et reconnaissance du dévouement altruiste, et dans lequel les limites entre les missions sont incertaines. Une perspective interactionniste, inspirée à la fois de la sociologie du travail et des professions, permet en premier lieu de soulever le rôle central des pouvoirs publics dans la régulation de l’activité par la diffusion de multiples injonctions – notamment à la « professionnalisation » et à la « coordination des maraudes » – auxquelles les trois organisations enquêtées souscrivent différemment, allant d’un rapport d’alliance à un rapport d’autonomie. L’étude de la division du travail éclaire ensuite la hiérarchie de noblesse des tâches ainsi que leur distribution, qui valorisent les fonctions d’accompagnement social prioritairement attribuée aux « maraudes professionnelles » et déprécie les missions de distribution, notamment alimentaire, qui incombent aux « maraudes bénévoles ». L’observation de stratégies de résistance à cette division – les équipes bénévoles souhaitant également assurer le « suivi » des sans-domicile – révèle dès lors l’existence de luttes de juridiction qui ont pour enjeux le contrôle d’un territoire à la fois spatial et professionnel mais aussi la maîtrise des savoirs essentiellement tacites et acquis par l’expérience. Empruntant à la sociologie de l’engagement, un regard resserré sur les maraudeurs et leurs trajectoires autorise en second lieu le dépassement de cette opposition (professionnel/bénévole). D’abord en montrant l’intrication et l’hybridation des carrières bénévoles et professionnelles, les maraudeurs salariés ayant très souvent eu une pratique de bénévolat préalable et certains bénévoles utilisant la maraude comme une expérience de préprofessionnalisation dans le travail social. Ensuite, en identifiant des continuités dans les façons de voir et d’exercer l’activité qui transcendent les appartenances associatives et les conditions statutaires pour mieux révéler l’influence de modes de socialisation (familial, militant, professionnel). / The presence of homeless people in the public space is an ancient social problem that the State has been attempting to solve for a long time. From the 90’s on - and especially after the enactment, in 1998, of the law fighting against social exclusion - government intervention has been embodied in a package of social measures under the umbrella term of “social watch” (“veille sociale”). Its implementation has been mainly entrusted to not-for-profit associations and charities, through delegation of public service programs. Among these measures, the mobile outreach programs describe the action of mobile teams given the mission to connect and engage with homeless people in the streets. The mobile outreach program constitutes the empirical subject of this thesis. The aim is to study this activity by taking into account the plurality of its actors - especially the not-for-profit associations - and the diversity of its contributors, both employees and volunteers as well as professional and non-professional social workers. Based on an ethnographic study led in Paris involving three different charity organizations, it combines participant observation and biographical interviews. The aim is to bring into view and clarify situations of inherent tension in this copresence of collective and individual actors through an analysis of mobile outreach programs as both places of work and social commitment. This analysis more generally enables an understanding of the dynamic boundaries within the field of social urgency, in which there are many persistant ambiguities. Ambiguities abound between social work and volunteering, public actions and private initiatives, between the prominence given to promote professionalism and the acknowledgment of altruistic dedication. The boundaries among these different missions remain vague and uncertain. An interactionist perspective inspired by the sociology of work and employment enables us to raise the issue of the main role played by the public authorities. They regulate the social outreach activity through multiple injunctions, notably with particular emphasis on professionalization and coordination of the mobile outreach program. The three different organizations that are the subject of enquiry take different approaches to those injunctions, whether in a relation of alliance or autonomy. The analysis of work divisions sheds light on the hierarchical division of labour as well as the question of how tasks are delegated. Social support and follow up missions are prioritised to professional outreach workers while responsibility for the less well considered missions such as food runs and distribution are handed over to the volunteer outreach workers. Observation of the different strategies of resistance towards this division reveal a struggle over jurisdiction – volunteer outreach workers equally want to be a part of the support and follow up missions and highlight what is at stake: the control of territory both physical and professional, as well as the mastery of knowledge which is essentially tacit and acquired through experience. By looking closer at volunteer outreach workers and their trajectories through the lens of sociology, the boundary between professional and volunteer can be seen to be an artificial one. First, by showing the overlap and hybridisation between the trajectories of volunteers and professionals: wage-earning outreach workers have a lot of the time practiced volunteering before, while on the other hand, some volunteers use the outreach programs as a way to enter the professional world of social work. Then by underlining the continuity in the way of seeing and practicing the activity that transcends organizations’ affiliations and status to better reveal the influence of different modes of socialization, be it through family, advocacy or work.

For the last two decades displaced homeless people living in public places have doted the American landscape, despite increasing national wealth. Two factors which may contribute to this phenomenon are: 1) how the issue of homelessness is perceived through media coverage, and 2) what attributions of causality and responsibility are extricated from the vast multitude of media messages. An integration of theoretical frameworks within social-psychology (attribution and priming theory) and communication (agenda setting and framing effects) was consummated in a hypothesized mediated inference process: conceptualized as a cognitive continuum where the issue of homelessness first enters the cognition of the social observer (inaugural prime); is then given salience by the frequency of media coverage (agenda setting); thereupon shaped by media portrayals (framed); and attributions of causality and responsibility are formed. To examine the proposed mediated inference process a survey questionaire (n=283) was administered to college students revealing a significant correlation between the importance placed on the issue of homelessness (agenda setting) and resultant attributions of causality. As respondents' perceptions of the importance of homelessness increased, their societal attributions of causality increased. Conversely, as perceptions of importance decreased personal, internal attributions of causality increased. Additionally, high television use was found, through regression analysis, to be a significant predictor of situational attributions of causality. An experiment (n=96) was also administered to examine how different newspaper and television framing conditions effect attributions of causality. The results indicate that newspaper portrayals presented as isolated events lead subjects to attribute causality to personal dispositions; whereas portrayals presented as overall accounts lead subjects to societal attributions. Although the evidence for a mediated inference process was inconclusive, the results suggest that the frequency and framing of media coverage significantly affect the process of attributing causality for social issues such as homelessness.

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One of the most basic human needs is access to a home, but the Swedish welfare state can not guarantee all of its citizens roof above their heads, and homelessness is – as it's always been –one of our major societal problems. An essential part of society's effort to counteract homelessness is to work with preventing evictions, which is something the municipal social services have main responsibility over. But despite great efforts evictions are a problem, and especially vulnerable are affected children. In 2021, the amount of children who were evicted was the highest in ten years. The purpose of this study has been to examine how social services can work successfully to prevent evictions. Through a qualitative text analysis based on reports, guidelines and statistics from Socialstyrelsen and Kronofogden, among others, working methods and success factors within the social services were identified. The results show among other things that organization, cooperation, knowledge and information, and identification of risk factors were elements that lead to success in preventing evictions.