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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

magazine SSAA PUBLICATION OF THE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SERVICE ADMINISTRATION

Supporting Parents The Latest Thinking about Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect

EDITORIAL BOARD Robert Chaskin, Chair William Borden Evelyn Brodkin

E. Summerson Carr masthead Colleen Grogan Jennifer Mosley Stephen Gilmore (ex officio) 10 16 20 Tina Rzepnicki (ex officio) Maureen Stimming (ex officio)

EDITOR Carl Vogel features 10 > COVER STORY: Protective Services We know more than ever before about how to prevent ASSISTANT EDITOR maltreatment of very young children. Brandie Egan DESIGN 16 > Close Support Anne Boyle, Boyle Design Associates Froma Walsh has become the leading advocate of the idea PHOTOGRAPHY that families can provide the strength to individuals to work Dan Dry through almost any trauma or adversity. Joan Hackett 20 > The High Cost of Giving Back Peter Kiar How can financial aid be fixed so graduate students can still Juliana Pino afford to work in public service? Marc PoKempner iStock Photography departments 2 > viewpoint: from the dean Insuring an SSA Education Susan Reich is Accessible to the Best and Brightest ShutterStock 4 > conversations In the Land of Immigrants EDITORIAL ADVISOR Melcher + Tucker Consultants 6 > ideas The Power of Stigma The shame of mental illness can SSA Magazine is published twice a derail clients already receiving treatment. year for alumni and friends of the Neurobiology and Substance Abuse A study of dopamine University of Chicago School of Social may hold a key to how addiction works. Service Administration. Articles may The Future History of Violence When children are be reprinted in full or in part with exposed to violence outside the home, it has significant written permission of the editor. developmental effects. We welcome your comments. 8 > a voice from the field Please send letters to the editor to Crime, Addiction, and Second Chances [email protected]. 36 > behind the numbers On Call Medicaid has moved far beyond its role as a last-resort THE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SERVICE ADMINISTRATION health care program for the poor. The University of Chicago 969 E. 60th St. 24 > inside social service review school news Chicago, IL 60637 Parenting Trap Stress and lack of resources have a negative impact on children. P 773.702.4334 Necessary Expenses Women who found work after F 773.834.1582 welfare reform aren’t spending more on their families. www.ssa.uchicago.edu All on the Family Welfare reform’s effects on child welfare are C unclear in a new study, but some of the indicators are troubling. Made from 30% recycled fiber and 26 > faculty notes chlorine free (TCF/ECF) pulp using timber from managed forests 30 > memoranda 32 > the alumni community ©2007 SSA, The University of Chicago 35 > in memoriam 2 | SSA Magazine Spring 2007 welcome

’M HONORED TO BEGIN A TERM AS THE CHAIR OF THE VISITING COMMITTEE at the School of Social Service Administration, a position that has been Iheld over the years by thoughtful and passionate advocates such as Reverend Kenneth B. Smith, Sr., Judy Block, Stanley Harris, and, most recently, Valerie Jarrett. I hope to be able to continue their fine work with the committee. In the course of my career, I have been fortunate to be associated with a number of Chicago institutions that have been part of the social fabric of this city for more than a century: the First National Bank of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Public Schools. Now, with SSA, I’m proud to be involved with another premier institution in Chicago as it prepares to start its second century. Much of my work over the years has been in helping successful institutions undergo trans- formations to meet new challenges and opportunities. At the bank, we went from being a traditional commercial bank into a modern investment institution, for instance, and as CEO of the Board of Trade, I helped usher in the era of electronic trading. A common thread in these experiences has been the importance of a strong and capable administrative infrastructure that can support change and allow the effective pursuit of the organization’s primary function. For example, at CPS we have placed great emphasis on creating an improved human resource department to recruit and support great teachers. It may seem to be a prosaic task—to be the back office to the front-line work—but I’ve seen first-hand how crucial it is for any institution’s long-term success. One of the things that impresses me about SSA is that not only are its graduates found providing services in social service organizations across the country, but they are also setting policy, conducting research, leading organizations, and running operations. SSA knows, as I do, that for an organization truly to be able to make a difference, every aspect of an enterprise needs to be up to the task. I’m also pleased to be involved with SSA because, while the School is not undergoing an intense transformation, it is starting its centennial year developing the resources, opportunities, and political support necessary to move the field into the next century. Dean Marsh’s campaign for a new building for the School is fundamentally about creating resources that will allow SSA to continue to find better ways to teach, do research, and provide service, as it has done now for nearly 100 years. I look forward to being part of that process.

