Social Work & Religion: A Duty to Inform

As we entered into week two, the class was given the assignment to read pages 178- 207, a section of our textbook that described the field of social work and its inherent affiliation with religion. The authors, Philip Popple and Leslie Leighninger, spent a significant amount of time detailing the religious roots of social welfare. They highlight that this religious affiliation was not limited to one specific cohort. Rather, Popple and Leighninger explain that associations span numerous populations including early Egyptian, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim cultures. In fact, they attribute the profession of social work to three specific movements, each having derived from the church: Charity Organization Society (COS) movement, Settlement House movement, and the development of institutions to deal with an entire range of social problems.

Eventually, the field of social work became more secular. Following the general secularization of society, public view began to stray from the “God’s Will” mentality of unfortunate events. Instead, individuals began to seek scientific, rational explanations for more of life’s events. As the growth of government services increased, funding with religious affiliation decreased. The 1960’s and 1970’s brought along with it waves of new students entering the social work profession, fueled by political and ideological incentives rather than religious motives.

Today, it can be argued that the tides are once again turning. The argument that social work has begun to see the reversal of secularization does not go without merit. In the past few years there has been a large amount of growth in conservative churches. Principles such as lack of birth control have fostered large population increases. Since President Reagan, trends in governmental control have shifted to incorporate more religious association. Communities continue to see the establishment and growth of professional organizations such as the North American Association of Christians in Social Work. Education programs continue to develop, offering a religious focus while those in doctoral pursuits are choosing dissertations with a religious aim. Still, social work and religion continue to be sensitive companions.

It has been a common argument that religion presents difficulties for both the individual social worker and agency. Those with strong religious views tend be less concerned with the material needs of the client. Agencies face concern with policies that outline client self- determination and non-judgementalism. Furthermore, most agencies agree that social work is not a place for “whitnessing”. The subject is often the topic of much debate and has not gone without capturing the attention of the media.

Author George Will begins his piece Code of Coercion by recapping the 1943 Supreme Court case, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, where it was determined that government funded schools could not force children in attendance to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He goes on to argue that this decision continues to be disparaged by teachers at public universities, particularly in the field of social work. Fortunately, George Will’s accusations fall apart with minimal investigation. Highlighted as a shining example of his allegations, Will tells the story of a former UIS student, Sandra Fuiten, who halted her pursuit of a BSW after a professor “told her that it is impossible to be both a social worker and an opponent of abortion” (Will, 2007). Between her comments for the Indianapolis Star and her self- written article, Anti- Catholic Social Work, one can see through her use of language and inconsistencies that her credibility is questionable at best. At one point, Fuiten states, “Surely Jane Addams has turned over in her grave myriad times, but I am sure she has at least for me.” I think, the only one that would be turning over in their grave would be Ms. Sandra Fuiten’s legal consultant.

All things considered, I challenge Mr. Will to pay homage to several other famous Supreme Court cases such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Roe v. Wade (1973), and United States v. Nixon (1974). For in the company of educators, doctors, and government officials, social workers share the responsibility of informing the individual(s) in which they serve regardless of race, gender, status, political affiliation, or religious identification. It is not a question of forgoing personal beliefs but rather maintaining client autonomy and self-determination.

Student supports health care reform

Second Reaction essay

In my second reaction essay I will be focusing on healthcare. This is a much debated issue in America right now. In my opinion this bill will revolutionize the way we look at healthcare and is a monumental step forward in what we have tried to achieve with healthcare since we passed The Social Security Act of 1935.

Many right wing individuals have been blowing this bill way out of proportion, and I wonder if it is because of their underlying racism that they have learned to ignore throughout their lifetimes, because I have not seen one African American, Chinese American, or any other person of non-traditional European American descent in any of these rallies they are deciding to go through with. It shows me that many Americans are not agreeing with an African American’s viewpoint which will make sure that all Americans will receive the sort of healthcare that is unbiased and more equal than it ever has been before. Every new policy has its flaws, which can be changed over time, and this is one which we will have to live and learn with.

Tea baggers have been protesting this because of misleading propaganda that many government officials have been lying about in the media. One of the main points I would like to make is that millions of Americans do not have insurance, and due to this they do not go to receive medical attention unless they go to an emergency room where they cannot be denied healthcare. [The Census Bureau estimated about 44 million Americans had no health insurance in 2007] If every American had affordable health insurance they would be more apt to visit doctors and have small medical bills with preventative measures they can seek out and take advantage of. Going to an emergency room is substantially higher in cost because they are denied the help before there ailment becomes severe. This means that we are paying out of pocket for procedures that cost $300 dollars for an aspirin, when in a normal doctor’s visit they can tell the patient to buy aspirin themselves at a pharmacy. This is one of the main reasons that healthcare can become more affordable when we take a residual view into the whole medical system and make sure we prevent more illnesses instead of waiting for them to become much more serious and monetarily painful to all Americans.

They are also trying to limit women’s reproductive health in the bill, which should not be taking place. If a woman has a right to choose what method of contraceptive she wants to utilize for herself, many more would be apt to take advantage of this and it would be a preventative measure to ensure fewer abortions are occurring. We need to educate and use vital resources that are available in order to reduce things instead of leaving no options open and having people throwing a devastating life choice, such as abortion, in the individuals face after they have had no options.

This bill may need a lot of adjustments, but that is why new laws always need monitoring and adjusting as we fix problems that may occur in the policy once they have begun, instead of leaving millions of people uninsured, and thousands of people dying because their insurance company drops them after they get an illness because they are too big of a risk to a company who grosses billions of dollars. [A recent report estimated 45,000 deaths in America are preventable and wouldn't happen or would be delayed if everyone had access to health care.]

Policies to change parenting practices

I read an article called “When children of abuse become parents” that I found on ABC news. It is about several different parents that are struggling with trying to break the cycle of abuse because their children are misbehaving. These parents have been abused when they were children whether they were spanked, punched, or thrown across the room. They do not want to abuse their children the way they were abused because they know that it caused them problems. I thought this article goes great with what we talked about in class last week. We are talking about if it was wrong to spank children or not.

