The Impact of Urban Removal from a Child\u27s Point of View

It is the premise of this paper that forced urban resettlement has more devastating consequences for children and their families than the usual voluntary moving process. The moving process, whether forced or voluntary, involves the following phases: a decision to change the place of residence, an exploration of housing opportunities in various areas, the final selection of one of these, activities associated with making the move, and activities associated with getting settled in the new house and neighborhood

Toward the Democratization of the Social Policy Process

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the nature of social policies and the public policymaking process. It is demonstrated that public social policies tend to accrue an aura or ideology of benevolence that is only partially warranted, and that may be quite misleading to policy analysts and citizenry. The major thrust of the paper is to consider the social policy process as a strategy for public decision-making. As such, properly organized, it can provide an alternative and complementary strategy to electoral politics and protest movements. To be effective as a strategy, three major barriers must be overcome: the lack of openness in the public policy process, the active discouragement of citizen participation, and the failure to evaluate policy outcomes. Some notions are advanced about how social policy analysts and researchers can improve their work and thereby assist in the democratization of the process

Some Critical Questions in the Political Economy of Social Welfare - The Carter Welfare Reform Proposals

The purpose of this paper is to discuss President Carter\u27s welfare reform proposals, appropriately titled, The Program for Better Jobs and Income. If these proposals are adopted by Congress, they will guide the Administration in its stance toward and its work with the lowest income sectors of the nation: the welfare poor--those who cannot work and must be supported by the government, and the working poor--those who are able to support themselves, but whose yearly income is less than the poverty level. Consequently, the paper starts with an analysis of what the government documents have to tell us about the scope and nature of poverty in the United States. Then we proceed with a discussion of the current welfare reform proposals--what the Administration intends to do about the persistent entrenched poverty that plagues the nation. Finally, we ask: will the Carter welfare reforms work? We return to the key question posed at the beginning of the paper: Is it possible for the federal government to institute reforms that will result in better jobs and better distribution of income so that the welfare poor and the working poor can maintain a standard of living above abject poverty

Introduction: Warfare-Welfare as a Serious Social Problem for Study and Action

Throughout the Journal reference will be made to The Warfare/Welfare State. When the term is used by the editors it refers to activities and programs in the public (governmental) sector having to do with the growth, development, and interrelationship of two of the major institutional complexes of society, the military and the social welfare. There are two major reasons for the term: First of all, it signals the findings of current research, that nations having large military budgets also have large budgets for social welfare. Both welfare and warfare seemingly are necessary components of the modern industrial state. Second, it embodies a central contradiction that exists for these nations: The goals and processes of social welfare are usually conceived as being in direct opposition to the goals and processes of warfare. Hence, attention is directed to many of the critical issues that are examined in this Journal. Some of the most important are: To what extent has there been growth in the military and/or social welfare institutions over time? What are the measurable effects of the growth and development of one institutional complex on the other, on the society at large? Who benefits and who suffers from such a development? Can typical social welfare services be provided under military auspices? What services, for whom and under what conditions? Above all, the imperative question is: Should the social, political, and economic development of the nation be directed toward the acquisition of overwhelming military power which will allow the state to enforce its will domestically and on the rest of the world, or should the state direct its efforts to the enhancement of the social welfare and to the equitable sharing of its national resources with less fortunate and underdeveloped nations of the world

The Relative Effectiveness of Legislative Campaigning in a School of Social Work

There are three interrelated strategies commonly used by social workers for coping with the conservative attack on social welfare institutions: client advocacy, electoral, and policy strategies. The paper evaluates the relative effectiveness of the policy strategy when 532 members of a school of social work were asked to write their legislators in support of progressive legislation. Five indicators of the relative effectiveness of this campaign were identified and assessed. The campaign is adjudged relatively effective from the standpoint of enlisting and motivating participants ready for service or action\u27 (action potential); in implementing a formal plan or organization--a connected series of operations to bring about a particular result (organization potential); in activizing a leadership cadre for current and future campaigns (leadership potential); and in disseminating information relevant to the campaign (information potential). The evidence on outcome effectiveness -- for producing a decided, decisive, and desired result -- was inconclusive. The advantages and disadvantages of the policy strategy are discussed

