Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1970. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

viii, 88 p. : ill. A print copy of this title is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / In recent years, researchers have taken a particular interest in the spatial concentration of poverty due to evidence suggesting that people liVing within certain densities of poverty are more likely to experience certain problems or what have become known as neighborhood effects. This analysis is a quantitative study, focused on describing changes in poverty concentration between 1990 and 2000 in United States metropolitan areas. The study reports changes seen at the commonly used 40% poverty concentration threshold between 1990 and 2000, while at the same time considering other concentration thresholds and how changing the threshold by which we evaluate poverty informs the general trends policy makers receive information about when changes in poverty occur. / Committee in Charge: Neil Bania, Ph.D., Chair; Jessica Greene, Ph.D.; Jean Stockard, Ph.D.

Given the present demand for greater accountability in public education and the call to close the achievement gap between the haves and have-nots, scholars have renewed advocacy for policy frameworks that combine education and antipoverty policies. This study historicizes the possibilities for such connections at the federal level by focusing on how people during the Carter Administration explained the relationship between the policies. Toward this end, this study examined how the coconstructions of context and meaning of the late 1970s made certain explanations of the relationship between education and anti-poverty policy more possible than others. This study is a critical policy analysis employing historical methods. A historical narrative was constructed through the collection of oral history and archival data. Through this history, explanations of the relationships between the policies by the Carter Administration are situated within the social regularities of the day. Specifically, in the late 1970s, as people became dismayed by the persistence of equality issues, despite equal protection under the law, they looked for other ways to work toward equality. The elevation of education as a national priority became a visible strategy to the power structure at the time because it did not require a necessary redistribution of privilege and would allow a concomitant strategy to invest in other identities. At the same time, as people searched for greater personal freedom through education. A growing neo-liberal sentiment asserted that education policies had to be disconnected from the antipoverty policies that were supported by groups, whose demands for conformity were seen as standing in the way of social well-being predicated on the pursuit of self-interest. Thus, in the late 1970s education and antipoverty policy were separated at the federal level, not only bureaucratically, but also in the rhetoric of national priorities. As a result, education policy became more greatly aligned with human capital development and further detached from more redistributive policy frameworks. The rearticulation in the social regularities regarding race, property, individualism, and domestic stability remade the possible in domestic social policy. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1998. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 336-343).

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This study explored the lived experiences of family case managers who routinely work with families who are culturally different from themselves. The purpose was to understand and interpret the meaning of culture and cultural difference as it relates to the engagement process with families. The research also sought to understand whether cultural insensitivity or bias may contribute to the overrepresentation of children of color in the child welfare system. The author conducted 10 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with graduates of a large, research-intensive Midwestern university’s Title-IV-E Social Work Program, who also were employed as family case managers in public child welfare. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and the analytic process of the hermeneutic circle. Results suggest the concept of culture is a complex term that encompasses many characteristics and a number of dimensions. In addition, four themes were identified as underlying the engagement process with culturally different families. These themes routinely overlapped, and family case managers often had to attend to each of the thematic areas simultaneously. At nearly every step in the engagement process, family case managers modulated their interactions in order to find balance and stability in their relationship with the family. Finally, poverty was revealed to be the most salient cultural difference in working with families involved in the child welfare system. These results have important implications for social work education, child welfare practice, and research on the overrepresentation of children of color in the child welfare system.