On this website there were video clips of parents struggling with their children misbehaving and not listening to them. The parents were threatening them with taking things away or threatening to hurt them and so forth. Then the families volunteered with a mentor program called Parent Aide. This program helped the parents learn a new way to deal with their children’s misbehavior. The Parent Aide said that what has worked best for children in order to prevent them from misbehaving is to maximize praise when they are doing something good. They said to do it with exaggeration and touch them by either high fiving them, patting them on the head or giving them a hug. For example, if the child takes their plate to the sink say “Wow! Thanks so much for taking your plate to the sink,” and then give them a high five! The parents could not believe that this would work, but it did. When children don’t get enough attention from their parents they will try to get it another way by throwing a fit or acting bad. They said by constantly praising them for the good things that they do and by keeping a reward chart for them that they will have better behavior.

I am so glad I read this article and watched the video clips because I am a new mother and I was spanked when I was a child, but I really didn’t want to spank my children. This gives me a new insight, and I hope to try this on my children. I thought they did a great job on explaining everything and then showing video clips to demonstrate. It was a very great article and is defiantly something I will recommend people to read.

I do believe that children do just act worse or throw a bigger fit when you yell at them or spank them. I know it is hard not to spank your kids because when you get impatient with their big tantrum it is hard to prevent. But what if you could prevent your kids from having these tantrums in the first place or at least not having them very often? I do agree that if you model the right way to act and praise them for doing it then they are going to do good more often. A lot of kids that misbehave just want attention; I know because I did it when I was a kid. I was born in a family of five, and I always wanted more attention from my mother, but she was always very busy, and when I didn’t get it I always back mouthed and acted out. Then she would spank me, threaten me or ground me, which wouldn’t help because I would just do it again. My mother use to pull my hair, kick me, slap me, and spank me, and it really did affect how I controlled my anger because now when I get angry at my boyfriend my instant reaction is to slap him. I know it is not right, and I don’t want to abuse him or my children so I believe it is important to break the cycle of abuse.

When my parents told me I couldn’t go do something it just discouraged me or made me lose confidence, but when my parents believed in me and encouraged me I felt like I could do anything. So once again I really understand what the article is talking about and how important it is to break the cycle of abuse.

I also encourage anybody who hasn’t read this article and seen these video clips to go to this website http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/parents-struggle-break-cycle-abuse/Story?id=8549642&page=1.

Child Care

My second reaction essay will be discussing an article on child care. This article is called “Child Care,” by Michelle Friedman, from the Coalition on Human Needs. I chose this topic and article because I work at a home childcare and preschool here in Springfield. While the need for childcare is rising, so is the cost of childcare. I feel that many people do not think of childcare as a social service issue, but it is. There are many programs and funding that the federal government operates in order to provide better child care services and affordable child care service. It is important to advocate for these services in order to help families all over the United States of America.

This article starts out discussing the growing need for child care. There are a few factors that influence this progression. The number of women working (participating in the paid labor force) is increasing as the years progress. Many women are going to work in order to help support the family. As the cost of things is increasing, the pay for people is staying the same. Families now need a second income. As this need for women to work increases, the need for good-quality childcare is also increasing. This article states that, unfortunately, the amount of good-quality childcare is not increasing. Every week, there are about 5 million children left unsupervised after school (Friedman). This leads to more crime and juvenile delinquency. While many families have relatives available to help with childcare, there is still a huge number of people that have to pay for childcare outside of the home. The costs for childcare can range from about $4,000 dollars to $10,000 dollars per year, per child (Friedman).

This article also talks about the quality of care for children. I like how this article mentions the importance of the quality of care effecting the child’s development. It is so important that children have interaction, safety, connections, and are being taught skills and responsibility and are engaged in learning. The child care should be more than just “babysitting.” There are many health and safety issues that children need to have as well. In this article it states that “a healthy and safe early childhood setting can also prevent cognitive and behavioral disorders later in life, some of which are irreversible” (Friedman). I feel that this is very important-helping prevent mental illness. This article mentions some statistics on the amount of child care providers that provide inadequate care. So many states have so many different rules and regulations that it is hard to ensure that each child care provider is truly an adequate provider. Of course, programs like DCFS do check-ups to ensure safety, but there are always some that get through the cracks or have second chances.

There are government programs that help with improving child care affordability and quality. There is a Child Care Development Block Grant that was passed in 1990. It became part of funding for families that receive welfare as part of the 1996 welfare law. It provides funding for early childhood development and before-and after-school child care services. There is a program called Head Start. It was created in 1965, and helps prepare low-income children to enter school. In 1996, this program served over 800,000 children (Friedman). In Springfield, I know there is a place called Community Child Care Connection. They link parents and providers to resources in the community. This is part of the Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies and is funded by the Illinois Department of Human Services. They have a child care assistance program. It is run through IDHS. It provides assistance to low-income working families and families on TANF. At my childcare home that I work at, there is only one family in this program. I feel relieved for these people that they have this program available to them.

The quality of childcare is decreasing in some areas in the United States, as the cost may be rising in some areas of the U.S. I think it is important for social workers to strive for better programs for child care assistance and to keep up with the policies that are in existence now for child care.

References

Friedman, M. (n.d.). Child Care. Almanac of Policy Issues. Retrieved April 13, 2010, from http://www.policyalmanac.org/social_welfare/childcare.shtml

New Health Care Bill and Health Insurance

In The State Journal Register, Springfield, IL, there was an article on Wellpoint Insurance rates and how they were expecting a 39 percent rate increase for some customers. Wellpoint is the largest publicly traded health insurer based on membership, and it runs Blue Cross Shield plans and Unicare plans. This insurance company is well known in many states. The article was printed before the health care bill passed, and many thought this was a good example of how universal health care was a necessity for America.

As mentioned before, there was an expected 39 percent increase; however, the company had a 2.7 billion dollar profit in the fourth quarter of 2009. If the insurance company had such a large profit why would there be a need for 39 percent increase for those covered? Personally, I find it very disturbing that companies make profit off of health insurance. While people are struggling to pay medical bills, finding coverage, or going uninsured, companies are making billions of dollars. I find it immoral for businesses making a profit from people being sick, injured, or dying.

This semester I have been very ill and was taken to the hospital. I had a hard time finding hospitals or medical facilities I could go to that my insurance covered. I later discovered I needed surgery; however, my insurance company did not cover doctors in Springfield. They gave me a three month emergency period to get the surgery, and luckily there happened to be an opening within the time limit. Instead of waiting until I was on summer or spring break from school, I had to go by what the insurance companies would allow, which created stress and anxiety. My parents spent hours on the phone with the insurance company just to allow this, and it was a nightmare. I feel like although my experience was an unpleasant one, I was very lucky because I was able to get the procedure done. Many people cannot afford health care payments and have problems finding doctors that will accept Medicaid.

