Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Paul Byers. Dissertation Committee: Herve Varenne. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-162).

In 1962 Congress enacted legislation which made social services an important instrument of public welfare reform. The law represented the culmination of a half-century effort on the part of public welfare officials to secure recognition for public social services as a distinctive yet integral feature of progressive social welfare policy in the United States. This dissertation traces the evolution of this effort from its origins in the Progressive period to the passage of the Public Welfare Amendments of 1962.The Progressive ideal of social welfare focused on building an institution of public welfare which would satisfy the economic, social, and psychological needs of all citizens. Public welfare officials viewed social services as playing a key role in the realization of this goal. The paper examines how social services became a means of protecting and expanding the functions of public welfare.The history of public social services has been marked by controversy. Throughout most of the twentieth century, the institution of public welfare has been subjected to periodic assaults by the taxpaying public. The stigma associated with welfare has caused many professional social workers to oppose the idea of incorporating social services into public welfare. The response of public welfare officials to these sources of conflict is a major topic which the paper explores.The context for and the ramifications of the dispute between professional social workers and public welfare officials over the propriety of public social services are discussed in the first three chapters of the paper. The last three chapters recount the political strategies used by public welfare officials to gain acceptance of their plan for integrating social services with public welfare policy. / Department of Sociology

This research is an exploratory study of thirty human service agencies' programs to link their services to informal helpers in their communities. The helpers were persons identified as important helping resources to persons in their own social networks, who were often also clients of the service agency. The thirty agencies were drawn from across the nation, and served several different types of client populations and needs. Models from practice and theory suggest that linkages between the formal and informal caregiving systems should be modeled after primary relations, informal and personal in character. Research and literature on organizations suggests, however, that the formal service system tends to impose its own standards of control and accountability on its linkages. This research sought to determine how agency context influenced the structure of relationships between agency staff and informal helpers. Specifically, what organizational attributes are barriers to informally structured relationships? Does the perception of the program mediate the influence of organizational attributes on the relationship structure? The data were gathered through intensive site visits, using discussions, observations, and document reviews, from which case studies and content analyses were prepared. Multiple item scales were constructed to measure several attributes of the agency context, the program innovation, and the staff-helper relationship. The scales constructed range in reliability from alpha = .29 to .93. A conceptual model described the predicted relationships among the variables, from which seven hypotheses were derived. Pearson correlations, partial correlations, and multiple regression were used to test the hypotheses statistically. Case materials were used to supplement the statistical analyses. The pattern of associations found in the study was more complex than initially proposed. High program unit formalization was the single best predictor of high formalization of the staff-helper relationship, while a supportive work climate was a good predictor of informal relationships between agency staff and informal helpers.

The principal investigator (PI) for this study surveyed 207 American School Counselor Association (ASCA) members on their attitudes toward utilizing trained counseling paraprofessionals in school counseling. The PI also examined the relationship between participants’ attitudes and their subjective reports of the counselor-student ratios in their schools, the amount of work time they spent providing direct counseling services to students, and the extent to which their districts experienced a school counselor shortage. The participants’ mean reported counselor-student ratio (1:464.63) significantly exceeded ASCA recommendations of 1:250. Elementary counselors reported the highest counselor-student ratios while high school counselors reported the lowest. Furthermore the PI found a significant linear trend for counselor-student ratios to decrease as school level increased. The participants’ reported mean percentage of time involved in direct counseling services (61.48%) fell significantly below the ASCA recommended 70%. Elementary counselors reported the highest amount of time involved in direct counseling services while high school counselors reported the lowest. The PI also found a significant linear trend for percentages of time involved in direct services to decrease as school level increased. Over one-fourth of the participants indicated school counselor shortages existed in their districts. A majority of participants supported utilizing counseling paraprofessionals in their schools. The PI found a significant negative correlation between support for counseling paraprofessionals and percentage of time involved in direct services. Participants reporting the lowest percentage of time providing direct services to students thus expressed the strongest endorsement for utilizing counseling paraprofessionals. Participants most strongly endorsed assigning clerical duties to counseling paraprofessionals. They likewise endorsed assigning some indirect helping duties to counseling paraprofessionals. However, participants strongly opposed assigning direct counseling duties to counseling paraprofessionals. Based on the results of the study the PI developed recommendations for school counselors, school administrators, state education agencies, and institutions of higher learning regarding the training, education, and job duties of counseling paraprofessionals.

