The effects of a short-term semi-structured group on individual adjustment to divorce were examined. The 10-week group treatment program was adapted from Fisher's Divorce and Personal Growth Seminars. Single case design and group comparison methodologies as well as qualitative data were employed in the analysis. Twelve subjects who participated in two groups were studied. Psychosocial wellbeing was measured by repeated administrations of Hudson's Generalized Contentment Scale, the Index of Self Esteem, and the Index of Peer Relations, in a baseline, treatment and posttreatment phases. Pre- and posttest measures of divorce adjustment were obtained by administering the Fisher Divorce adjustment Scale. ANOVA showed that both groups had significantly improved in divorce adjustment and in psychosocial wellbeing scores between the pretest and posttest measures. All subjects improved on divorce adjustment, and 8 of 11 subjects improved on psychosocial wellbeing. However, broad variations in the rate of improvement were observed among individuals. Single case analysis was done by visual inspection of plotted scores. Qualitative data from the subjects' history and from notes taken by the researcher during the study, were used to interpret the differences observed among the individual subjects. / The presence of factors such as multiple stressors, life events, social support, who initiated the separation, and the passage of time, were judged to have an effect in the divorce adjustment process of individual cases. The use of the group as a therapeutic modality for the crisis of divorce and implications for social work practice and research are discussed. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-09, Section: A, page: 2813. / Major Professor: Dianne Harrison Montgomery. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 37-07, Section: A, page: 4625. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1976.

Thesis advisor: David Hollenbach / Thesis advisor: Thomas D. Stegman / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

<p> Esta investigaci&oacute;n gir&oacute; en torno al objetivo de analizar de qu&eacute; forma el constructo y contenido de desarrollo ha discurrido en la pol&iacute;tica social para vislumbrar su impacto en t&eacute;rminos de justicia social y equidad en Puerto Rico durante el periodo de 1993 al 2000. En adici&oacute;n, se dispuso el dilucidar algunos lineamientos conceptuales que pudieran guiar la generaci&oacute;n de una pol&iacute;tica social a partir de la justicia social y equidad, permitiendo puntualizar en algunas implicaciones que esto representa para el Trabajo Social. Tal tarea heur&iacute;stica, estuvo demarcada por el fen&oacute;meno del predominio de un [macro]concepto de desarrollo econ&oacute;mico que, consider&aacute;ndose equivalente al desarrollo en un sentido amplio, se configur&oacute; a partir del modelo neoliberal y de sistema de mercado capitalista e impacto la pol&iacute;tica social. </p><p> A nivel conceptual, se recurri&oacute; a una articulaci&oacute;n te&oacute;rica cr&iacute;tica e interpretativa a partir de la perspectiva de la complejidad y el posestructuralismo. Se configur&oacute; un m&eacute;todo investigativo cualitativo con exploraci&oacute;n mediante una fase. El dise&ntilde;o de investigaci&oacute;n fue el m&eacute;todo hist&oacute;rico discursivo cr&iacute;tico [MHDC] de Reisigl y Wodak (2016). Por otro lado, la estrategia de recopilaci&oacute;n de informaci&oacute;n se llev&oacute; a cabo mediante la sistem&aacute;tica colecci&oacute;n y registro de datos e informaci&oacute;n contextual relevante. El procedimiento para el an&aacute;lisis de la informaci&oacute;n sigui&oacute; las ocho (8) fases del MHDC. Las consideraciones &eacute;ticas de las estrategias de investigaci&oacute;n del presente documento se esbozaron desde las normas legales y &eacute;ticas aplicables a nivel institucional y seg&uacute;n la profesi&oacute;n del Trabajo Social en Puerto Rico. </p><p> Los resultados sobresalientes del estudio fueron: 1) Necesidad de recurrir a una tensi&oacute;n de la pol&iacute;tica social mediante un giro ontoepistemol&oacute;gico para la generaci&oacute;n de pol&iacute;ticas sociales a la luz de epistemolog&iacute;as locales, posicionadas y situadas. 2) Concebir la pol&iacute;tica social desde la complejidad para impulsar la asociatividad e integraci&oacute;n de la mirada a los fen&oacute;menos y dimensiones que le impactan o configuran. 3) Promover una &ldquo;segunda alfabetizaci&oacute;n&rdquo; mediante una educaci&oacute;n cr&iacute;tica que sea desnaturalizadora, disruptiva y propositiva, puesto que este proceso consiste en un conjunto de gu&iacute;as que devienen del cuestionamiento del contenido en las l&oacute;gicas dominantes. </p><p>