In one of the most significant policies to pass, the new health care bill will hopefully eliminate the stress and demands the insurance companies have, or at least allow for an alternative for people without insurance. The new health care bill allows coverage for children with pre-existing conditions, free preventative care under Medicare, banning of lifetime limits on coverage, prohibiting discrimination based on salary, and a number of other services (http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/keyprovisions.html).

Student responds to "Why Do We Fight"

Reaction Paper # 2

Film- Why Do We Fight?

The film by Eugene Jarecki, Why Do We Fight, that we watched in class touched a sore subject with me. My family is a military family, including myself. My father has fought in multiple wars and my grandfather died in Desert Storm. I do not believe some of what the movie was broadcasting was true. For starters, people claim the United States spends more on the defense discretionary budget then anything else. This may be true, we do spent a lot of money on defense; but it is not always used in the most efficient ways when it gets to our fighting soldiers. In fact, many of the deaths on the American side during our current fight for freedom, are solely because we do not have enough or proper equipment to protect us from the enemy.

I deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom in 2004-2005. While I was there, my platoon lost one female soldier because the truck she was in hit an IED. She would have survived with injuries had her truck been properly equipped with armor. We drove on the roads to and from Kuwait and Iraq for days on end without the proper truck armor for at least the first five months of my deployment. That should of never happened, if in fact we do spend so much money on defense.

Also, I did not like the fact that the movie pointed out, that we have no agreement on this question: Why do we fight? Yes, I believe when there is a reason to go to war to prevent attacks against the U.S. and our allies, then by all means go to war and fight for our freedom. But don't tell our citizens lies about why we are going to war. The movie showed children and adults defending freedom as the reason we went to war, but there were other reasons thrown out as well. For instance, people thought we were fighting Iraq to prevent other attacks on U.S. soil. But shortly after, there was word that we were fighting for cheaper oil, to catch Saddam, and to find weapons of mass destruction. The government lied to the people, and they continue to lie. Will we ever be able to trust the government again? Over a half a million extra people died due to government policy.

While I was deployed, I personally got to witness death and destruction. But I also got to be part of history. The year I was fighting in Iraq was the first year women had the right to vote, December 2005. But this was not true about the women in all Arab countries, but hopefully soon it will happen. I also learned the real reason why the Arabic people have been fighting all these years. They are fighting a religious war, over whose land belongs to who and where the boundaries are. I do not believe this war involves us at all. The government is just wasting money, time, and resources sending more and more troops to a fighting country that will never be happy. The majority of our troops that are dying over there is simply because we got in the way. The women and children that are dying in country are dying at the hands of their own people as well.

The main reason I show "Why Do We Fight?" is because it demonstrates the main competing type of government spending, which is military spending. We spend maybe $800 billion on Social Security, and then nearly $700 billion on health (Medicare, Medicaid, Centers for Disease Control, NIH, etc., and actually much more if we include state contributions to Medicaid), and we spend about $600 billion (actually a bit more) on defense (if we are including Homeland Security, Veteran's Administration, and various other benefits related to defense in addition to the Defense Department's budget). Combined state and federal spending on justice and law enforcement and corrections is perhaps $185-$200 billion. Public spending on education from preschool through higher education is a bit over $900 billion, although most of this is collected and spent at the state level without much of a federal contribution. If we want to allocate more money to social services, crime prevention, interventions to reduce recidivism in convicts released from incarceration, poverty reduction, health, affordable housing, or education, the natural target for cuts would be defense. But, as the film showed, there are powerful economic and political interests that give us policies that continue to fund defense at rates around $600 billion, which may be over twice what we actually need.

Clearly there was a rational argument to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. There were good rational arguments against each occupation as well. If people really believed Iraq posed a threat to us, and also believed a pre-emptive strike based on this perceived threat was justified, then such beliefs could be used to support the occupation of Iraq. I didn't believe Iraq posed a threat, and I rejected the notion of pre-emptive strikes against countries that aren't directly threatening us, so I demonstrated against the invasion of Iraq. But, even as I did so, I realized that in an ideal international system some sort of multinational coalition would coercively remove the Ba'ath Party and the ruling elites such as Saddam Husain from power in Iraq. I'd like to live in a world were a humanitarian coalition of powerful governments would combine their forces to remove the worst despots and tyrannies from power and give oppressed people a chance to gave better governments replace the totalitarian or murderous regimes that misrule them. So, from that perspective, even if Iraq posed no threat to us, I could hope for the best. But, I expected the worst, because it seemed clear to me that the powers organizing Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom were incompetent, historically ignorant, culturally insensitive, and willfully stupid. I expected them to botch the occupation and alienate the Iraqi people, and many of my fears were confirmed. Thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives were wasted.

Women probably had a "better" situation relative to men under the Ba'ath regime in the sense that women and men were equally oppressed and enjoyed approximately equal freedoms and rights (what little they had of those). I think our success (and it's a fragile and shaky success, but I hope it takes root and gains strength) was to let Iraqis vote for their political leadership so that the government would be accountable to the people. In the long term, I hope Iraqi women can regain their standing of equality to men (which I recognize had been imperfectly attained under the Ba'ath regime), a standing I believe has been partly lost with the (hopefully temporary) rise of religious fanaticism and literalism and factionalism in Iraq.

I've just read an interesting book that seems to explain how American foreign policy could have much more success against the very real and dangerous threat of murderous death cults masquerading under the guise of Islamic Fundamentalism, and with your experiences in Iraq you might enjoy reading this book. It is An End to Al-Qaeda, and it's written by Malcolm Nance.

You are probably aware that women have been voting in meaningful democratic elections in Lebanon, Algeria, Jordan, and Morocco for decades. Women have had the vote, but elections are relatively meaningless, in most of the other Arab countries (e.g., Egypt, Tunisia), aside from those that don't even have any sort of reasonable elections because royal families or totalitarian single-party dictatorships rule everything (as in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, etc.). The Iraqi elections in 2005 you witnessed were meaningful, and I hope that soon the Iraqi people will be able to enjoy the fruits of universal enfranchisement and free and fair elections, and they will not give up this precious system, bought with so much blood and sacrifice by Iraqis, Americans, and others.

Student is interested in poverty.

Here is a reaction essay a student wrote to review what she had been learning about poverty in some class readings.

