Browsing by Subject "Social services"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6

A meta-synthesis of unaccompanied minors' experiences with legal and social services
(2021-12-06) Marcos Flores, Anayeli; Gulbas, Lauren E.
Unaccompanied minors are characterized as children who present themselves at the U.S. border without a legal guardian and are apprehended by border patrol and placed under the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Initially, many of these children were coming from Mexico, but 2014 saw an increase of children coming from Central America, and this region continues to dominate the overall unaccompanied minor apprehensions at the border till this day (Kandel, 2021). There is a growing body of literature on the interactions between unaccompanied minors and the various adults they meet during and after their apprehension, and the lasting impacts these experiences have on these children (Larrison & Edlins, 2020). This thesis will provide an overview of the existing literature along with historical context of why children continue to make the dangerous journey to the United States, include a meta-synthesis of the experiences of minors, lawyers, and social service providers, and provide implications for future research and practice.
Devolution's discord : resolving operational dissonance with the UBIT exemption
(1998) Abrams, Stacey; Wilson, Robert Hines; Black, William K. (William Kurt), 1951-
This Report addresses a pressing problem in tax policy: the federal government has asked public charities to take on its role in providing social services without properly subsidizing charities efforts. The Report defines operational dissonance, the social phenomenon where government directs charities to take on its role in providing poverty services, but maintains a tax code that prevents them from gaining enough capital to provide these services. Specifically, the Report suggests that we exempt charities from the "substantially related" test of the unrelated business income tax, thereby permitting them to more freely engage in commercial enterprises. The discussion establishes that until poverty-servicing charities are able to engage in protected business ventures, they will be unable to fill their role in providing services to the poor
Evaluating the differential response approach in child protection : a systematic review of the evidence
(2019-08-09) Traish, Nawal Murjana; Osborne, Cynthia Anne, 1969-
In U.S. Fiscal Year 2017, states responded to 2.4 million calls reporting child abuse or neglect, spanning from inadequate supervision to severe physical maltreatment (U.S. Children’s Bureau, 2017). Since the mid-1990s, child welfare reformers have increasingly acknowledged that such a volume of reports warrants a wider, more flexible range of interventions than the standard fact-finding investigation. Today, the majority of states offer at least two distinct responses to child maltreatment reports through an approach known as Differential Response (DR). Despite the rapid proliferation of DR over the past two decades, critics have charged that it does not keep children as safe as traditional one-track systems, and some states have discontinued their pilot programs after mixed results. This report takes a systematic review approach to identify and assess the most rigorous published studies examining DR’s impact on child maltreatment recidivism. The balance of evidence supports the claim that DR, and in particular the Alternative Response (AR) track, has kept children equally as safe, or safer, than their counterparts served by the traditional investigative response. Qualitative research has also revealed that caregivers receive the Alternative Response intervention more positively than the traditional investigation. The report identifies key differences in jurisdictions’ implementation of DR that have led to varying levels of success and offers policy and practice recommendations based on state and county practices that have yielded the best outcomes. Disparate research methodologies also contributed to different findings on child safety outcomes. The report recommends more consistent analytic strategies to make state DR evaluations comparable to one another and to build a stronger national consensus on the efficacy of the approach
Inter-organizational networks : challenges, best practices, and relevance in Austin, TX
(2011-05) Seals, Courtney Renee; King, Christopher T.; Mueller, Elizabeth J.
In the recent years, the number of nonprofit organizations in the Austin area has proliferated. At the same time, the state economic budget crisis has reduced public and private resources available to social service providers. In addition, potential clients face many barriers to accessing the services being provided. Research suggests that service coordination and collaboration between service providers may be one way to increase efficiency and effectiveness in the nonprofit sector and improve outcomes for clients. The four objectives of this report are: 1) to present an overview of issues facing the Austin social services field as a whole, 2) to conduct an exploratory scan of existing Austin networks including their goals, organizational histories, and challenges that they face in their collaborative efforts, 3) to synthesize findings from a variety of publications in a thorough discussion of the challenges and best practices for forming effective inter-organizational working groups, and 4) to identify what Austin networks can learn from the literature and derive recommendations for enhancing coordinated efforts between social service providers in the city of Austin.
