SW5900: Social Welfare and American Indians/Alaska Natives Course Syllabus

This syllabus is the prototype for SW5900, a new specialized topics course on the Social Welfare and American Indians/Alaska Natives. Portions of the course content were piloted in the quarter system. The semester format and the service learning components of the course were developed for the semester system and the process of development involved all faculty

Improvised care: public health with Latinos in new immigrant destinations

As Latino immigrants continue to settle in new destinations across the U.S., human service institutions in these communities struggle to meet the intense needs of their increasingly diverse clients (Jiménez, 2007). Health care providers in particular are often ill-equipped to serve Latino newcomers who speak limited English, come from different cultures, and who are more likely than their peers in traditional destinations to be poor (Kandel et al., 2011), uninsured (Portes, et al., 2012), and undocumented (Passel & Cohn, 2009). The mismatch between Latino clients' needs and providers' capabilities raises doubts about the long-term prospects for these communities and their new residents. Moreover, providers' abilities to overcome such challenges are critical to ensuring the well being of the 17 million children of immigrants who are mostly American-born and yet are less likely than the children of American parents to receive human service supports (Perreira et al., 2012). This study examines how human service institutions in 18 new destinations respond to the needs of their growing Latinos populations. This qualitative study used 28 in-depth interviews with 30 public health administrators and front-line staff to identify how agencies serve Latino clients in new destinations. I used a two-step process of purposeful and snowball sampling to recruit participants (Patton, 1990). First, I invited the administrators from 28 Illinois counties with fast-growing Latino populations to join the study. Second, I asked administrators to nominate Latino-serving employees to participate. I analyzed the data using open coding to identify themes in the data, axial coding to determine the ways themes related to one another, and theoretical coding to tell the story of how institutions respond to this demographic shift (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Findings from this study suggest that inadequate structures and resources for serving diverse clients prompted new destination public health agencies to improvise service delivery for Latino residents. The lack of government oversight of human services work with immigrants led agency administrators and staff to use considerable discretion in their work. Further, the dearth of bilingual professionals in these communities led administrators to rely heavily on non-professional bilingual clerical and intake staff to address Latino clients’ complex needs. Consequently, agencies adopted a plethora of unsystematic and untested practices to address the heightened linguistic, cultural, and contextual barriers their Latino clients experienced. Latino immigrants are likely to encounter different types of services, levels of access, and quality of care across these communities. This study highlights the need for increased attention to human service delivery in new destinations where Latino clients' needs and providers' capabilities are often incongruent. It underscores the need for additional research to identify evidence-based interventions that simultaneously attend to clients' needs and agencies' limitations. This research also highlights the need for strategies to overcome a scarce bilingual workforce, including appropriate guidelines for the use and supervision of bilingual non-professionals. Finally, this study emphasizes the need for enhanced government planning, oversight, and resources for human services with immigrants in the many new destinations across the country

Joining the Club: Reflections on Developing and Implementing a Social Work Doctoral Student Organization

This article describes the development of a social work doctoral student organization to enhance student experiences at a Midwestern school of social work. Doctoral student organizations are consistent with research that emphasizes the importance of environmental factors in doctoral program completion. Social supports are especially important among increasingly diverse social work doctoral students whose needs likely differ from those of their more homogenous predecessors. The authors describe the process of creating a student organization; identify the association’s mission and activities; offer a reflective assessment, and provide recommendations for students interested in developing these organizations at their own institutions. We suggest that doctoral student organizations are feasible, affordable, and may enhance communication, mentoring, and the sense of community among doctoral social work students

PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL WORK VOLUME 11 (FALL 2015)

This is the full-text volume of Perspectives on Social Work, vol. 11 (Fall 2015)