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In the United States today, there are 2.3 million people behind bars in jails and prisons. Mass incarceration has swept up the United States to such a degree that we are known globally for holding more people in correctional facilities than any other country in the world. Although women have always, and still do, reflect a smaller proportion of the correctional population, over the last 40 years, their rates of criminalization and imprisonment have far outpaced that of men's. Drastic increases in the criminalization of women are intimately connected to the entrenchment of social disadvantage enabled under neoliberal globalization. Neoliberal transformations in the economy have contributed to women's poverty across the globe and have brought an increasing number of women into contact with the criminal justice system. The rising incarceration rate of women, and the disproportionate rate of women of color in U.S. prisons is a timely and urgent issue and one that social work is poised to address. Indeed, some of our most prominent national organizations recognize mass incarceration as an urgent issue that merits the attention of social workers. As such, it is prudent to examine social work's engagement with this issue. This study employed a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of social work scholarship in order to: 1) explore current constructions of criminalized women in social work; 2) understand the knowledge produced through such constructions; and 3) explore how that knowledge supports/shapes practice with criminalized women. Specifically, this study draws on Jäger and Maier's (2009) framework for performing a Foucauldian-inspired CDA. This approach centers Foucault's conceptualizations of discourse and the workings of power and builds on the work of Jurgen Link (1982) to examine the function of discourse in legitimizing and securing dominance. Data include a sample of 49 articles published in social work high impact journals from 2000-2018. A keyword search was performed to locate articles with an explicit focus on incarcerated/criminalized women. Only articles dealing with a U.S. context were included. Analysis occurred on two levels consisting of a structural analysis to identify initial coding schema and a detailed analysis of select articles. Detailed analysis attended to: context of text; surface of text; rhetorical means; content and ideological statements. These two levels of analysis lead to an overall synoptic analysis, or final assessment of the overall discourse. Multi-racial feminism, discourse theory, and Foucault's concept of governmentality anchored the research and provided the theoretical framework for analysis. The overarching finding is that social work high impact journals privilege a psychological discourse and that the assessment and management of risk has supplanted a holistic approach to meeting client needs and addressing mass incarceration. This, I conclude, reflects a neoliberal political climate and aligns social work with penal institutions in troubling ways. Criminalized women are overwhelmingly constructed as risky in the sample. Embedded in this construction is a strong neoliberal discourse on knowing and changing the "responsibilized" self. The implied knowledge claims that flow from these constructions rely on the use of "objective" and often depoliticized explanations for crime and criminal justice involvement. I show how this depoliticization is accomplished through a variety of neutralizing strategies, which ultimately serve to depoliticize social work itself. I highlight how, by primarily constituting criminalized women as risky, social work necessarily responds to her with individualized service delivery aimed at regulating and changing the behavior of individuals. I argue that in its reliance on practices of risk management and a preference toward micro-level service delivery, social work deploys regulatory practices that further neoliberal governance (Parton, 1998; Webb, 2003). Further, I discovered a profound ethical dissonance between social work's engagement with criminalized women and social work values. Specifically, I found that social work discourse passively accepts the logic of punishment and supports dominant ideology surrounding gender and crime while concurrently attempting to redress the consequences of such constructions through social justice values. I conceptualize this as a discursive struggle over the meaning and purpose of social work; a struggle that embodies some of the most salient historical and contemporary tensions in our field related to our professional identity and an increasing drive toward professionalization (Reisch, 2013). I argue that social work's growing dedication to practices that seek to adjust the psychological fortitude of criminalized women relies on broader cultural discourses of responsibilization, which reproduce, rather than interrupt criminalization, and divert attention away from the need for social and economic change. My analysis exposes how social work is implicated in processes of criminalization and propels a shift in emphasis from individualized service delivery, aimed at changing the behavior of individuals, to launching interventions that tackle structural injustice and inequity. Understanding the subtle and productive work of power to undermine our "good intentions" and aspirations for social justice requires us to rethink explanations for crime and our understandings regarding the purpose and necessity of the criminal justice system.

Parent-child caregiving is the most basic caregiving situation. However, parents who continue to provide care to an adult mentally retarded child have been an unexamined group of caregivers. This study compared stress levels and social support constellations among these caregivers and two other groups of parents. The study tested two major hypotheses. Parents who were caregivers for an adult child with mental retardation were predicted to report higher stress levels and smaller social support constellations than the other groups. Two comparison groups were included in the study. One group was parents of an mentally retarded child who did not live in their household. The second comparison group contained parents who had caregiving responsibilities for non-disabled children. Data were collected in two ways. The three groups of parents (N =210) responded to a survey which contained characteristics about themselves and their household, stress and their social supports. Additionally, five caregivers of a mentally retarded adult child were interviewed in the family home. Partial support was found for both the stress and social support hypotheses. Parents who were caregivers for an adult mentally retarded child reported a number of health symptoms and depressed mood items. These caregivers also reported having the fewest number of personal hours per week. Although all three groups of parents reported equal numbers of social supports, differences were found in the roles of the members of the support system and the type of exchanges in the support systems of the three groups. Implications of the research for social work practice, policy and education are presented. Suggestions about additional research on parents of mentally retarded adults are offered.