A Contest of Values: A Cultural History of Approaches toward Alcohol

This is a smaller version of a manuscript prepared for the special seminar on Alcohol and Social Policy, School of Social Work, University of Michigan, Winter 1978. The assistance of Kim Hoa Granville and Craig King is gratefully acknowledged. The support and encouragement of Dr. Edith Gomberg also needs to be recognized; without it, this paper never would have materialized

Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.\u3c/i\u3e Katherine Stewart. Reviewed by John E. Tropman.

Review of: Katherine Stewart, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children. Public Affairs (2012). $25.99 (hardcover)

The Welfare Calculus Allocations and Utilization within the American States

Within the history of the American states, the attitude toward welfare had been fundamentally ambivalent. On the one hand there is a great thrust in this country toward charity, and toward helping the poor. Much is given each year to United Funds across the country (860 million in 1972-73), and the Christmas listing by the New York Times of the 100 neediest cases results in much spontaneous offering of aid. On the other hand, Americans are singularly suspicious of institutionalizing this impulse. These suspicions leave the United States behind other comparable countries in providing social welfare benefits. Indeed, so suspicious are we about helping the poor that, for a long time, we really knew very little about them. As late as 1958, Galbraith\u27s volume THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY celebrated the most pervasive myth about America - that we were wealthy with cases of need in the minority (Galbraith, 1958). Figures collected by the Census one year later - in 1959 - revealed that 23.4 of the American families had incomes of less than $3,000. Seemigly, we just did not want to acknowledge the amount of poverty. Rainwater coumments that Perhaps so long as economic exploitation of the poor was central to the working of the economy, no broad awareness was possible (Rainwater, 1969:9). For whatever reason, we were unaware. It is not surprising, therefore, that the absence of public awareness was matched by insufficient scholarly attention to problems of poverty. Social scientists have been very slow to provide detailed information on what has become apparent as the central fact about the American underclass - that it is created by, and its existence maintained by, the operation of what in other ways is the most successful economic system known to man (Rainwater,1969:9). Whether or not one agrees with the second part of Rainwater\u27s assertation, and Piven and Cloward (1971) certainly do, his initial point is surely correct. And what is true generally about poverty was true to an even greater extent about welfare. There is not available a general public analysis which shows where welfare fits in relationship to poverty in general or to potential clients in particular, even though techniques for this kind of analysis are available (Reiner, 1968). Perhaps least is known about the topic of major interest here - welfare rates and welfare grants, and their relationship to each other and general social structural variables, although some work has been done (Dawson and Robinson, 1965; Gordon, 1969; Collins, 1967; and Kasper, 1968). This general lack of appropriate public and scholarly attention left the country quite unprepared for the rate and cost spiral which affected the AFDC program, especially during the 1960\u27s. The basic response of the country was that there must be many chiselers somewhere, the trends were deplored singly and collectively, the citizenry reemphasized the importance of work, social workers were damned, and the program itself was faulted. Although the Nixon Administration used the impetus generated by this upheaval to propose a new welfare system, little information was generated on the whole problem. Indeed, most of the few pieces available were done during that period (Schorr, 1968)

Public Welfare: Utilization, Change, Appropriations, Service

During the decade of the 1960\u27s there was continually increasing interest in the programs of public welfare. This interest sprang from several sources. Citizens, always worried about welfare expenditures, developed resurgent concern. Recipients, long a quiet group, became more active, forming the National Welfare Rights Organization. And then there was the rediscovery of poverty as a social problem, and a realization that very many Americans were poor, many more than anyone had somehow realized. The general interest in poverty and the measures used to relieve it had an effect on the academic community, generating some sustained and critical attention to public welfare by people other than those identifiid with the social work profession for the first time in many years. Of particular interest were the rates of welfare utilization and the amount of money the client on welfare received. The purpose of this paper is to review literature in the area of welfare utilization analysis, to present some new data in the area, and to present a hypothetical model which accounts for some of the differences in the data, and provides an integration of the mechanism used by welfare agencies to deal with the multiple contingency situation they face

