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Advocates’ 2011 FORUMA PUBLICATION BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SERVICE ADMINISTRATION S C H O O L O F S O C I A L S E RV I C E ADMINISTRATION Advocates’ 2011 FORUMA PUBLICATION BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SERVICE ADMINISTRATION EDITOR IN CHIEF Emily Oshima CO EDITOR S Janet Li Alberto Ortega EDITORIAL BOARD Lindsey Burke Jeannine Chester Julia Conte David Demethers Kristin Dickens Elizabeth Hart Greg Kirschling Xuan Than Le Emily Mendesh Ian Mobley Saleem Hue Penny Matthew Raffol Rocio Reyes Kathryn Rice Darrah Sipe Lindsey Whitlock FACULTY ADVISOR Virginia Parks, Ph.D. MISSION STATEMENT Advocates’ Forum is an academic journal that explores implications of clinical social work practice, social issues, administration, and public policies linked to the social work profession. The Editorial Board of ESSAYS AND ARTICLES Advocates’ Forum seeks to provide a medium through which SSA students Foreword by Alex Kotlowitz.................................... i can contribute to public thinking about social welfare and policy in theory and practice. Above all, Letter from the Editor............................................ .ii Advocates’ Forum serves to encourage and facilitate an open, scholarly Feeding the Ghosts: Existential Concerns of exchange of ideas among individuals working toward the shared goal of Clients with Chronic Disease a more just and humane society. By Libby Bachhuber................................................. 1 Protecting the Human Rights of Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors EDITORIAL POLICY By Kate Englund………………………………......... 10 Advocates’ Forum is published by the students of the School of Social Haiti’s IDP Camp Policy: The Management of Service Administration (SSA) at The Vulnerability University of Chicago. Submissions By Chris Eves ……………………………................ 18 to the journal are selected by the editorial board from works submitted by SSA students and edited in an Chinatown: The Neoliberal Remaking of Culture in extensive revision process with the the Contemporary City authors’ permission. Responsibility By Van Nguyen………………………………........... 25 for the accuracy of information contained in written submissions rests solely with the author. Views Theoretical Formulation and Implementation of the expressed within each article belong Earned Income Tax Credit to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial By Saleem Hue Penny……………………………….. 32 board, the School of Social Service Administration, or The University Sex Trafficking in Cambodia as a Complex of Chicago. All inquiries and Humanitarian Emergency submissions should be directed to: By Susan Rosas………………………………........... 41 Advocates’ Forum The University of Chicago Gay-Straight Alliances in Public Schools: School of Social Service Agents of Early Adolescent Alienation Administration 969 East 60th Street By Terrence Scudieri……………………………….... 51 Chicago, IL 60637 Editors and Editorial Board.................................... 61 WEB ADDRESS http://www.ssa.uchicago.edu/ publications/advoforum.shtml © 2011 The University of Chicago. ON THE COVER All rights reserved. The University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration Photographer: Lloyd DeGrane Foreword by alex kotlowitz When I was getting started in journalism, making $110 a week as a reporter, my mother pulled me aside. “You know,” she said, “you could go back to school to become a social worker.” She was speaking from experience; in her forties, she had gone back to school to earn her social work degree. I considered her advice, and then stubbornly continued on with my writing (and my low wages). But in the end I have no doubt about it, I’ve inherited some of my mom’s sensibilities: her understanding that the only thing holding us together is a social compact, and it’s a compact whose foundation in these times is in particular need of maintenance. Some may look at social work as a benign profession, but I know better—from my mom, I suppose. Here’s the best kept secret: social workers are subversive. I don’t mean that as a profession they upend the social order, but rather that they attempt to bring order to people and to places for whom life hasn’t been fair. I don’t mean this as some dime-store philosophizing, but rather to suggest that given the growing inequality in this country, the state of our schools, the treatment of new immigrants, the place of race, the neglect of the mentally ill (I could go on), our community isn’t doing well. Social workers know that better than anyone. They don’t feel compelled to shout about it, to order us around. They don’t lob diatribes. Rather, every day, they quietly go into our schools, into our neighborhoods, into our homes, bearing witness and fortifying the human spirit. They know. For social workers, their centripetal force is empathy, the ability (and desire) to place themselves in someone else’s shoes, to be able to look at the world through the eyes of others. Social workers, more than anyone, understand that empathy is the thread that holds the