Responsible Government: Investing in the Well-Being of Black Fathers, Families and Communities

Beginning with a summary of the history of public policy contributions to poverty and racial inequity in America, the report describes how this context impacts black fathers, and how their circumstances and choices in turn affect black children. It concludes with an overview of the Julia Carson Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act of 2009 (which subsequently died and was re-introduced in 2011 and 2013)

Professional Burnout: Sociocultural and Sociopolitical Perspectives

Social psychological, organizational, and administrative orientations dominate the literature on the phenarenon of professional burnout. This paper argues that sociocultural and sociopolitical perspectives offer additional insights into the issue. By the application of such perspectives we are compelled to examine how certain characteristics of social policies impact dysfunctionally on service providers as well as service recipients. Furthermore, the broader approach outlined here offers alternative intervention strategies for the alleviation or prevention of burnout than those ccomonly posed in previous literature

... and We Keep on Building Prisons: Racism, Poverty, and Challenges to the Welfare State

Prison-building is argued to be an intervention of last resort when a nation loses faith in the social welfare enterprise. Recent proposals for more punitive regulations for means-tested benefits, along with the recent dramatic growth in the construction of prisons and in the size of the inmate population, indicate that we are moving as a society toward heightened levels of scapegoating and victim-blaming as a response to troubles generated by significant structural shifts in the economy. This paper analyzes the connections between poverty, punishment, and prisons, with particular emphasis on the scapegoating of people of color. The role of racism in the production of poverty and in policy debates surrounding its alleviation is highlighted

Verbal Strategies that Succeed when Job Performance Fails or How to Eschew Social Work through Convincing Conversation (A Pocket Guide for the Weary)

The seemingly endless parade of literature on burnout among social service workers is the source of inspiration for this pocket guide. With the creative tailoring of some of the following vignettes to local situations, it will be almost impossible for you, the service worker, to achieve burn-out. Daily interactions with your clients and your co-workers can be accomplished with the greatest of ease, and services delivered with no muss or fuss. If the situation demands it, perhaps you can avoid clients altogether. With current retrenchment in social services, you have been asked repeatedly to do more for your clients and your agency with less and less resources. Here, instead, is a way you can do more for yourself without even having to secure outside funding. The first part of the pocket guide outlines six handy ways that you can maneuver work situations to your advantage and relief, simply by opening your mouth. Part II describes some difficult situations encountered by social workers and shows you how to prevail simply by employing the verbal strategies outlined in Part I

Beyond An Underclass: An Essay on Up-Front Politics

Debate about underclass conceptualization has once again forced sociologists to acknowledge the political context and implications of our work. This article extends the critical examination of underclass conceptualization to relatively undeveloped but politically important areas of concern. Initially we discuss the political economic context of conceptual controversies surrounding poverty. With a preference for structural analysis, we call for the return of class to economically marginalized people and suggest how that goal might be enhanced by a focus on relations of distribution as well as production. Valuing subjects\u27 vantage points, we recommend how sociologists\u27 work can return agency and diversity to economically marginalized people. Finally, acknowledging the agency of sociologists, we call for greater attention to the implications of our class positions for how we, too, make history, either by intention or default

Welfare Workers as Surplus Population: A Useful Model?

Analysts of organizational and employment issues in social welfare are in need of a more critical orientation for framing debate. We propose that an understanding of welfare workers as surplus population offers critical insights into a number of longstanding welfare concerns, including political coalitions, professional standards, and worker burnout. Empirical evidence is presented to undergird the credibility of the surplus population argument

Second-Order Victim-Blaming

Second-order victim-blaming emerges within a host of rationales given when designated solutions to first-order social problems do not produce the desired results. In certain cases second-order victim-blaming is built upon first-order victim blaming. This article develops a typology of second-order victim blaming based on the nature of problems forthcoming from failed social interventions. It then explores the implications of the phenomenon for those upon whom the blame falls, for other actors in intervention systems, and for social policy and programs more generally. It concludes with a tentative model of the sociopolitical implications of accumulated institutionalized victim-blaming, including the extremes of isolation and genocide

Exchange Rules in the Mediation of Social Welfare Work

This article demonstrates the utility of the concept of exchange rules for understanding welfare worker agency in the mediation of workplace ideologies and behaviors. The exchange rules of complementarity, reciprocity, and beneficence are applied to the issues of service worker burnout, worker-client interactions, and labor issues to illustrate their conceptual and practical power. This analysis from an interactionist perspective complements the macro-level observations of the fundamental contradictions within the social welfare enterprise. It also suggests avenues for the mediation and alleviation of certain workplace dilemmas

Deprofessionalization, Proletarianization, and Social Welfare Work

In this paper we explore the personnel transformations which have occurred in social welfare work. Specifically, we examine the tensions between the dynamics of professionalization and deprofessionalization and how these trends have impacted upon those who work in the social welfare enterprise. Another concern of the paper is the effect of the proletarianization of social welfare work in the face of increasing efforts of some to create professional standards and to solidify the position of professionals in agencies. These struggles are examined in terms of their ability to affect the likelihood of both worker unionization and worker-client political coalitions