Second Reaction Essay

I am very interested in poverty and how to help it, but even more importantly how to prevent it, or help people get away from it. I enjoyed the section we did on poverty and the rates we looked at over time.

From the websites we looked at, the poverty rate in 2006 was 12.3%, which was 36.5 million people (it's up around 13.5% or higher now with the Great Recession). It was interesting how ethnicity seemed to show a trend in poverty. For whites, the poverty rate was 8.2%. For African Americans, the rate was 24.3%. For Asians, the rate was 10.3%. The rates for different ages was also important to notice. For people under 18 years old, the poverty rate was 17.4% equaling 12.8 million people. For people over 18 years old, the poverty rate was 10.8%, so it was lower, but that came out to be 20.2 million people (there are lot more people over 18). The poverty rate for people over age 65 has decreased; it’s under 10%.

Dependency and recipiency was also looked at. On a broad view over time, both dependency and recipiency rates were high in the early to mid 90's and then decreased through 2000. The rates increased again after 2000. Between 1993 and 2004, recipiency rates were: for whites, 8-10%, for African Americans, 26-38%, for Hispanics, 21-34%. The rates continued to go up for all the races, whites being the lowest and African Americans being the highest. For dependency rates, whites ranged from 1.8-3%, African Americans ranged from 8.8-17.8%, and Hispanics ranged from 4.5-11.8%.

More than 50% of single mothers experience poverty for at least one month in a years time. There are many reasons why the mothers face this. One reason single mothers face poverty is because the father doesn't help them with bills and the children, so they are on their own. Childcare is so expensive, that it almost doesn't pay to put them in daycare while at work. Another problem with women trying to support themselves and children on their own is that women only make $0.77 for every $1.00 a man makes on average. Women are typically underpaid for the jobs they can do, because society expects the men to pay the bills. Unfortunately, no one is thinking about the women who are on their own.

There was a group of single mothers who were tracked over a two year period. It was shown that 28% of poor single women receiving welfare (TANF) are poverty leavers, meaning after being in poverty once, they never return to poverty, or at least not for several years. This study showed that 56% of the same female TANF-receiving population are poverty cyclers, meaning they cycle in and out of poverty, maybe out of poverty for a year or some months and then falling back into poverty for a year or some months. The last segment of the poor single TANF-receiving population was poverty returners, and 16% of the these single women stay poor. This last category of long-term poverty-stricken women is generally afflicted with chronic health or mental health problems, although a small fraction of this group must include the notorious welfare cheaters who prefer to collect welfare benefits when they could be working. Still, it’s clear from this study that most people who receive welfare such as TANF are not experiencing steady long-term dependency, and for the fraction that does experience this, only a very small part could be cheating. (see Economic Patterns of Single Mothers Following Their Poverty Exits at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/07/PovertyExits/ch1.htm for the original 2007 study).

Mark Rank made an interesting statement when he said that between the age of 20-65, two out of five people would use some kind of welfare program. For some people who don't agree with welfare because they think it is abused and a waste of money, I know they would want it if they were in the same situation. I believe it was Mark who said that 58% of Americans would experience poverty. For more than half of Americans to experience poverty, I would think that there would be a lot more people helping out when they can. However, people don't expect that something may happen and send them into poverty, so they don't take preventative measures. There was one myth that I know I have heard before and I believe it is a statement that comes from a lot of people and that is that women on welfare have more kids. It is actually a false statement, and women on welfare have lower birthrates than women not in poverty (when you control for age, as women on welfare tend to be younger, so they are more likely to have children compared to all women of all ages, but less likely to have children than women of the same age who aren’t on welfare). Also, despite the previously reported percentages of welfare use and dependency by race or ethnicity, Mark says the 2 out of 3 people who receive welfare are white. This is true of total numbers because the great majority (about two-thirds) of Americans are white with no Hispanic ethnicity, so even with the lower rates I saw earlier on a different website, with whites being the least likely to be using or dependent upon welfare, there is still a greater total number of whites on welfare.

Another interesting number is that one out of four people in poverty had parents who were on welfare. Generational poverty is one thing that could be prevented with the right education. I suppose that would eliminate 25% of the poverty number.

labeling theory, an anecdote and reaction

In a couple classes we talked about labeling and how people might conform to expectations or roles.  This is relevant in issues of crime and deviance, and also in the process of illness and mental illness. Here is a student’s reflection on her own family’s experience with labeling, and my comments follow the anecdote in this purple font.

For the second reaction paper, I’m going to write about the labeling theory.  When we talked about this in class, I was very interested and wanted to know more.  I have always thought that my brother was a product of labeling.  He was always labeled as a problem child.  

Growing up, my brother was always overweight.  My father constantly made references to his weight problem.  My parents would chastise him for eating too much at dinner and would compare him to me.  I tended to be very small and I know it bothered him that he wasn’t thinner.  Not only did he have a weight problem, but he also had problems in school.  This led to yet another comparison between him and I because I always excelled in academics.

In school, my brother was always labeled as the slacker who ran with the wrong crowd.  He never received good grades and felt that his teachers labeled him as someone who was never going to amount to anything.  He claimed that his teachers knew about him before he was even their student.  Because he felt this way, my parents took him out of Mt. Zion schools and paid out of area tuition to send him to Macon schools.

While attending Macon, my brother once again felt that his teachers singled him out and didn’t like him.  He never felt that his grades were the ones that he deserved but rather, punishments for his teachers’ dislike.  He was frequently absent and our parents stated that he was just not trying hard enough.  They got into many fights over his lack of achievement which later led to him transferring to yet another school.  He attended this school, but was kicked out for lack of attendance.  Eventually, he received his GED on his first try without classes.

My brother got into drugs heavily and we later found out that it started when he was 13.  My parents struggled to help him overcome his addiction and often wondered where they went wrong with their parenting.  In fact, they bickered so much about him and his well-being that they eventually divorced.

I firmly believe that my brother became his label.  Growing up, my parents made constant references to his weight.  This did not encourage him to lose weight, but actually discouraged him.  To this day, he remains overweight.  He was also labeled a problem child early on.  These labels became a stigma to him.  He never felt like he was smart enough, thin enough, or good enough.

My brother and I are very different people.  I would argue that I am also a product of labeling.  I am several years younger than my brother.  I saw the problems that labeling caused my brother, so I became everything opposite.  I never had a weight problem, always excelled at school, and chose not to do drugs.  I didn’t want my parents to be disappointed in me the way they were with my brother.

