» welfare offices

New edition of “Human Services as Complex Organizations” released

Celeste Watkins-Hayes — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:39:14 +0000

Sociologist and social welfare scholar Yeheskel Hasenfeld has recently published a new edition of his seminal volume, Human Services as Complex Organizations. This comprehensive and state-of-the-art collection on human service organizations weaves the latest theoretical and empirical studies in macro theory with contemporary examples from hospitals, schools, social service organizations, mental health centers, and public welfare agencies. Blending theory with application, this outstanding anthology highlights the moral choices and accomplishments made by human service organizations. University of Michigan Professor Emerius Mayer Zald writes, “Hasenfeld has done it again. An excellent collection of essays on many of the most important trends and issues involving human service organizations.” The volume features essays from urbanorgs.org members Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Evelyn Brodkin, Stephen R. Smith, Jodi Sandfort and many others.

Celeste Watkins-Hayes publishes book on the professional lives of bureaucrats in welfare offices

mariosmall — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:36:40 +0000

A behind-the-scenes look at bureaucracy’s human face in the wake of welfare reform, The New Welfare Bureaucrats is a study of welfare officers and how they navigate the increasingly tangled political and emotional terrain of their jobs. Celeste Watkins-Hayes here reveals how welfare reform engendered a shift in focus for caseworkers from simply providing monetary aid to the much more complex process of helping recipients find work. Now both more intimately involved in their clients’ lives and wielding greater power over their well-being, welfare officers’ racial, class, and professional identities have become increasingly important factors in their work. Based on the author’s extensive fieldwork in two very different communities, The New Welfare Bureaucrats is for anyone looking to understand the impact of the institutional and policy changes wrought by welfare reform as well as the subtle social dynamics that shape the way public resources are meted out to the poor at the individual level.

New paper highlights how intra-racial politics inform service delivery in street-level bureaucracies

Celeste Watkins-Hayes — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:25:47 +0000

A new paper published in Social Problems (vol. 56 no. 2, pp. 285–310) by Celeste Watkins-Hayes explores how the substantial increase in people of color working in street-level bureaucracies shapes policy implementation. In, “Race-ing the Bootstrap Climb: Black and Latino Bureaucrats in Post-Reform Welfare Offices,” Watkins-Hayes uses interview data collected from black and Latino supervisors and caseworkers implementing welfare reform to explicate how these actors deploy race and other social group memberships as tools in the delivery of casework services to black and Latino clients. Contrary to our assumptions about the level of impersonality entrenched in public bureaucracies, she finds that most caseworkers and supervisors of color identify with the circumstances of their clients, but interpret the politics of welfare through not only racialized but also classed and gendered lenses. Consequently, they support and challenge clients of color in a variety of ways often unexamined in previous scholarship on the inner workings of street-level bureaucracies. This article suggests that not only inter-racial but also intra-racial politics inform institutional processes within human service agencies.

The direct link to the article:

http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/sp.2009.56.2.285

The article is also currently available on the Social Problems website:

http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/325

Welfare States in Transition Symposium – May 15, 2009

Celeste Watkins-Hayes — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:22:15 +0000

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN!

Please click below

https://ssanet.uchicago.edu/rsvp/centennial/event.cfm?eventid=090515

Registration is required for attendance.

The University of Chicago -School of Social Service Administration Centennial Welfare States in Transition: Social Policy Transformation in Organizational Practice

Friday, May 15, 2009
9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. with reception to follow

The School of Social Service Administration
969 East 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637

Organized by: Evelyn Brodkin, Associate Professor

Recent decades have witnessed a transformation in social policies and practices in the U.S. and internationally. Some of the most dramatic changes are occurring in policies that are reshaping the relationship between welfare and work. This symposium will examine this transformation, not only as enacted in law, but as enacted in practice. It will feature a series of papers and discussion that offer organizations-eye views of ways in which the changing relationship between welfare and work is being translated into practice in different states, cities, and in other countries.

The papers and discussion will consider shifts in both policy and practice, advancing new ways of thinking about the role of organizations in social policy transformation. As welfare and work policies have changed, so have the administrative arrangements under which they are implemented, arrangements increasingly constructed around new public management strategies of devolution, contracting, and performance measurement. How are these changes in policy and practice redefining the relationship between disadvantaged citizens, the state, and the market?

This symposium brings together researchers examining welfare-to-work as a global policy trend and new public management as a global administrative trend. It provides a forum for a discussion of the effects of these trends and their implications for future efforts to address poverty, inequality, and marginalization.

Confirmed Speakers:

Michael Adler
School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh – Scotland
Martin Brussig
University of Duisburg-Essen, Institut Arbeit und Qualifikation (Institute for Work, Skills and Training) – Germany
Joel Handler
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), School of Law and School of Public Affairs – USA
Yeheskel Hasenfeld
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), School of Public Affairs, Department of Social Welfare – USA
Henning Jorgenson
Aalborg University, Centre for Labour Market Research (CARMA) – Denmark
Petra Kaps
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (Social Science Research Center Berlin), Institut für Arbeitsmarkt und Berufsforschung (Institute for Labor Market Policy and Employment) – Germany
Matthias Knuth
University of Duisburg-Essen,Institut Arbeit und Qualifikation (Institute for Work, Skills and Training) – Germany
Susan Lambert
University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration – USA
Flemming Larsen
Aalborg University, Centre for Labour Market Research (CARMA) – Denmark
Michael Lipsky
Demos, Center for the Public Sector, and Georgetown University, Public Policy Institute – USA
Gregory Marston
University of Queensland, School of Social Work and Human Services – Australia
Jennifer Mosley
University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration – USA
William Sites
University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration – USA
C.C.A.M. (Els) Sol
University of Amsterdam, Hugo Sinzheimer Institute – Netherlands
Joe Soss
University of Minnesota, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs – USA
Ludo Struyven
Catholic University of Leuven, Higher Institute of Labour Studies – Belgium
H.H.A. (Rik) van Berkel
Utrecht University, School of Governance – Netherlands
Celeste Watkins-Hayes
Northwestern University, Departments of Sociology and African-American Studies – USA

This Symposium is sponsored in part by the Danish Social Science Research Council and RESq – an international research network studying reform of employment services and social welfare policy.

Contact 001.773.702.1166 or centennial@ssa.uchicago.edu with
questions.

http://ssacentennial.uchicago.edu/events/symposium-brodkin.shtml