This student-centered analysis of caring in three academically promising, low-income public high schools in Texas used an instrumental case study design (Stake, 1998) to investigate students' perceptions and experiences of receiving care in high school. The analysis also examined the teacher and administrator practices that contributed to students' experience of receiving care, and considered the resources that supported the adults' caring practice at the three schools. Archival data consisting of open-ended interviews with students, teachers, administrators, and school staff were analyzed qualitatively. Results suggest that caring should be evaluated in context. In the high school context students experience care through having their teachers' and administrators’ help and support with academics. Results also suggest that students experience caring through teacher and administrator behaviors and attitudes that respond to their developmental needs. That is, they experience care when adults at school establish a style and pattern of interaction similar to "authoritative parenting" (Baumrind, 1987). Recognition from adults in the school is very important for high school students, and especially salient for low-income and minority adolescents who often receive negative and discriminatory feedback from the community. / text

Social Security is the main instrument of social policy that serves to balance social inequalities and helps address adverse social situations. This thesis provides a basic overview of individual retirement and sickness insurance allowances, state social support benefits, social care, poverty relief allowances and the offer of social services. The thesis also deals with the Medical Assessment Service and the health assessment of persons for purposes of individual social security systems. The main attention is paid to the care allowance, the benefit addressed to persons who are, mainly due to poor health status, dependent on the assistance of another person in regular daily self-care and self-sufficiency. The research is focused on care allowance recipients who live in homes for the elderly, in nursing homes and in their own households with their families or separately. The objective of this thesis is to survey the provision of social security allowances, activities of the Medical Assessment Service and the issues of the health assessment process for the purposes of the care allowance entitlement. Another objection is to determine the quality of life of people receiving the care allowance. A part of the thesis is a questionnaire by which the course of the care allowance entitlement was assessed, the reasons for applying for the care allowance and the manner of the care allowance use are described, and the health status assessment of respondents and quality of their lives were determined. The information obtained from the questionnaires was evaluated and recorded in graphs. It was found that 93.6% of respondents use the care allowance for payments for care services, personal assistance or to pay the rent and services in senior homes, i.e. payments of services related to the security assistance and support to the allowance receiver. The first hypothesis, assuming that the care allowance is mainly used to cover expenses related to the security assistance and support to the allowance receiver, was confirmed. It was also found that, with the exception of respondents living in nursing homes, the respondents´ quality of life did not change when they were drawing the allowance. The second hypothesis, assuming that the care allowance improved the respondents´ quality of life, was not confirmed. The considered replacing the current 36 self-care and self-sufficiency operations with 10 areas of basic needs of life might be a simplification and an increase in effectiveness of the health condition assessment for the purpose of the care allowance admission.