This study examines the impact of Christian religiosity on attitudes toward social safety-net policies over the past three decades in the US. The study used data from the General Social Survey on social safety-net policy preferences and levels of Christian religiosity. Simple cross tabulations, correlations and multiple regression analysis were used to assess the data. Contrary to previous related research, the results of this study indicate that Christian religiosity has a very weak association with opposition to social safety-net policies. At the national level, the relationship between Christian religiosity and attitudes toward social protection policies was largely mediated by other factors such as race, gender, education, family income, and political ideology. These results indicate that Christian religiosity per se does not independently influence social spending preferences. Instead, these results suggest that social divisions in socioeconomic standing and in political ideology, which in turn are closely related to differences in support for social protection policies, permeate American Christianity. The study also examined the relationship between Christian religiosity and social protection policy preferences among Hispanic and Black Americans separately. Although Hispanics and Blacks are generally more supportive of social spending in comparison to White Americans, Christian religiosity was not found to have a strong independent effect on support for social safety-net policies among these two groups. The study did find, however, a markedly different level of support for social safety-net policies among identifiable Christian groups at the national level and in the Hispanic-American population. / Those who self-identified as "evangelical" or "fundamentalist" Christians were much less supportive of social safety-net policies in comparison to "mainline" or "liberal" Christians. Among Hispanics, Catholics were more supp in comparison to Evangelical Protestants. Moreover, the results of this study indicate that religious American Christians have had a tendency to give precedence to moral issues over concerns about social safety-net policies thus facilitating an issue-bundling effect in recent electoral competition. Lastly, the present work proposes a broad framework through which to interpret the aforementioned findings grounded on the existence and interaction of two counterpoised cultural narratives on social protection found within American Christianity. / by Emmanuel Alvarado. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Service-learning continues to gain in popularity across the higher education landscape and can be found in most educational institutions. Although more often found in student affairs programming, it is also viewed as a viable pedagogy. Most studies show that service-learning impacts students in various ways: academically, socially and vocationally. The research study employed quantitative methods. It analyzed prediction of participation in community service/service-learning with students' self-assessment on five outcomes: academic skills, social integration, community integration/alumni expectations, connection with the campus community and change in opinions, values and attitudes. A canonical correlation analysis was conducted on data collected on the Profile of Today's College Student administered by NASPA-Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. The data represent a random sample (N = 374) of undergraduate students enrolled at a mid-sized, private four-year university located in the south central United States. The study looked for statistical significance as well as employed effect size measures. The study found participation in community service/service-learning predicts on all five factors in the model. Additional analysis incorporated effect size measures to further strengthen the results. The results were both statistically (p < .001) and practically significant (Rc2 = .101). Connection with the campus community and social integration were best predicted by participation in community service/service-learning. Surprisingly, change in opinions, values and attitudes was found to be least predictive, but correlated at significant levels. Research on service-learning has focused on service-learning related to academic performance, often neglecting the co-curricular experiences and development. Since service-learning can be found in co-curricular and academic programming, more research on community service/service-learning should focus on co-curricular service experiences.

During the period of the late 1920s through the late 1940s, a most remarkable event in the history of American social work emerged: the development of a vital radical trade union organizing effort known as the ''rank and file movement." Born within the growing economic crisis of the 1920s and maturing in the national economic collapse and social upheaval heralded by the Great Depression, the rank and file movement would attract the support and membership of thousands of professional social workers and uncredentialed relief workers in efforts to organize social service workers along the lines of industrial unionism. Within its relatively short life span, the rank and file movement would grow in sufficient number and influence to challenge both the prevailing definitions of social work as a profession - its form and identity and the essence of its function - its practice. It is the thesis of this study that an understanding of the rank and file movement is central to a modem understanding of our profession. The origin, development and demise of the rank and file movement reflects more than the historical curiosity of a momentary tendency in the evolution of a profession; rather, it reveals the enduring legacy of individuals, organizations and collective intellectual discourse in common struggle for the possibilities of a more just and democratic social order. And, perhaps unlike any other profession, the domain of social work is historically one uniquely born of this struggle, encompassing the self-imposed imperatives and paradoxes of morality, socially purposive service and scientific rationality. Consequently, this study seeks to inform the terms of this enduring legacy within the dynamic world of social work. It does so by: 1) locating the history of the rank and file movement within the context of an evolving profession; 2) analyzing this specific history of a profession within the context of broader social and political forces that defined both the limits and potentials of that evolution; and 3) assessing the implications of this history for social work in terms of its past, present and future.

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe the transfer of a specific technology to a program intended to benefit a segment of the older population. The study interprets the implications of this transfer process for human service programs responsive to the public interest. This provides a lucrative realm for examining the process as an outgrowth of public-private partnerships. Analysis of a partnership in five case studies illustrates the dynamics between nonprofit and for-profit organizations and potential tensions related to differing goals, means, and values. Theoretical grounding draws on relevant organization theory that guides the consideration of prominent concepts, such as responsiveness to the public and the potential for cooptation of public goals in public-private organizational partnerships. With this as a base, the dissertation provides implications for the development of theory on technology transfer in the delivery of human services. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this study is to more closely examine social workers who are practicing or familiar with spiritual and alternative techniques. These approaches are seen as highly relevant to social work values of cultural competency and empowerment.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / A sizeable body of research has attempted to examine the interaction between government spending and private giving known as the crowd-out effect. Most researchers reported that increases of government spending cause decreases of philanthropic giving to different types of nonprofits. However, few studies have attempted to indicate the interaction between government welfare expenditures and private giving to human service organizations even though human service organizations are the most sensitive to the changes of government spending. Additionally, the estimated crowd-out effects with a simple crowd-out model have been criticized for potential endogeneity bias. This paper investigates the total effect of federal government welfare spending on state government expenditures and philanthropic giving to human service organizations (known as joint crowd-out). I used the 2005 wave of the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study (COPPS) to estimate the effect of federal human service grants on state government spending on, and donations to human services. From these reduced-form estimates I infer the levels of simple and joint crowd-out. I found that indicate federal spending on public welfare crowds out private giving to human service organizations while holding control variables constant in the donations equation. However, federal government spending on public welfare crowds in state government spending on public welfare.