Measuring the Impact of the Fiscal Crisis on Human Services Agencies and Social Work Training
The Bush administration followed its predecessor's lead in sharply reducing the federal government's role in social welfare. Public alarm over the cost of health care led to cutbacks in funding for mental health services and medical services, including reduction of private insurance coverage for public programs like Medicaid. As a result, treatment services for mental illness and substance abuse disorders have been severely underfunded (Sharfstein, Stoline, & Goldman, 1993). Although the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was able and willing for many years to repair the holes in the social safety net (Burt & Pittman, 1985), a deepening recession during the late 1980s in the Northeast diminished resources and ushered in a conservative administration that sharply reduced funding for social services. At the beginning of the 1990s, the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health's budget was $30 million less than the previous year's appropriation. Three state mental hospitals were closed, and many state workers were laid off, hired at lower pay, or "bumped" into unfamiliar positions (Massachusetts Human Services Coalition, 1991). Accompanying this retrenchment has been "a pervasive 'marketization' of the American social welfare system, as nonprofit organizations have been sucked increasingly into market-type relationships and for-profit firms have steadily expanded their market niche" (Salamon, 1993, p. 36). In a market economy competition, productivity, and efficiency are key forces, and a "survival of the fittest" mentality prevails. Agencies are therefore required to focus more closely on reimbursable and profitable services (Gopelrud, Walfish, & Apsey, 1983; Mordock, 1989). They often institute tighter controls on their staffs, demanding increased productivity and efficiency as well as proof of service effectiveness. Frumkin (1980) warned against the "professional commitment fallacy": the assumption that social services agencies will always subordinate their needs to ethical obligations to provide professional training. Schools of social work depend on the resources of human services settings for a most important part of the curriculum, field education. Their master's degree programs must include 900 hours of supervised work in a field practicum. Simmons College School of Social Work's master of social work program prepares students for advanced direct practice with particular concentration on the application of clinical methods; in the two-year full-time program, students concurrently do two days of academic course work and three days of field placement per week. Unfortunately, the agencies used as field placements for social work interns have been hard hit in the past few years by budget cuts and accompanying changes in practice. Concerned about increasing reports of agency closings and layoffs, members of the Field Education Department at Simmons College School of Social Work sought to accurately describe the constraints experienced by their agencies in training social work interns in a time of fiscal crisis. The department applied for and received a grant from the Simmons College Fund for Research to conduct a survey of 200 agencies used by the School of Social Work as field placements. Method Questionnaires were mailed to 200 agencies that served as field placements for the School of Social Work from 1992 to 1994. Respondents were asked open-ended and closed-ended questions about their perceptions of the major impact of funding cuts on their agencies and their training of social work interns; they were also asked to provide suggestions about how schools of social work - and the social work profession - could help. A cover letter explained the purpose of the study and indicated that participation was voluntary and would not jeopardize the agency's allotment of student interns. A follow-up mailing was sent to agencies that did not respond. The final response rate was 51 percent; 101 of the 200 agencies returned completed questionnaires. …
Quality Internships for Part-time Graduate Students: An Exploratory Study of a University/Agency Partnership
The university student population is changing and more students choose to complete graduate programs while working full-time and going to school parttime. Part-time graduate students, who are working towards a professional degree in the human services domain often struggle fi nding quality internship placements that are available during non-regular offi ce hours. At the same time, non-profi t organizations, especially those who are small and lesser known, struggle to recruit, train, and retain high quality volunteers. This is especially problematic since the number of non-profi ts is increasing and the number of volunteers decreasing. To look for answers both university part-time programs and non-profi ts must look to innovative solutions. The literature speaks of the necessity of partnerships but there is a lack of specifi c examples within the literature. This exploratory study describes how a partnership between a university part-time graduate program in social work and a local non-profi t grief camp program for children led to a win-win situation that fulfi lled the needs of both and provided future social workers with a high quality internship opportunity.
Power and community
Of course, from childhood to forever, we are always thought to love reading. It is not only reading the lesson book but also reading everything good is the choice of getting new inspirations. Religion, sciences, politics, social, literature, and fictions will enrich you for not only one aspect. Having more aspects to know and understand will lead you become someone more precious. Yea, becoming precious can be situated with the presentation of how your knowledge much.