Toward Partisan Politics in a Professional Association: Utility of the Candidates Poll

The purpose of this paper is to describe the initial efforts of one local chapter, The Puget Sound Chapter; to engage in partisan politics by the conduct of a poll of candidates for election to the Washington State Legislature in 1974. Properly speaking, the Chapter endorsed no candidates, merely rated them from weak to outstanding on their agreement with NASW policies on relevant programs and their social welfare attitudes. Thus, it is a mild form of partisan politics that will be considered. The paper will analyze the social and organizational context in which the candidates\u27 poll occurred, and then report on the advantages and shortcomings of the poll as a technique for the assessment of political candidates. Finally, there will be a brief commentary on the functions of the professional association in the politicalization of the activities of organized social workers

Eighteen Leading Social Critics Comment: What is the Real Threat to World Peace and Social Security?

What is the real threat to world peace and social security? Is it the prevalent ideology of violence, aggressive nationalism, and militarism? Or is it the maldistribution of resources, technology, and social welfare benefits? How much of itsnational budget must the U.S. allocate to military expenditures? How can the national budget priorities be changed so there is a more realistic funding of social programs? Do we face as great a threat of nuclear annihilation in the \u2770\u27s and the \u2780\u27s as we did in the early \u2760\u27s? These are some of the questions the editors asked of 96 experts on the warfare- welfare problem. In all, 18 persons responded to the invitation, including 22% of the social scientists (N=11), 10% of the writers and editors (N=l), 25% of the executives of peace organizations (N=5), 10% of the elected government officials (N=l), and none of the military leaders. The names and affiliations of participants are indicated on the following page

The South Asian genome

Genetics of disease Microarrays Variant genotypes Population genetics Sequence alignment AllelesThe genetic sequence variation of people from the Indian subcontinent who comprise one-quarter of the world's population, is not well described. We carried out whole genome sequencing of 168 South Asians, along with whole-exome sequencing of 147 South Asians to provide deeper characterisation of coding regions. We identify 12,962,155 autosomal sequence variants, including 2,946,861 new SNPs and 312,738 novel indels. This catalogue of SNPs and indels amongst South Asians provides the first comprehensive map of genetic variation in this major human population, and reveals evidence for selective pressures on genes involved in skin biology, metabolism, infection and immunity. Our results will accelerate the search for the genetic variants underlying susceptibility to disorders such as type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease which are highly prevalent amongst South Asians.Whole genome sequencing to discover genetic variants underlying type-2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and related phenotypes amongst Indian Asians. Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust cBRC 2011-13 (JS Kooner [PI], JC Chambers)

CogStack - experiences of deploying integrated information retrieval and extraction services in a large National Health Service Foundation Trust hospital.

BACKGROUND: Traditional health information systems are generally devised to support clinical data collection at the point of care. However, as the significance of the modern information economy expands in scope and permeates the healthcare domain, there is an increasing urgency for healthcare organisations to offer information systems that address the expectations of clinicians, researchers and the business intelligence community alike. Amongst other emergent requirements, the principal unmet need might be defined as the 3R principle (right data, right place, right time) to address deficiencies in organisational data flow while retaining the strict information governance policies that apply within the UK National Health Service (NHS). Here, we describe our work on creating and deploying a low cost structured and unstructured information retrieval and extraction architecture within King's College Hospital, the management of governance concerns and the associated use cases and cost saving opportunities that such components present. RESULTS: To date, our CogStack architecture has processed over 300 million lines of clinical data, making it available for internal service improvement projects at King's College London. On generated data designed to simulate real world clinical text, our de-identification algorithm achieved up to 94% precision and up to 96% recall. CONCLUSION: We describe a toolkit which we feel is of huge value to the UK (and beyond) healthcare community. It is the only open source, easily deployable solution designed for the UK healthcare environment, in a landscape populated by expensive proprietary systems. Solutions such as these provide a crucial foundation for the genomic revolution in medicine