Sincerely,

DAVID VITALE Chair of SSA’s Visiting Committee

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 1 viewpoint from the dean

Insuring an SSA Education

o all the graduates of the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration: Remember that moment long ago—or perhaps not so long ago—when the enve- lope from the University of Chicago arrived to let you know you were accepted into SSA? The thrill of that moment was, no tdoubt, only surpassed by receipt of the financial aid information let- ting you know that you could actually afford to attend. Making graduate social work education accessible to the best and brightest students has been a priority for the School since its inception nearly 100 years ago. Most students have received and continue to receive two types of financial aid that enable them to attend SSA: loans and gift aid from endowed scholarship funds. The students who are able to attend SSA because of the help of financial aid are an impressive group. You probably know many from your time at the School—there’s a good chance that you were one yourself. Today is no exception. One of our student scholars is a magna cum laude from Indiana University who has logged years of experience working with developmentally disabled adults before coming to SSA. Another graduated with highest honors from DePaul University and has performed relief work in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, as well as youth mentoring in the Chicago Public Schools. A third is a summa cum laude graduate from the University of Connecticut who has assisted low-income high school students and worked in developing countries to better women’s economic situations. All SSA students are distinctive, but they tend to share the traits that make the individuals I noted above so special: They’re tremendously intelligent and curious, fiercely dedicated to social welfare issues, and extremely hardworking. In short, they’re the kind of people we as Americans want to be working in public service. We need such committed and impressive citizens to have the best training and experience possible to help us solve the many issues that plague distressed communities and individuals. We are proud of the education offered by SSA. With tuition of about $32,000 annually, however, affording an SSA degree is a challenge for students. Not an insignificant number arrive at graduate school with loan debt from undergraduate studies ranging from $5,000 to $74,000, with an average of $20,172. On top of this,

2 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 The students who are able to attend SSA because of is Accessible to the Best and Brightest the help of financial aid are an impressive group. You according to a recent survey of graduate honor his wife, a member of the SSA probably know social work programs, 81 percent of Visiting Committee and a tireless advo- social work graduate students add addi- cate for the School’s work. The fund sup- many from your tional debt, approximately $25,000, to ports students pursuing clinical social their overall debt load. work careers helping vulnerable and dis- time at the At the same time, attracting the tressed people. Two graduates who were School—there’s a best and brightest students to SSA is the first recipients are now practicing increasingly competitive. The number social workers; one works with urban good chance that of programs nationally has increased 82 school children and the other with Latino you were one percent, from 106 programs in 1995 to single mothers. 193 in 2005, according to the Council Jeanne C. Marsh Two new gifts this year illustrate how yourself. on Social Work Education (CSWE). In important such philanthropy can be. The Illinois alone, there were six CSWE accredited programs in 1995, Alex and Miriam Elson Scholarship was created by friends of Alex and 11 in 2005 (with seven of these in the Chicago area). The good and Miriam in their honor, recognizing the Elsons’ unique and news is that talented social work students have an increasing number complementary viewpoints about getting involved at many levels: of options available for graduate school. The challenge for SSA is individual, familial, community, and systems. The fund will help that financial support has become an increasingly important factor in two students whose focus is helping disadvantaged families in the students’ choice of graduate school. most needy Chicago neighborhoods. SSA graduate Susan This issue’s article about student financial aid, starting on page Rosenson and her husband Edward began a scholarship this year 20, outlines the high costs of student loans, and also some recent for a clinical student, inspired by her 40-year career in social work, improvements. The new federal student loan bill, the College Cost which included both clinical and academic responsibilities. Their Reduction and Access Act of 2007, represents welcome news for hope is that the gift will help to contribute to the continuation social work students and others who pursue typically low-paying jobs and the further development of the field of social work by attract- in public service. If you work for a government or nonprofit organi- ing and retaining great people who are as dedicated, smart, and zation in public service, the government will forgive your outstand- well-prepared as she was. ing loan balance once you have made payments on that balance for These types of investments in SSA students have enabled gen- ten years. This bill will ease the anticipated burden for prospective erations of the most talented students to attend the premier social SSA students, but it will only ease it, not eliminate it. work graduate program in the country. We are forever grateful to Gift aid from endowed scholarship funds will continue to play a the benefactors whose gifts provide funds to help our students vital role in determining whether a prospective student will be able earn a University of Chicago education. attend SSA. We know that when our most talented applicants make The need for talented, University of Chicago-prepared leaders their decision about whether to attend SSA or another top-ranked and practitioners in social work fields has never been greater. The program, their decision typically rides on whether they can actually need for you to support the next generation of SSA graduates— afford to come. Forty-four percent of our top applicants last year just as you may have been supported—has never been more com- declined because of better financial aid offers from other schools. pelling. As we move into the celebration of the SSA Centennial, SSA is fortunate in that alumni and friends of the School have I hope you will consider supporting or increasing your support for been generously contributing scholarship and gift aid from our earli- SSA student scholarships. Our future depends on it. est days. For example, our largest memorial scholarship, the Patricia Jeanne C. Marsh, Ph.D., is George Herbert Jones Professor and McKnew Nielson Scholarship, was created by Arthur Nielsen to dean of the School of Social Service Administration.

