The concern in human services as to how to provide skilled manpower of sufficient training and in sufficient numbers to meet public demand has been a source of experimentation and controversy over the past decade. In recent years the rapid growth of social and mental health services has provided a multitude of programs and services for both the poor and non-poor. Traditional services of social welfare -- health care, education, housing and employment -- have been increasingly supplemented by new forms of services (e.g., community organization, youth work, recreation, and personal growth therapy), thus vastly expanding the numbers of actual and potential recipients of such services. The changing nature of social services in recent years has stimulated within the helping professions serious discussion over the proper training and utilization of manpower. The new roles and functions that social workers and other professionals are entering into in order to effectively challenge old and new problems have led many in and out of the professions to call for the development of new levels and types of social service workers. A major response to this call has been the development of a new type of worker, the paraprofessional. Known variously as non-professionals, indigenous workers, subprofessionals and the like, this new breed of worker is meant to fill the gap between low level entry positions in the human services and the more specialized components and job tasks in the field. The development of the paraprofessional movement has sparked considerable controversy and study. Attempts to define and identify the precise elements involved in these new middle level positions -- the skill levels and task expectations of such positions -- and the social and political dynamics involved in their creation, have been primary focuses of such debate and study. Issues such as the relationship between paraprofessionals and professionals, the content and nature of paraprofessional training, the establishment of meaningful career ladders, and the relative effectiveness of these new workers have also invoked close scrutiny in the field. To this point, the examination of such generic issues has suffered from considerable imbalance. In recent years, research into paraprofessionalism has tended to concentrate on the recruitment and training aspects. As such, information concerning where paraprofessionals are employed and what they do once in the field is sadly lacking. This is an exploratory study intended to provide such a profile. It is meant to examine paraprofessional human service workers from three graduating classes of the Human Resources Technology program at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Oregon. The study is interested in examining the employment status of these workers, what roles and functions they serve in their agencies, the monetary and career mobility opportunities in those agencies, and the educational status and aspirations of the graduates. The study also intends to examine their personal views and experiences concerning issues of paraprofessionalism, professionalism, and their role as new workers in the human services.

This study deals with the annual review procedure of the services comprising the Portland Council of Social Agencies. An effective method of appraisal of the community social welfare services is an obvious necessity of a central planning body. Background information was obtained during a six month student placement with the above agency, through discussions with Council staff, and through participation on two review committees. Findings were also based on study of annual reports and minutes of committee meetings of the Council. The thesis begins with a brief history of the federated planning movement in social welfare, and then describes the structure and function of a Council of Social Agencies. Attention is given to the development of the Portland Council, and the role of the review committee is shown in relation to the other functions of that Council. Discussion is made of the initial practice and the development of the review committee. The review committee procedure is discussed in detail. Recruitment of members and their orientation to the review role is considered. The function of the council secretary in preparing for the meeting with the agency is shown. Emphasis is stressed on the participation by the agency in submitting material to be studied. The development of the review report from the meeting of the committee with the agency is described. The techniques of formulating the recommendations and the various problems encountered are presented. The educational influence of the review procedure is explained. Examples of the consideration of agencies to review recommendations are given. The emphasis on the effectiveness of cooperative review by committee and agency concludes the thesis. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

The professional social worker needs to understand, wide social issues, including the culture and cultural background of minority persons and groups in the United States. One mlnorlty group wlth whlch soclal work has not much contact, and thus has llttle knowledge about, ls the Chlnese. Regarding professional social work knowledge about minority groups, the Chinese could be considered a "silent minority."

During first year field placement, we worked with a number of rural families, most of them Mexican-American. It seemed to us that rural families in general and Mexican-Americans in particular were not being very well served by social service agencies. We questioned whether this might be due to a lack of Mexican-American perspective in traditional services or perhaps a lack of Mexican-American manpower or at least Spanish-speaking manpower. This study, then, developed out of a general area of interest that can be stated as three questions: (1) Do rural people (especially Mexican-Americans) feel there is a need for various social services and what do they identify as needs? (2) Do they know about social service agencies that exist and what their services are? (3) How available are those services? i.e., an existing agency may be "unavailable" because people don't know about it, because of lack of transportation, because of language/cultural barriers, because of an inappropriateness of services offered, etc.