Policy Analysis and Older People: A Conceptual Framework

The policy sciences, says Harold Lasswell, require clarification of goals, analysis of conditions, project of future developments, and invention, evaluation, and selection of alternatives. 1 This rocess is imbued with values and often these values lie unrecognized.3 Both personal values of the individual analyst and social values of the Society can be and often are involved. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate four policy problems involved in analyses concerning the elderly, and to suggest some additional considerations which would bring these problems into the open and aid in specification and focusing of policy research in this area. While only two of the areas specifically concern values, the remaining two contain implicit value issues. This effort, and others, at laying out basic issues involved in policy analysis of the condition of the elderly is essential if policy and planning are to be carried out in an understandable and appropriate manner. As Gil indicates, there is... a curious lack of clarity as to what social policy actually is... and an ...insufficient comprehension of the nature of the key processes through which policy systems operate....,,3 One part of that policy process is construction of an intellectual/conceptual backdrop. This paper represents an attempt to specify more concretely a set of considerations in each of four areas crucial to policy for the elderly. Unless the policy analysis process itself is analyzed, we remain victims of our assumptions and preconceptions

Cost/Benefit Analysis

The techniques of cost/benefit analysis are presented in a general way in order to encourage decision-makers in the crim inal justice system to adopt a style of thought that will assist them in formulating decisional alternatives. Discussion of the promises and pitfalls of the technique addresses the question of whether the "benefits" of cost/benefit analysis are sufficient to outweigh the "costs" in its adoption. The authors contend that the technique can be quite useful to executives in their quest to manage their organizations toward the achievement of organizational goals because the technique will enable them to identify new programs worthy of experimentation, will encour age the development of an accurate information system, will en hance their ability to base programatic decisions on community and social indicatcrs, and will better equip them in their rela tionships with legislators, funding bodies, and interest groups.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66961/2/10.1177_001112877301900302.pd

Community Planning Organizations Coping with Their Problems: The Case of the Welfare Council

Community welfare councils, sharply attacked in the 1960\u27s, have survived, while many of their competitors have lost ground. Understanding their survival may help community planning agencies and planners. This study combines data from a survey of community welfare councils with data from a longitudinal study of a single council. The basic problem of councils is conceptualized as value precariousness, following Clark and Selznick, and data are provided that tend to confirm the existence of this problem among councils. The ways in which councils cope with the problem are described in some detail. Finally, the findings are compared with three similar studies

Urban policy perspectives in the U.S.A.: An extension of the Yarmolinsky option

Building on a suggestion by Adam Yarmolinsky that the Federal American government insure the equity that homeowners have developed in their property, we suggest some additional elements which would make a more complete urban policy package. Educational opportunity is seen as a critical element in property value within the American context and any scheme such as Yarmolinsky suggests needs to take into account the fact that “house price” reflects heavily the general judgment of the quality of the school to which that residence has access. Hence, a stabilization of the housing market is heavily dependent upon an equalization of educational opportunity. Two ideas to this end are suggested. One, the “school parity adjustment,” would grant funds directly to the school district, generally in inverse proportion to the assessed property valuation, and consistent with the funding required for a quality education. The second notion, the “urban tax credit” would help to rectify the desirability of suburban locations for parents of school age children by giving them tax credits for living in the city, and in effect, equalizing the subsidy which the government already provides suburban dwellers through insuring the school-inflated value of their property through Mortgage Insurance.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45453/1/11077_2005_Article_BF01405734.pd

An intervention framework for collaboration

This paper provides an intervention framework for collaboration to improve services. When collaboration is an intervention, its development and effectiveness depend on intervention logic. Intervention logic requires a precise conceptualization of collaboration. This conceptualization emphasizes its vital and unique components. It includes a developmental progression in which collaboration is contrasted with companion concepts. It also includes progress benchmarks, outcome measures, and logic models. These models depict relations among the benchmarks and outcomes, and they identify the mediating and moderating variables that account for collaboration's development and effectiveness. These models are designed to improve planning, evaluation, and their relations. This intervention framework for collaboration contrasts sharply with other conceptualizations and strategies. Although its aim is to unify and improve collaboration policy and practice, its inherent selectivity is an obvious limitation. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT

Nicotine-containing products. Commitment among USMU students

The purpose of the study is to analyze the distribution of the use of nicotine-containing products among USMU students.Цель исследования – провести анализ распространения употребления никотинсодержащей продукции среди студентов УГМУ