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 3 conversations

In the Land of Immigrants

With both tensions and rhetoric rising this low-wage work but puts these peo- has half of its workers gone. It will ple at great risk. bring our entire economy to a grinding on immigrations issues over the last several halt. And it will create incredible insta- years, the failure to pass the federal Comprehensive Salgado: The United States of bility in our communities and incredible America went out and created the instability politically, I think. Immigration Reform bill this summer has already global economy. We were the ones impacted immigrant communities across the country. proactive in the NAFTA agreements and Salgado: Immigrants have subsidized the CAFTA agreements and creating all this whole country’s well-being in many, Perhaps the biggest news is a proposed crackdown by Homeland Security on “no of those open markets. But we didn’t many different ways and not just by match” letters, which flag invalid employee Social Security Numbers, with bigger penalties to firms that continue to employ workers. As this issue was going to press, a federal court was starting to hear a case against the policy brought by several labor unions and immigrant rights organizations. For this issue’s Conversation, Virginia Parks, an assistant professor at SSA whose fields of special interest include urban labor markets, immigration, and community organizing, sat down with Juan Salgado, executive director of the Instituto del Progreso Latino, a community organization in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood dedicated to meeting the needs of Latino immigrants, and Lars Negstad, research director for Local 1 of UNITE HERE, which represents more than 14,000 hospitality workers in Chicago. >>> . <<<