As a social worker, I believe that it is our duty to help end this cycle.  We need to teach our youth self-confidence. It should also be taught that it is okay to make mistakes.  We need not dwell on them, but find a way to make sure that we learn from them.  High expectations from parents are a fact of life.  However, there is a point when they are not expectations, but stigmas placed on them.

Your personal story brings to mind a few critical ideas I want to comment upon.

First, if we see something bad going on, it’s imported to describe it as a specific situation in a specific context, and help people see how the situation or context was involved with the problem behavior or failure. For example, a parent might say, “You ate a tremendous amount of food today, you must have been feeling really hungry today. I’ll try to serve you less food tomorrow so you won’t overeat, do you think that would help you?” This would be better than saying, “You always overeat, and you’re getting fat. A fat person like you shouldn’t eat so much.”  In the first example, the parent is commenting on the overeating as a specific one-time event, and is also suggesting a solution, and is offering to be part of the solution (by serving less food).  The parent is also asking the child to be engaged in the change in behavior by asking, “do you think that would help you?”  It might be even better to just ask an open-ended question to let the child say something about their eating behavior on that specific day and what might help change behaviors at future meals.

Second, your story reminds me of the importance of holding high expectations of everyone while at the same time having a realistic understanding that people won’t reach your expectations. If teachers have low expectations and assume the worst of their students, the students will be “allowed” by the teacher’s expectations to perform at the level the teacher had signaled them to perform to. If a teacher holds all students to high expectations, students will attempt to achieve those higher expectations. Yet, when holding high expectations, I think it’s important to allow failure, and let students know that high expectations must be coupled with patience, support, and a high tolerance for people not achieving the highest marks. When we have high expectations and show too much disappointment or displeasure when people can’t achieve what we asked of them, then we will tend to encourage frustration and discouragement. The correct way to apply high expectations is to keep up an optimistic and accepting attitude.  “Oh well, you didn’t quite reach the mark this time, but you came pretty far toward it and you tried hard. Let’s see what you can do next time, and what I can do to help you get closer to the mark we’re striving to reach. I’m confident you’ll eventually get it.” 

When we’re disappointed with ourselves, or with our spouse or a child, we can communicate our disappointment, but we need to make the feeling related to a specific instance of behavior, and not raise issues of a person “always” doing something we don’t like, or “being” the wrong type of person. In the present instant of time we can’t do something about a problem that is “always” going on, can we?  We can only modify what we are doing in the present instant.  And, it’s hardly fair to blame us for being wrong. We can only control what we do, not what we are.

Student reacts to mental illness being treated in corrections facilities

I'm sharing this student reaction paper without any comments from me. 

After reading our chapters on mental illness and crime and punishment, I was extremely disturbed to find out how many individuals with mental illness are in the prison system. It seems to me that a much better idea would be to find the individuals with mental illnesses before they commit a crime and get them treatment.

A girl I work with has a son, B____, who recently went to prison. He stole a blank check from his brother and forged his name to get money. His brother pressed charges and he was sentenced to two years. If all goes well he’ll be out in May for good time. B____ had been in and out of trouble as a teenager. He stole bikes and hung out with gangs. However, he managed to stay out of juvenile detention. In the past two years, he’s had a lot of health problems. He’s been having seizures and nosebleeds. He was usually treated at the hospital emergency room with no follow up. The emergency room doctor recommended that he see a neurologist. The neurologist couldn’t find anything wrong with him. It makes me wonder if the treatment that he received was marginal because he was on a medical card.

While in prison, B____ has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. His mom was shocked. He’s been taking medication for the illness. However, I wonder that when he gets out if he’ll continue his treatment. After three years of release 62.3% of offenders will be back in jail. In the case of individuals who have mental illness I’m sure that’s because they discontinue treatment.

Early intervention and early use of new medications lead to better medical outcomes for the individual. The earlier someone with schizophrenia is diagnosed and stabilized on treatment, the better the long-term prognosis for their illness. B____ is only 19 years old. Since schizophrenia is a disease that typically begins to show signs in early adulthood, B____ has a good chance to control his disease. It’s just sad that he had to go to jail to get a prognosis.

Student considers parental stresses related to autism

The story of Katherine McCarron, the three year old child who was smothered to death by her own mother, was very sad, and is one of the readings that stood out to me the most this semester. I had never heard of this case before, so it was new information to me. I did a little more research on the topic, just reading a little more into the story. I was shocked to learn that her mother was a physician. 

I found a website titled “Action for Autism”  with some more information about Katherine McCarron. Some newspapers actually reported that this murder was done to put her out of pain. It seems like a lot of people are misinformed about autism. It is not a disorder that causes pain. It has more to do with the way people socially interact.

One part of the article states: “one mother—with her autistic daughter within earshot—mentioned that she once thought of driving her and her daughter off the George Washington Bridge.” When I read this portion, I just thought it was absolutely horrible. What kind of person could think that, let alone talk about it with their child listening?

However, something changed my mind.

After reading the article, I was browsing through the comments that people were leaving. One stood out to me and really gave me a different point of view. “I am not condoning murder….I am defending the mother who had the courage to admit her desire to drive off the Washington bridge. We need to listen to these cries for help as a society and work on creating greater and more accessible support systems for families with autistic children.” I still think the idea of driving off of the Washington Bridge is pretty extreme, but this commenter had an excellent point. Clearly there is a need for more support for not just autistic people, but for their parents as well. It makes sense, the parents are their sole care providers. They need resources and information that are accessible so that they do not feel alone or overwhelmed. It seems like many of the other people who commented related to this story at least a little bit. One mother that commented claimed to feel unsupported, exhausted, and depressed. Taking care of any child is time consuming and stressful. A special needs child could be more stressful on the parents and family.

I think that this just shows the importance of the few supportive organizations for parents of autistic (or any other special needs) children. 

Here is my reaction, in a purple font.

Children with significant autistic symptoms and associated social impairments are not like the rest of us. They share with persons who have anti-social personality disorder a difficulty feeling empathy or understanding the reality that other people exist as something other than objects, things, tools, means toward the gratification of desires. Unlike persons with anti-social personality disorder, persons with serious autistic disorder  don’t try to deceive (in fact, persons with autism can be the most honest humans, as they sometimes do not understand the concept of deception, lies, or such things). Much of human morality seems to be related to wanting to be perceived as a good person, and persons with significant autism symptoms don’t usually care how others perceive them, or they are unaware that other people can even have conceptions or perceptions of them.  That just isn’t part of the mental world for them. 