social fabric together. It’s what connects us. It’s what binds us. Social workers imagine what it’s like to be a young African American on Chicago’s west side, or an undocumented worker trying to raise a child in Phoenix, or a daughter of a drug-addicted mother in Seattle. Social workers know the forces that bear down on the human spirit, and so better than anyone know what it takes to strengthen the soul. Clearly, my mom failed in her efforts to lure me into social work, but she taught me the essential place of empathy. And she left with me with what I believe to be the essential notion guiding social workers: if the community isn’t doing alright, neither am I. i FROM THE EDITOR Our increasingly diverse society faces a range of social issues and challenges, domestically and globally. The authors in this year’s edition of Advocates’ Forum address justice, empowerment, advocacy, and other themes at the heart of effective social work policy and practice. Readers are called to examine their individual potential to advocate for disenfranchised communities from Chicago to Haiti to Asia. The articles affirm the commitment of students at the School of Social Service Administration to work towards a more equitable global society, and, as Alex Kotlowitz suggests, to continually fortify the human spirit. I would like to sincerely thank and recognize those whose hard work and dedication made this issue possible: Professor Virginia Parks, Advocates’ Forum’s faculty advisor; Daniel Listoe, editing consultant; Julie Jung, Director of Communications; Penny Johnson, Dean of Students; and Dean Neil Gutterman. Additionally, I would like to extend a special thank you to Alex Kotlowitz, who wrote Advocates’ Forum’s first guest foreword and affirmed the important role of social workers in our communities. Finally, I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to the editorial board whose collective work shaped this edition of the journal in important ways, and make me proud to present the 2011 issue of Advocates’ Forum. Emily Oshima Editor-in-Chief If you are interested in writing for the 2012 edition of Advocates’ Forum, please contact Janet Li at: [email protected]. ii Feeding the Ghosts: Existential Concerns of Clients with chronic disease Libby Bachhuber School of Social Service Administration University of Chicago Abstract This paper explores existential and spiritual concerns related to living with chronic disease, such as type 1 diabetes; its purpose is to support clinical social work practitioners serving clients who face these concerns. The paper cites the work of existential philosophers and therapists, contemporary Buddhist thinkers, and psychodynamic psychotherapists, tracing ways that existential dilemmas can manifest in the lives of people with chronic conditions. The view taken is that these dilemmas are universal, and that exploring them is an inherently therapeutic act. The paper concludes by discussing ways to support clients who might benefit from such an exploration of existential concerns. ocial work practitioners often assist people facing difficulties profoundly different from their own. At times, such problems Scan seem foreign and intimidating. This paper aims to support practitioners who help people with chronic disease. It seeks to reveal the connections between these clients’ dilemmas and fundamental aspects of the human condition. The paper uses the example of type 1 diabetes because diabetes treatment presents a clear view of these concerns; its focus on controlling bodily processes that are essentially uncontrollable pushes sufferers of the disease to confront particular spiritual and existential concerns. This paper will argue that “facing into” such concerns can be enormously useful for both clients and practitioners. Following the convention of many who write about spiritual and existential issues, the first person plural is used. © 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 1 advocates ’ forum Challenges of the Disease According to the American Diabetes Association, approximately 0.2% of children in the United States will develop type 1 diabetes before they reach adulthood; onset rarely occurs after age 35 (Hanas 2005, 15). Unlike type 2 diabetes, which is far more common, type 1 diabetes is currently neither preventable nor reversible, and appears triggered by complex environmental factors in people genetically susceptible (Eckman 2010). In people who have type 1 diabetes (referred to hereafter as “diabetes”), the pancreas ceases to produce insulin, which means that the body cannot process glucose—“blood sugar”—from food. Therefore, people with diabetes must inject insulin into their bodies daily. However, it is nearly impossible to calculate the precise amount that the body needs at any given time; even with careful treatment, blood-sugar levels can fluctuate widely during the course of a day, with a variety of deleterious effects on the body. Diabetes is life threatening. In the long term, complications can affect major organs. In the short term, the body will enter a coma if blood-sugar levels become too high or too low (Eckman 2010).