Salgado: Since the effort to get a that’s having devastating consequences comprehensive immigration bill failed, in our community: psychological, emo- the number of anti-immigrant local tional, economic, and in our churches ordinances is escalating. We’ve seen an and community organizations and increase in ICE [Immigration and unions. I don’t think we have an idea “We’ve created a political and economic Customs Enforcement] raids, not just in what this will do in the long run. A the traditional places like meat packing mom just came in to our office yester- plants, but more here in Chicago. And day with a letter that basically stated deal with the labor end of it. doing the low-wage work. The reason probably the most damaging of all is that—even though she’s a citizen, even immigrant workers are so successful is the Homeland Security announcement though her children are citizens—her Negstad: Madeline Talbott of ACORN that they show up a half hour early and on Social Security no matches. husband has no right to be in this once wrote a really great letter about they’re willing to stay two hours late country anymore because he entered immigration that said it’s just simple. and all those kinds of things, and that’s Negstad: In the past, there would be the country without authorization. He You put a rich country next to a poor the truth. Start from the fact that they occasional no-match letters from the has to return to Mexico for 10 years country and people are going to move have to finance their own way to this Social Security Administration that before he can return again. And what from the poor country to the rich coun- country, and they have to do it through employers often would file away, and will that family do? What will her 15- try. So to punish individual workers, coyotes, which means they have to pay there wasn’t a lot of follow-up. year-old son do without his father? who are just trying to make a better life $2,000 to $3,000 per person to cross Sometimes employers would use them Think about this multiplied throughout for their family, is just unconscionable the border and risk their lives. to scare workers. In fact, four or five our communities. and outrageous. Then they finally get here and, years ago, in a meeting with local elect- you know, they’ve got to make a new ed officials and management from one Parks: Right. We’ve shifted the burden Parks: We really have to step back and life for themselves. What Lars said earli- hotel corporation, essentially the mes- of responsibility to individuals. It’s been understand that we’ve created a politi- er—that “don’t-ask, don’t-tell” policy sage was kind of a “don’t-ask, don’t- very effective on the part of people cal and economic system that is creat- that permeated the country for many, tell” policy about immigration status, who are anti-immigrant to say, “It’s ing a whole separate class of people in many years—that allowed people to and the company really settled down. these people or this person who decid- our society. And it’s a moment where establish roots and make this their The climate has definitely changed in ed to break the law and cross the bor- we have to recognize what the full con- home. Think about the institutions in just the last few months. der.” But really, it’s all of our responsi- sequences of that are. Our current path Chicago. Where would the Catholic bility. We have created, politically and to reform won’t just affect one hotel on Church be today if it were not for the Salgado: And people are fearful, and economically, a system that demands Michigan Avenue that all of a sudden influx of immigrants? What would that

4 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 mean to the city of Chicago? Americans for such a large and shame- with race in America. This whole issue in sociology, that’s considered the end ful part of our nation’s history. has turned into an issue largely of point of assimilation: actually marrying Negstad: Or even the population of Mexicans and of Latin Americans. outside of the ethnic group. The other Chicago. Parks: At all points in the history of There’s this fear that somehow we’re side of this fear is cultural, a fear that the U. S. when there has been a move going to be radically different than somehow an immigrant group is so dif- Parks: Yes. Chicago’s population was to include more people, there’s always other immigrant groups. But we dye ferent, they will never understand our declining for decades, but in 2000 we a battle. And this is something I’ve the river green here for the St. Patrick’s society, what we hold dear, what’s saw the population of the city growing, been thinking about a lot lately, that at Day parade. most important. And yet what we and it was primarily due to immigra- this period of time, I think there’s this

system that is creating a whole separate class of people in our society.”

tion. I mean the very health and vibran- great insecurity given the inequality Parks: Yet we don’t fear the Irish. Now know, from looking across history, that cy of our cities depend on immigrants, that we’re experiencing. This country is we’ve accepted them as part of people assimilate—whether they want people who are willing to live and work as inequitable as it was during the American society. to or not—largely because they have here. You need immigrants here as con- Gilded Age. children. This is borne out in the litera- sumers. They keep our economy going. So it’s interesting that at a point Salgado: And so there will come a ture time and time again: Even people in time when Americans have so little, day when Mexican culture is accepted. who say that they’re going to come for Negstad: There’s one thing I want to it becomes so important for them to And it already is. I mean, people love to 10 years or 20 years and go back, touch on too: the hatred for immi- keep other people from having what eat in our restaurants, right? They love don’t, because their kids grow up as grants. It’s connected very directly to little they have. People see it as a zero- to listen to our music. It’s already hap- Americans and their kids aren’t going the insecurity and fear of working-class sum game; that if we let these immi- pening. And so there’s this natural pro- back to Mexico. people who are seeing manufacturing grants in, somehow they’ll take away gression. I have to say that the fact of jobs disappear, seeing wages go down, from what I have. And yet what you’ve the matter is, we are integrating like no Salgado: The only major threat to any seeing health care benefits or pension been saying Juan, is that we have other immigrant group ever has. For kind of immigration and assimilation is benefits just come off the table. And what we have because of immigrants. Mexican Americans of my generation, isolation. that fear is so intense that it’s very easy They contribute to this growing econo- you’re more likely to marry someone Parks: That’s a really a good point, for demagogues to get in there and tap my so that jobs that people do have— who isn’t Latino than someone who is. and I think we need to consider the into that and say, here’s a solution, even those that may not pay well or In my entire family, every one of my political consequences of that. That’s scapegoat the immigrants—particularly have much security—are partly due to younger cousins—there are about 15 what we’re doing right now. We’re the Spanish-speaking immigrants, a growing immigrant population. of them—none of them are married to because they’re pretty visible. I think it Mexicans. forcing isolation upon a particular must be very similar to the intense Salgado: It also brings us back to the group of people based on no other hatred directed towards African reality that we’re obviously still dealing Parks: According to a classic argument factor than their status.