This is a descriptive, partially exploratory study which examined the date obtained from interviews with socials workers in selected social welfare programs in regard to the father in treatment. Explored were descriptive information concerning the agency's characteristics, the type and extend of treatment offered, the involvement or resistance of the father in therapy, and the provision made for a surrogate male model in the event of the father's absence. The literature revealed that currently there is a growing body of knowledge and theory related to the father's role in the psychosocial development of the child and the consequences of his absence. It might be noted that in the past more attention has been given in theory and research to the mother's role. Through personal interviews with one professional social worker in each of eighteen selected programs in Multnomah County data were obtained with a data collection schedule used as a guide. The findings indicated that the father was interested in his child's development and more willing to participate in treatment than is generally appreciated. Although the philosophy and policy of all of the agencies recognized the importance of the father in therapy, in actual practice only a minority had been able to implement this in treatment to an extensive degree due to the lack of staff time and training. A few programs, however, did report a ratio of staff to clients which enabled them to sustain the father and his family in intensive, meaningful therapy. There are indications that more flexible agency hours need to be implemented to better enable social workers to involve the father. An emerging emphasis on innovative new methods such as total family group therapy which tends to involve the father in therapy, was reflected in the study. The data indicated that several agencies in the last few years have begun to use new methods to a significant degree, with the leadership of trained social work therapists, and that other agencies are using new methods in a moderate degree or are planning to implement these methods in the near future. The majority of agencies did recognize the need for the use of substitute male models, in some cases of father absence, but they found few available resources for the provision of this service. Although this was a general, descriptive paper only, some trends in practice regarding the father did emerge. Indications are that the father has a vital interest in his child's development, that he has shown an increasing willingness to become involved in therapy, and that there is a growing emphasis, in agencies, for the use of new treatment methods which emphasize the involvement of the father.

One aspect of reality that professional social workers are experiencing in the course of performing social work is what the authors will refer to as natural service delivery systems. We use this particular term for clarity, yet there are questions that still remain. Are there, in fact, measurable phenomena that we can call natural service delivery systems? If these systems exist, what kind of services do they deliver or what types of services do they imply? If these services do exist and if we recognize them, what are the implications for professional social workers? How does our knowledge base allow for us to intervene in these systems with minimal danger of destroying or changing their character and still use them as resources? These questions arose after both authors had worked within communities where, because, of the nature and composition of the populations, it was apparent that natural services were being provided by one neighbor to another or by one friend to another. It was difficult to explain those services in relation to our own roles as social workers. Often it seemed as if there was in existence a procedure that we did not understand in terms of a worker-client relationship. It is from this history of interest and with these questions in mind that we began our research into the area of natural service delivery systems.

It is criticism of traditional theory and methods, and the advocacy of new approaches that feminists have tried to present to social workers and to other professionals in mental health and other social services. The feminist goal has been to convince social workers and others to modify their beliefs and practice in order to be more helpful (as the feminists believe) to women. In this study of the beliefs and practice of social workers in Oregon, I attempt to find out to what extent, ten years after the "rebirth of feminism," they have adopted feminist beliefs and recommendations for practice.

This is a study of Yellow Brick Road a paraprofessional volunteer training and group counseling program. The study was designed to help determine whether or not the program was meeting its own goals which are stated as: 1) to offer clients an experience which not only helps them to effect change in their lives, but to maintain those changes through healthy time-restructuring within a supportive environment; 2) to demonstrate that volunteers who are undergoing intensive training can provide quality counseling and other services; 3) to create a community environment supportive of healthy change. Toward evaluating these broadly stated goals, this study will specifically look at these factors: 1) client satisfaction, 2) internal program consistency, 3) activity group validity, that is, whether or not activity groups contribute to the change process.

This study attempts to identify the variables associated with an organization's decision to participate in an interorganizational service network. The survev of literature on the subject supported the hypothesis that structural variables of complexity, formalization, and centralization and a psychological variable, the awareness of organizational interdependency, are associated with the decision to participate. Interorganizational participation was operationally defined in terms of various behavioral components: an organization's involvement with the coordinating agency, client referrals to and from other organizations and to and from the coordinating agency, and information exchanged with other organizations and with the coordinating agency. Using this framework, testable hypotheses were formulated regarding the relationship between the selected measures of the independent variables of complexity, formalization, centralization, and awareness of interdependency and the dependent variable of interorganizational participation. Human service agencies which provide services to the elderly in the State of Oregon were surveyed in this study. These agencies, together with the Area Agency on Aging, a coordinating agency established under the Older Americans Act, constituted the interorganizational service network. A main concern of that type of coordinating agency is to facilitate effective working relationships between the organizations in such service networks. This study was designed to explore the factors associated with that process. Findings and Conclusions: The evidence presented suggests that the psychological variable of awareness of interdependency is significantly related to the decision to participate. This finding was generally supported by qualitative data gathered from six organizations examined under the case study method. For the structural variable it was found that: a) complexity was not significantly related to the decision to participate; b) centralization had a significant relationship with only some components of the measures of participation; c) there was some association between formalization and the participation processes. In general, it appears that a key step to building effective networks of service organizations is to increase awareness of interdependency among organizational members.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Self-Help Information Service (SIS) and to obtain information necessary for the improvement of the service. The study also described the development and operation of SIS and assessed the use and effect of the service. The evaluation of SIS was based on initial global utilization data and the results of participant satisfaction surveys targeted at four distinct groups: (1) Self-Help Project staff, (2) Tri-County Information and Referral Service staff, (3) self-help groups, and (4) callers of the service (potential members of self-help groups). The Self-Help Project and Tri-County I & R staffs represent staff samples; the self-help groups and potential members represent consumer samples.