Lost in translation : transnational indigenous migrants re-defining social services in Los Angeles, California
(2014-08) Huitzil, Cintia Marisol; Speed, Shannon,1964-; Baker-Cristales, Beth
Recently, the ‘changing patterns of migration’ have become a growing focus in academia specifically in regards to indigenous migration to the U.S. from nontraditional migrant sending regions south of the border. Such work has focused on migrant farm workers, transnational identities and/or transnational community networks. This case study on language barriers, ingenuity and resilience as a result of miscommunication between monolingual or limited spanish, or english speaking indigenous transnational migrants and service providers in Los Angeles County compliments previous research in its analysis of public service interactions and their resulting symbolic and physical violence. Latin American, non-native Spanish speaking, migrants residing in the U.S, number anywhere between 500,000-1,250,000. LA County is home to the largest immigrant community in the US and forty percent of county social service recipients do not identify English as their primary language. Services are currently offered in nine ‘threshold languages’ at a county wide, public service level: Vietnamese, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, Farsi, Chinese, Tagalog, Cambodian, and Korean. The Los Angeles. Department of Public Social Services (LADPSS), boasts a mission of “effective and caring service.” However, for indigenous migrants in LA county who do not speak one of these languages, (and who lack a legal status), “effective and caring service” is virtually non-existent. With the growing presence of Indigenous migrants in the US, including Mixtec, Maya and Zapotec peoples, current LADPSS language policies perpetuate and can instigate psychological, physical, and structural violence for these communities as no services are offered in their indigenous languages. Currently, there are four organizations in Los Angeles that are challenging traditional service provider practices. This study looks at the ways in which Mayavison, Clinica Monseñor Oscar Romero, the Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño and the Frente Indígena the Organizaciones Binacionales are re-defining services and service provider practices through grassroots, community education campaigns and training workshops to lessen and spread awareness about the violence perpetuated by the social exclusion of indigenous transnational migrant communities and their needs.
Mapping the landscape : intervention services for child sexual abuse in Lima, Peru
(2018-10-08) Panepinto, Lynn Anne; Gulbas, Lauren E.
In this project, I explore challenges related to providing and receiving support services after a child has experienced sexual violence. My research aims centered on mapping the landscape of existing services for child sexual abuse (CSA) in the Lima province; identifying providers’ perceptions of the beliefs and attitudes that shape CSA service delivery; and eliciting a family’s narrative regarding their experience in seeking support after CSA. Employing a qualitative research design and exploratory, descriptive approach, I interviewed twelve service providers with diverse professional backgrounds as well as one caregiver who had sought services after her daughter had experienced CSA. Upon analyzing my data, I discovered a variety of themes and grouped them into three categories: causes, or why participants believe that CSA happens; services, or how organizations intervene after CSA has occurred; and philosophy, or what drives the services that organizations provide. I also collected recommendations from service providers regarding the ways that they believe CSA intervention services could be improved. My findings reveal the interconnected nature between providers’ beliefs about what causes CSA, the services they develop to address CSA, and the organizations’ philosophies for providing services. My data also show that cultural distance exists between providers and clients because they typically come from different racial, socioeconomic, educational, and linguistic backgrounds, which impacts service delivery. Cultural distance leads providers to “other” the clients and communities they serve, believing that CSA occurs because of problems within the communities themselves. Organizations, in turn, focus on educating community members and promoting healing and justice primarily through seeking harsh penalties for perpetrators. As I learned from my caregiver interview, though, the cultural distance between providers and clients can create a disconnect between what providers believe is important and what children and families truly need after experiencing trauma. Based on participants’ recommendations along with the aforementioned findings, I posit that it is necessary to involve community members and to honor the unique experiences of each child and family in order to develop culturally informed and effective CSA services.