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 5 ideas Neurobiology and Substance Abuse

OR MOST OF that compel substance As a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. became interested in neurobiology US, the ideas abuse can help quell those Xiaoxi Zhuang’s laboratory, Beeler is while working with chronically mentally of liking some- desires. using genetically engineered mice to ill adults. “I started to increasingly thing and “My work looks at the examine the phasic activity of appreciate how biological factors Fwanting something relationship between dopamine. Although we have known might cause people to act in ways that would seem to be learning and motivation about dopamine for nearly 50 years, are so very different,” he says. almost identical. But for and how the dopamine much of how it functions in the body is In the course that he teaches at substance abusers, the system mediates this rela- still a mystery. Scientists no longer SSA, Beeler provides students with two thoughts can A study of tionship. I think dopamine believe that dopamine is a signal trans- information about the biological factors become completely dopamine may evolved to highlight to the mitter for pleasure, but how it helps that impact issues from mood disorders uncoupled—someone hold a key to brain what it should pay process stimuli is not fully clear. to substance abuse. “Social work who is addicted may no how attention to, what’s impor- “Dopamine seems to take pleasure always has put forth the idea of biolog- longer really like the tant. For substance information and help the brain learn ical, psychological, and social perspec- substance that he now addiction abusers, it is widely from it,” Beeler says. “It’s involved in a tives, but the biological components craves. Jeff Beeler, a works believed that the natural lot of psychological problems—ADHD, aren’t really looked at as much,” he neurobiologist at the reward system is being substance abuse, schizophrenia—many says. “We want a social worker to rec- BY CARL VOGEL University of Chicago, is highjacked by the drugs of of the issues that social workers deal ognize the potential biological factors working to tease out abuse,” says Beeler, who with in their work.” that may contribute to challenges faced how the neurotransmitter dopamine also teaches “Biomedical Perspectives in Beeler, who has a M.S.W. from the by their clients and to understand what plays a role in this dichotomy and how Social Work” at SSA as a member of Jane Addams College of Social Work at options and treatments are available understanding the biological factors the adjunct instructional staff. the University of Illinois at Chicago, and when they might be appropriate.”

The Power of Stigma BY CINDY BARRYMORE The shame of mental illness can derail clients already receiving treatment

