This dissertation explores how the women's movement survived New Right attacks through the analysis of change in feminist social movement organizations (FSMOs) from 1977 to 1987. Nine FSMOs (3 NOW chapters, 3 anti-violence organizations, and 3 reproductive rights organizations) that experienced New Right activity are examined. The process of analytical induction guided a comparative case study approach.
Recent history has witnessed a revolution in womens health care. Beginning in the late 1960s, women in communities across the United States challenged medical and male control over womens health. Few people today realize the extent to which these grassroots efforts shifted power and responsibility from the medical establishment into womens hands as health care consumers, providers, and advocates. Into Our Own Hands traces the womens health care movement in the United States. Richly documented, this study is based on more than a decade of research, including interviews with leading activists; documentary material from feminist health clinics and advocacy organizations; a survey of womens health movement organizations in the early 1990s; and ethnographic fieldwork. Sandra Morgen focuses on the clinics born from this movement, as well as how the movements encounters with organized medicine, the state, and ascendant neoconservative and neoliberal political forces of the 1970s to the1980s shaped the confrontations and accomplishments in womens health care. The book also explores the impact of political struggles over race and class within the movement organizations.
Social workers encounter politically fraught issues in many aspects of their professional lives. They must make decisions that touch on topics such as abortion, family planning, end-of-life care, immigration rights, economic assistance, and racial inequality, among many others. How do personal political beliefs influence social workers’ education and training, practice with clients and communities, and efforts to achieve social change? Mitchell Rosenwald provides a comprehensive examination of the role of politics in the social work profession. He discusses how political ideology relates to social work education and practice at all levels, identifying and analyzing the strands of thought that have shaped the profession’s history up to the present day. This book examines how social workers strive to balance their personal views with the professional obligation to provide therapy, case management, and information and referral to their clients. It explores how the social work profession struggles to encourage and support political diversity among its members and what happens when an individual’s political beliefs challenge commonly held attitudes. Considering both clinical and policy work, Political Ideology and Social Work also offers recommendations for encouraging political reconciliation in order to strengthen the profession.
Written for and about the special population of parents of children with cancer, this book explores the remarkable effectiveness of self-help groups and profiles their rapid rise as a resource complementing traditional health care. Mark A. Chesler and Barbara K. Chesney draw on their own experience as members of such groups and on a combined thirty years of research on self-help. They provide essential information for families of children with cancer (and other chronic life-threatening illnesses), for health-care professionals working with them, and for scholars of self-help and psychosocial processes in health care--including explanations of how self-help groups function, why they are effective, and how they can be created and maintained. The authors show that, through self-help groups, parents can learn coping skills, find personal affirmation and mutual support, and share the wisdom gained from their experiences. Chesler and Chesney find that group participation improves parents' coping capabilities in the face of terrible odds and fosters an increased sense of empowerment as they care and advocate for their children in an increasingly complex health care system. Cancer and Self-Help distills the experiences of more than fifty self-help groups and their members over twelve years. It also places cancer self-help groups in a larger context, comparing them to other social movement organizations and to other strategies for personal coping or change. The book includes the voices of individual parents and professionals recounting their experiences; detailed examples of group activities, programs, operating procedures, and organizational structures; fundamental, how-to information on forming a self-help group; comments on the roles and dilemmas of health care professionals in these groups and on the medical care system as a whole, and interpretations of these individual and organizational dynamics.
Qualitative Studies in Social Work Research provides actual examples of social work investigators working systematically with data in alternative ways. A diversity of qualitative approaches are represented including field observations, interviews, organizational documents, and literary narratives. The studies--all by social workers--range from examining surface content to analysis of deep structures of discourse. Among the social work problems examined are isolation of the chronically ill, child welfare, sexual abuse, and what happens when the homeless apply for welfare. This much-needed volume is perfect for students.
Arguing that feminist practice can help build communities and solve problems, this text is organized by methods, fields of practice and special populations. It sets forth a feminist model in social work theory and practice, from the feminization of poverty to the feminist perspective on politics.
