Work Sanctions Under Welfare Reform: Are They Helping Women Achieve Self-Sufficiency?

The focus of this thesis has been to determine the usable voltage range of carbon-based supercapacitors (SC). Supercapacitors are a relatively new type of capacitors with a vast increase in capacitance compared to capacitors which utilize a dielectric as charge separator. A SC consists of two electrodes and an electrolyte separating the electrodes. The charges are stored by electrostatic forces in the interface between the electrode and the electrolyte, forming the so called electrochemical double-layer (EDL). With porous electrodes the effective surface area of the interfacial zone can be made very large, giving SCs a large storage capacity. The limiting factors of a SC is the decomposition potential of the electrolyte and the decomposition of the electrodes. For commercially manufactured SCs the electrolyte is usually an organic solvent, which has a decomposition potential of up to 2.7-2.8 V. Compared to aqueous electrolytes with a thermodynamic limit of 1.23 V. The drawback of using non-aqueous electrolytes is that they are not environmentally friendly, and they increase the production cost. It is claimed that the voltage range can be up to 1.9 V using aqueous electrolytes. Some researchers have focused on aqueous electrolytes for these reasons. In this thesis two different electrolytes were tested to determine if the voltage range could be extended. The experiments were conducted using a three electrode cell and performing cyclic voltammogram measurements (CV). The carbon electrodes were made of  two different sources of grahite, battery graphite or exfoliated graphite, and nano fibrilated cellulose was added to increase the mechanical stability. The results show that the oxidation potential of the carbon electrode was the positive limit. A usable potential of about 1 V was shown. However, when cycling the electrodes to potentials below the decomposition limit, for hydrogen evolution, interesting effects were seen. A decrease in reaction kinetics, indicating a type of conditioning of the electrode was observed. An increase in charge storage capacitance was also observed when comparing the initial measurements with the final, probably corresponding to an increase in porosity.KEPS projekt Sundsvall Mitt Universite

Public Voices and Public Policy: Changing the Societal Discourse on Welfare

Much of the public discourse on welfare reform is subjective and value laden, a composite of socially constructed stories and myths that support the dominant ideology. This article reports on a study that examines the language used by government officials, poverty experts, advocates and others to discuss welfare reform. Statements made about welfare reform were extracted from the Washington Post and the New York Times and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Dissecting the public language of welfare provides insight into how prevailing ideologies are communicated and reinforced, and how they can be changed

Social Justice and the Supreme Court: Lessons from the Past

This article revisits over sixty years of Supreme Court decisions that have affected the poor and racial minorities, using a novel approach that considers the synergistic relationship between different doctrinal areas rather than focusing on one area. Specifically, I appraise the Supreme Court’s doctrinal contributions from 1953 to the present across three foundational elements of social justice on behalf of the poor and people of color: the school integration cases under the Equal Protection Clause, a series of cases under the Fourth Amendment which sanctioned the police tactic of stop-and-frisk, and attempts to secure economic security for the poor through the Constitution under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. I find that the Warren Court, which is widely considered the most progressive court in U.S. history, failed in several respects. It damaged, rather than abetted, the cause of economic justice. And what it gave to Black children in terms of educational opportunity, it took away from their future selves, their adult community members, and their caretakers by facilitating the mass incarceration of Black men through the practice of stop- and-frisk. I also show how the conservative Courts that followed diluted any gains from this era. I conclude that the Supreme Court has been more foe than friend, and has abandoned, rather than protected, the poor and racial minorities. I draw from this history lessons for the present, including strategies for advancing social justice in the current political and legal environment

Examining the Administration of Work Sanctions on the Front lines of the Welfare System

Objectives. Financial penalties, or sanctions, are a core mechanism for enforcing the work requirements of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and helping clients achieve self-sufficiency. This study’s objective is to examine whether sanctions are being administered consistent with policy goals of encouraging work. Methods. This study uses administrative fair hearing decisions, which are the product of an adversarial-style procedure triggered when a client appeals an adverse decision by the agency, including work sanctions. Qualitative content analysis is used to analyze the decisions. Results. The study found that despite organizational reforms, local offices had created the welfare-to-work version of an eligibility-compliance culture, where sanctions were based primarily on attendance records and became a paper-processing function. Transactions between clients and workers were often routinized and mechanical, resulting in improper and arbitrary sanctions that were reversed by the hearing officers nearly 50 percent of the time. Conclusion. This study underscores the importance of scrutinizing and correcting agency errors that may undercut clients’ engagement in work activities

When the Personal and the Political Collide

A consistent theme within social work has been the exploration of the conflict between the personal and the political – especially how social workers resolve conflicts between their own personal values and their political views. This account explores the clash that occurred when a researcher’s findings about school vouchers conflicted with the personal experiences of those around her

The Supreme Court, Federalism, and Social Policy: The New Judicial Activism

The Supreme Court is entering a new era, discarding long-standing legal doctrines to reshape the relationship between the states and the federal government. Paralleling trends in the legislative and executive branches of government, the Court is constructing its own version of devolution. Through a reinterpretation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which is the anchor for many of our civil rights and social welfare laws, the Court has severely curtailed the power of the federal government to enact progressive legislation. This article provides an overview of this new judicial doctrine and discusses its implications for social welfare policy

Seeking Justice: Citizens’ Use of Fair Hearings to Correct Errors in Public Welfare Bureaucracies

An understudied area of public administration is administrative hearings, used by clients to challenge denials or reductions of aid in public welfare programs. They help ensure that officials are applying the law consistently, fairly and equitably, and as intended by policy makers. Drawing on 59 qualitative interviews with public assistance clients in an urban and suburban county in New York who received notices discontinuing or reducing their assistance, this study explores why clients appeal or not and their perceptions of hearings. The findings indicate that clients’ decisions to contest agency decisions were influenced by their perceptions of how workers treated them, their reactions to powerlessness and stigma, and their social networks, especially client networks. Clients who filed appeals perceived hearings as a valuable tool, albeit one that needed improvements. Although concerned with outcomes, they also focused on the procedural fairness of the hearing and whether they had an opportunity to fully present their case to an impartial decision maker. Although some clients had difficulty navigating the appeals process, procedural fairness was possible to achieve, despite the evident power and status disparities between the parties

Judge or Bureaucrat? How Administrative Law Judges Exercise Discretion in Welfare Bureaucracies

Administrative law judges are neglected but powerful actors in public welfare bureaucracies, presiding over quasi-judicial hearings triggered if participants challenge a bureaucratic decision on public welfare benefits. Drawing on ethnographic observations of fair hearings, as well as interviews with administrative law judges and appellants, this study seeks to understand the ways in which these judges exercise discretion and how it affects the adjudication of disputes. Findings suggest that disputes generated by poorly run bureaucracies provide judges with limited opportunity to use professional skills or discretion to scrutinize bureaucratic practices. When opportunities for such judgments do arise, judges take widely divergent paths. Some align themselves with the welfare agency, enforcing bureaucratic practices rather than scrutinizing them. Others emphasize their neutrality and judicial role, scrutinizing and aligning agency practices with the law’s underlying purposes

RESPECT: The Missing Policy Tool of Welfare Reform

The dramatic reshaping of welfare in 1996 included an arsenal of policy tools, from time limits, work requirements, and sanctions to work supports, job training and education, and case management services. To deploy these tools, welfare offices have been reconfigured and outside providers, including for profit and nonprofit agencies, enlisted. One policy tool, however, has been conspicuously and persistently absent: respect