Thus, it can sometimes seem that persons with autistic disorder are entirely a-moral.  When they are in the grip of strong negative (hostile) emotions, they can be moved to murderous rage, and they may not be able to constrain acts of violence, or their control of violent impulses may be rooted only in fear of consequences, and not in any empathetic sense of sympathy for the person with whom they are angry.

Since the children with this disorder live in a mental and emotional world so alien to normal human thinking (and morality), they can be perceived as being entirely wicked, and in exasperation, it would be easy for people to become utterly and murderously frustrated and able to contemplate murdering such children, even if they were their own children. It is probably good for people to recognize this and talk about it, because by recognizing their dark feelings and desires they will be able to deal with them and control them.  If they deny such feelings, or pretend that those feelings aren’t there, it may be harder to control them, or they may start to feel tremendous guilt (and resulting sadness or depression). 

That’s my understanding of it all.

Student thinks some parents use crisis nursery too much

I am commenting on the discussion we had on child welfare as it relates to the issue of whether or not the government should limit the amount of children a woman should have.  When I first thought about this during our class discussion, I thought to myself that letting the government decide how many children people can have is infringing too much on people’s rights as American citizens.  I mean, that is why people come here from other countries so that they can live the “American dream” and have the things they want and live the life they want.  So why would the government start making people limit the number of children they have?

Then I began to think about the children that I work with at the Mini O’ Beirne Crisis Nursery.  Although most children are there because their parent(s) are experiencing some type of crisis, there are many cases where parents send their children to the nursery because they just “don’t feel like dealing with them”.  When we have cases like that the parent is usually a young, single mother that has one or more children and no help. In such cases I can understand that it can be difficult, but the thing is, the children belong to the mother and are the mother’s responsibility.  It used to be that parents took care of their children, no matter what.  There were no “stress breaks” for parents.  If the mother needed a break, she either left the child with another family member or the father looked after the child(ren) while she went somewhere and relaxed.  Now that women are either single mothers or divorcees things have changed.

I said all of that to simply say this, although I do not think the government should regulate how many children women have, I do think that the single mothers that are having a hard time taking care of the children they have and who feel that they need “stress breaks” because they don’t know how to handle their children (because children will be children, regardless), should stop having more children if they cannot handle the ones they have.  Or, they should learn how to parent the ones they have so that if they do plan to have more they will know how to care for them.  Crisis nursery staff should not have to raise other people’s children; the children deserve to be with the most important people in their little lives, their parents.

Some of my comments on my student's paper follow in this purple font:

I wonder if you have considered that in our natural human environments (before modernity, and certainly before the invention of agriculture) we tended to live in bands of 20-200 closely related life-long friends and family members, and child-rearing was a shared duty, with parents taking primary responsibilities, but with significant assistance from aunts, uncles, old friends, grandparents, siblings, cousins, and so forth.  That’s changed now, and we do not live in clans, roaming over the land hunting and gathering. But that’s what our minds are best suited to doing, and as adaptable as we are, it’s difficult for some of us to adjust to modern life. 

Then there is another point. You’ve written this essay to make a point that is easy to make and entirely uncontroversial. Should single parents who are having significant trouble with their parenting duties have more children?  No.  Should they stop having sex? Traditional morality says if they are single they should practice chastity. If they are having sex, should they practice contraception or perhaps get abortions or put up children for adoption? Traditionally these would have been acceptable solutions in some circumstances. 

But, what is the policy you can suggest to address this situation?  Should the crisis nursery refuse to serve parents who have given birth to a second child out-of-wedlock when they were already having trouble with a first child?  No, you wouldn’t suggest that, and of course you wouldn’t want that.  Maybe you would just like persons who deliver social welfare services including crisis nursery services to be able to influence parents to control their fertility if they are having trouble rearing their children.  I’m a person who is concerned about overpopulation, and so I always endorse policies that encourage everyone to limit their fertility, so I won’t argue with you about that. Perhaps you are merely saying that some clients who use crisis nursery services are relying too much on those services, and using them for reasons that are too trivial. That is, the crisis nursery is a place where parents can bring their children so that they (the parents) can have a break and reduce their stresses, and this may help prevent child maltreatment, or improve parenting skills by those parents.  But, the service is not designed to be a babysitting service for lazy parents who want lots of breaks when they are in fact not having much stress.  Nor is it supposed to be used by parents to enable them to avoid learning how to practice good parenting.  That is, parents who want to deal with problems by turning to others to help them out instead of learning how to solve their own problems (with child rearing, discipline, stresses, etc.) should be encouraged to become more self-reliant, and crisis nursery services should not enable such parents to continue being helpless and needy in their parenting styles.

Student shares outrage about health care system.

This is a student reaction essay that I'm including without adding my own comments.

After reading this week's topic about health care, it reminded me of how immense the problems are.  We (the U.S.) spend so much money on health care, yet we do not have significantly better outcomes than other developed countries.  We put so much money into newer technologies and treatments, that we have to pass those costs along to patients, and again....our outcomes are not any better than those countries using less advanced options.  The drug companies used to extravagantly wine and dine physicians and their families.  Thankfully that has been curtailed. These are the costs hidden in our drug prices that people don't realize.  My parents live in Tucson, and when I visit, I travel I pick up a medication that is very expensive here for less than 1/20th of the cost there.  It is hard to believe that some people have to choose to forego medical care because they cannot afford it.  When I worked at the University of Michigan, patients had to go through many processes when being considered for transplant.  One of those processes was meeting with the finance department. They assessed what benefits that patient had, what would and would not be covered and whether the patient had the financial means to cover their portion of the expenses.  It was not unusual for a patient to be denied being listed for organ transplant solely on the basis that they did not have the ability to pay.  So in this great country of ours, people have to die because they do not have the resources to make different choices. Unbelievable!! Sorry for the rant, but it really is a sad statement when we have had previous administrations go on and on that we cannot afford to offer insurance to everyone, yet we are spending 11 billion dollars a month ( I think that figure is accurate) in Iraq.  I think this administration will finally get something passed because we literally cannot afford to ignore it any longer.  While they are at it, I hope they tackle tort reform.

Grandparents Acting As Parents

Here is a student paper offered without any commentary by me. 

Since 1980, the number of children living with and being cared for by their grandparents has been increasing. “Based on the 1996 Census data, 4 million (6%) were living in grandparent(s)’s home. Over one-third of these children, or 1.4 million, were being raised solely by their grandparents, without the presence of either parent”. (www.ueex.ed/ces/gprg/article.html.)

The reasons for grandparents acting as parents vary. Some of the reasons are: divorce, substance abuse, child abuse and/or neglect, abandonment, teenage pregnancy, death, HIV/AIDS, unemployment, incarceration and mental health problems. Each and every one of the above listed reasons is an ongoing social problem and interrelates to numerous other social problems. For instance, divorce, teenage pregnancy. Divorce for a couple with children, many times results in the woman having custody of the children (or teenager pregnancy) with little or no child support, which then leads to poverty, no insurance, possible homelessness and to social welfare programs (more specifically TANF). Mental Health and substance abuse many times leads to unemployment. Unemployment leads to poverty and possible homelessness.

The welfare services available, in the past, to assist these grandparents were the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and foster care stipends. The Personal responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was passed 1996 by the United State Congress. It replaced AFDC with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs. According to AARP (1997), these new programs are different from the AFDC. (www.ueex.ed/ces/gprg/article.html.) Some of the requirements do not apply to the grandparents. Such as, the Work Requirements. Many of the grandparents, depending on age are already working, but do not make enough to support a family any longer. Or the grandparent(s) are retired and on a fixed income. There are legal custody requirements in some states. Not all of the grandparents caring for their grandchildren are the legal custodial parents. Although some of the requirements can be waived through the use of “child only” grants states are not required to continue to offer these grants under TANF, some still do.

Some states refuse foster care financial assistance for children placed with relatives, which can be a huge financial burden as well as placing the grandparent(s) and child(ren) at a poverty level or maybe just above it. Welfare reforms can affect an already precarious existence for these families.

The effects on the children in the homes of grandparents have not yet been ascertained as beneficial or not. Studies are still being conducted.

Regardless of the reason(s) for this trend in grandparents raising grandchildren, we should all be concerned with the social ills creating these circumstances, because we are all affected by it.

Student considers housing crisis, immigration, and hunger

Here is another interesting student reaction paper.  You never know where students will go with these informal writing assignments, and there is always something new or innovative in these.

First off I would like to discuss more in-depth the hungry [hunger] issue that we talked about briefly. I was looking on frac.org and found some interesting facts about hungry [hunger] that I would like to share with you. There were 36.2 million people living in households considered to be food insecure in the year 2007. Of these 36.2 million, 23.8 million are adults (10.6 percent of all adults) and 12.4 million are children (16.9 percent of all children). In some developing nations where famine is widespread, hunger manifests itself as severe and very visible clinical malnutrition. In the United States hunger manifests itself, generally, in a less severe form. This is in part because established programs – like the federal nutrition programs – help to provide a safety net for many low-income families. While starvation seldom occurs in this country, children and adults do go hungry and chronic mild under nutrition does occur when financial resources are low. The mental and physical changes that accompany inadequate food intakes can have harmful effects on learning, development, productivity, physical and psychological health, and family life. (FRAC, 2008) 

I really believe that immigration is a major cause of poverty. I know you will have a great deal to argue against what I believe, but when [we] bring the people of foreign countries over we are taking away plenty of jobs for our people that are suffering from poverty. Even if they are taking the low level jobs such as McDonalds and Wal-mart, those are still jobs [now unavailable] for our people. This is just something that I believe will help the ones in poverty. The government needs to make the immigration laws harder and more impossible for them to be citizens of the United States. I do not have anything against the immigrants, but believe we have our own problems and don’t need them coming to make more, such as being here illegally and so on. 

The second issue I would like to discuss is the housing issue that we hit base with this last week. There are not nearly enough places for people to live and the Section 8 housing voucher waiting lists are a mile long. There needs to be more built and more homeless shelters built. I was reading a very interesting article on MSN today [“More families move in together during the housing crisis,” by Stephanie Armour, USA Today, February 3, 2009] . It was about a dad that built a three family house and then lost his job. His family to help him out moved into it. 

“We're still living there now. Times are rough," says Tixe, 26, a publicist. "It's been very beneficial that we're all together. My stepbrother and I have a wonderful relationship now. We eat together for dinner, and I've become closer to my dad, too. This is an important time for family to help, the way the housing market is going. Our story is a testament to how families should come together to help with a mortgage." 

Another direct quote that I liked from this story was 

“The weak economy — which has brought surging foreclosures, sinking property values, vanishing home equity and mounting job losses — is playing a major role in family dynamics, pulling relatives under the same roof to pool their resources and aid relatives who've lost their homes.” 

This is so very true, and many are living paycheck to paycheck who never did before. Many family elders are living with family because they can’t afford their old home anymore. Many say they see a decrease of divorces because of financial reasons, which is very wrong, but what can we do? People are taking out their money from banks left and right. So many are staying in the rentals and afraid to buy homes. This economy is getting scary and something major needs to take place. 

Student Reacts to Sundown Towns

The James W. Loewen web site about sundown towns that we had to read for this class particularly sparked my interest.  I am not exactly sure why the subject intrigued me so much.  The fact that people were so racist still amazes me.  Another fact that stood out to me was how many sun down towns there were in this country, many of them in Illinois.  While preparing for this paper, I started thinking about the people in the sundown towns. One subject that came to mind was why people had so much hatred for people with different ethnic backgrounds, especially African Americans.

One of the more obvious reasons to me for why people where so full of hate for people of different races is fear.  There are many reasons why citizens might be scared. Some individuals tend to become afraid of situations and people who are not like them.  People of other backgrounds sometimes look or talk different, which might set off someone’s defensive side.   I realize that it is not a nice or good reason to be racist, but I do believe that this could be a reason why people in sundown towns are racist.

Another reason people in sundown towns might be hateful to minorities’ could be because they were taught to be that way.  If someone’s parents were racist towards a certain group of people, their children could pick that up like a bad habit, whether or not the parents wanted that child to pick it up or not.  Once the child has a prejudice in their head, it might be hard to change their thinking.  It could also become a vicious cycle, if the parents teach their children to be bigots, they might teach their children, and so on.  Parents need to keep in mind that they have a lot of influence on their children, especially younger children.  Some younger children look up to their parents, therefore they will mimic many actions of their parents.

The last reason that I came up with for the bigotry in sundown towns would be because of past experiences. Maybe some of the people in the town had a bad experience with a minority; therefore they assume that all of the people who are of that race are the same way.   For example, say that a person went to sell a car to an African-American.  The guy was supposed to pay a certain amount of payments of $175 per month.  They guy stopped paying on the car, now the guy who sold the car to him assumes all African Americans cannot be trusted. 

One can see that there are many theories to why people think negatively of people who are of different ethnic backgrounds.  This problem will more than likely not go away anytime soon.  Hopefully with some more help, we can achieve the goal of getting people who have a negative view of different minorities to think more positively of them.  That way they can live together in the same town in peace.  

The previous (black font face) was the student's reaction, and my comments follow in this blue font face.

Yes, fear is closely associated with aversion and negative stereotypes.  And I think you’re correct about some of those reasons for fear.  To some degree people are more comfortable with others around them who are “like them” and less comfortable around people who are “different” or so this seems to be a general trend. Of course, what markers people look for to detect whether a person is “alike” or “different” can change in different circumstances.  An European-American and an African-American in a place like India or China, where there are few persons with European or African heritage, might see each other’s phenotypes as indicating nationality similarity, and feel attracted to each other as fellow American expatriates, while the same two persons might not notice any similarities if they met each other in the United States under different circumstances.  You’re also correct about the idea that prejudices are learned.  We’re ready to learn them (disposed to divide ourselves into “in-groups” and “out-groups”), but how we build up prejudices is socially shaped.  So, for example, we could create societies where ethnic background was not a maker of similarity and difference, and instead some other indicator would represent whether a person belongs with us or is an “outsider.”  Political ideologies, scientific training, religious commitments, professional identities, and military camaraderie seem like powerful ways of using non-ethnic-based identities to define who is with us and who is different from us.  We could also divide the world into “moral people who can be trusted” and “scoundrels and knaves around whom one must be on one’s guard” without any stereotyped generalizations about whether there exist correlations between whether we belong in one of those two groups and our ethnic background. 

The thing that matters here is the salience of our ethnic and racial identities, and the way those racial and ethnic identities are used.  The trick is to use them to celebrate the fun or interesting differences and not use them to divide us. In order to do this, one needs a strong ideological commitment to ethnicity-transcending ideologies. The social work code of ethics, the American system of values (all of us born equal and having certain inalienable rights, etc.) seem promising to me, as do religious values of universalism combined with interfaith unity. 

You’re correct that the problems won’t go away soon, but it’s a relief to note that every time the general social survey research measures prejudice in our society the trends show it decreasing, and every cohort seems to be less infected with this disorder than previous cohorts and generations.  We are slowly unlearning racism, and social work has a role in encouraging and hastening this process.

Reaction Essay About Homeless Shelter Closing

Here is a student essay about the closing of a temporary overflow homeless shelter in the city of Springfield, Illinois.  I'm offering it here without my comments.

The Springfield overflow shelter (SOS) is closing down for the season in a week.  This not only puts people out of jobs but also out of a safe, warm place to sleep and get food.  The closure of the shelter leaves our town with an extra 60 or so people sleeping out on the streets every night.  This now causes more problems for the police who are trying to make the city a safe and clean environment.  So now when they find someone sleeping on the sidewalk, and they tell them that they have to go someplace else where are they supposed to go?  All of the shelters in town (e.g., Salvation Army and Helping Hands) are always full to the max.  The city needs to take all of these factors into consideration before closing down a shelter that houses nearly 60 people a night, every night.  The city should come up with a solution for where these people can go, it is unethical for us to just leave them out on the streets with no place to go for shelter.  I know personally I wouldn’t want to sleep outside even if it was nice, I would want someone to care about me enough to at least give me shelter, and safety.

Student paper reacting to article about welfare reform

Here is a student's reaction essay about welfare reform. My comments are at the end in this purple font.

On www.usatoday.com, I found the article about mothers whose lives were changed since the nation’s welfare system was overhauled to require work and limit benefits. In 1996 the United States government reformed welfare and required many parents on welfare to work. In 1996, Michelle Gordon was 30 years old and a single mother with four children between the ages 5 and 13.  Since then Michelle and her children have struggled with unstable jobs. Michelle has had over 10 jobs in the last 10 years. Working full time and caring for her four children on her own is a daily battle.

Mary Bradford was 45 years old in 1996. Mary had three children between the ages of 11 and 25. She traded welfare and was hired at a local office. Although the office moved locations, Mary is still with the company and has nearly doubled her earnings since 1996. Since Mary was hired at her job, she has successfully supported her three children. Her boss speaks of her reliability and positive attitude. The opposite paths that Bradford and Gordon have traveled illustrate the successes and frustrations that have occurred due to the change in the welfare system. 

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed a bill transforming the way the welfare system helps needy families. The bill removed government checks for parents raising children in poverty. There are now over 50 state programs to help those parents acquire jobs. Caseloads peaked at 5.1 million in 1994. Since then millions have left the welfare system for low paying jobs. Today nearly 1.9 million families get cash benefits; in one third of them, only the children qualify for aid. About 38% of those still on welfare are black, 33% white, and 24% Hispanic. 

Three in four families on welfare are headed by unmarried women. As a result of the change, employment rates for all single women rose by 25%. Earnings for the poorest 40% of families headed by women doubled from 1994 to 2000. A change was apparent in 2000 due to the recession. Although there are continuing problems, the change stood out broadly within the decade. 

Yes, on average the wages of people on welfare go up as they leave welfare.  And yes, more people leave welfare more quickly than they did before welfare reform. Clearly when you look at this aspect of welfare reform we have a success. Whether it is fair to characterize the entire welfare reform policy as a success requires looking at more aspects of the reform.  One also has to consider the fact that before welfare reform most people were already leaving welfare after using it temporarily, and former welfare users were already enjoying gains in income and rising job status, at least on average, before welfare reform. 

I think you (and Richard Wolf, the author of the article that sparked your reaction) have the basic story straight here.  Many people benefitted from welfare and the welfare reform has not harmed them. In some cases reform may have benefitted them, perhaps by providing a stricter focus on vocational training or job readiness. Some people were not helped much be welfare, and welfare reform may have harmed some of these people, but it may have helped others.  Some people were helped by welfare before reform, and the reforms have harmed them. Whether you think the improvements enjoyed by a few are worth more to our society than the harm inflicted on a few is really a personal judgment call. For most people, the welfare reform didn’t give them a different experience on welfare than what they would have experienced before reform.  Most welfare users are transitional users, and they were thus before reform and so they are now, after reform.