S PART OF HER justice system face stigma from both their own illness” or to organize their ness and gave them funds to support RESEARCH on the quality statuses, limiting housing and employ- lives exclusively around a disabled iden- recreational activities. Other programs, of services for people ment opportunities. tity, Angell says. And for clients, a more including a flagship project at the VA with serious and long- Research also shows, though, that complete social network is an important medical center in Los Angeles, aim to Aterm mental illness, SSA associate pro- people with mental illness hold the step to learning to live with the illness, increase social functioning by teaching fessor Beth Angell studies the social same stereotypes about the condition and its social capital can provide oppor- social skills to clients. “In my view the integration of clients. She says that the as the general public. Once they’ve tunities from child care options to job most important thing that professionals lingering stigma of mental illness plays been formally diagnosed, people with referrals to emotional support. can do, though, is advocate for their notable, and in some ways surprising, mental illness are often less likely to Some service providers incorporate clients to live and work in the main- roles in how patients interact with oth- interact socially. “It’s threatening to specialized interventions to bring clients stream community and to access com- ers—which in turn can affect how well their self-esteem, and they fear that delicately into the flow of “mainstream” munity resources. This means avoiding they are served by treatment programs. other people can detect [mental illness] relationships. For example, a program clustering people with mental illness Researchers have been able to in them,” Angell says. “Because many pilot tested in New Haven paired volun- together in large congregated facili- document the impact of stereotypes withdraw from mainstream social inter- teer peers with people with mental ill- ties,” Angell says. and negative attitudes, from preference actions, their social Unfortunately, innovating pro- for social distance to outright discrimi- networks can become gramming is becoming less common. nation, about those who have a mental dominated by either “Mental health programs in an area of illness. For example, a cross-cultural service providers or fel- restricted funding focus on the most study Angell conducted on employer low clients in the pro- pressing needs first, such as psychiatric attitudes toward people with psychotic gram.” stabilization, locating affordable hous- disorders shows that public mispercep- While some peo- ing, and securing financial benefits,” tions can hinder these clients’ employ- ple with mental illness Angell says. “When programs are ment prospects. A new study she is relish the comfort of forced to operate solely in a crisis conducting with Amy Watson, Ph.D., the common bond mode, goals of helping people inte- ‘01, an assistant professor at the Jane with other patients, grate into the community go by the Addams College of Social Work, is find- others don’t want to wayside. I see this happening more ing that people with mental illness be reminded of this now than when I began studying this who’ve had contact with the criminal “powerful signal of issue in the mid-1990s.”

6 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 The Future History of Violence When children are exposed to violence outside the home, it has significant developmental effects

BY CHELAN DAVID

SSA Associate Professor Dexter Voisin

HE CONSEQUENCES of The genesis of Voisin’s latest find- lence and psychological distress is not a that has claimed the lives of over two inner-city youth being ings began more than a decade ago, final outcome and that the relationship dozen Chicago Public School students exposed to community vio- when his research found that there was between community violence and low from last September to date. Since the lence may be more signifi- a consistent pattern of association school achievement is not a final out- onset of the murders, Voisin has given Tcant then previously imagined. Findings between high levels of violence and come. These forms are actually inter- perspective on his work to CNN’s by Dexter Voisin, an associate professor youth engaging in higher levels of sex- connected. We’ve found that psycho- Anderson Cooper 360, National Public at SSA, suggest that violence exposure ual risk-taking behavior. One study logical distress is the pathway through Radio, the Chicago Tribune, and the among African-American youth is a Voisin conducted involved multiethnic which community violence is connected Chicago Sun-Times. conduit to psychological distress, low youth aged 14-19 years old in New to low school achievement.” “There was quite a bit of school achievement, negative peer York City, where he found that victims The study also found notably high response in terms of the media and involvement, and risky sexual behaviors. of community violence were almost levels of exposure to community vio- community trying to understand what “It appears that exposure to vio- four times more likely than their non- lence, particularly for African-American is responsible for these patterns of violence is not just a one-time event,” victim peers to have had sex without youth. Of the 600 African-American lence; however, it is equally important Voisin says. “The effects of violence condoms, to have engaged in sex after Chicago high school students inter- for this attention to be sustained and affect adolescents in many ways: It drug use, and to have had group sex. viewed by Voisin for his latest study, translated into some visible corrective affects them psychologically; it affects Next, Voisin set out to determine nearly a quarter reported being a victim action steps by the powers that be,” them in terms of their ability to perform what factors were responsible for this of a robbery or mugging and nearly Voisin says. at school academically; and it also influ- correlation. By looking at pathways— half witnessed a gang-related injury or In most instances, however, inner ences the type of friends they associate factors that might explain why and death. Startlingly, nearly a third of the city violence doesn’t make headline with.” His article entitled, “The Effects how community violence exposure participants indicated they had wit- news. “Community violence very often of Family and Community Violence affects teenagers—he discovered that nessed a dead body in their community goes unrecognized and undocumented Exposure Among Youth: those who reported high levels of com- not related to a funeral. African- by educators, social work providers, Recommendations for Practice and munity violence also reported high lev- American youth are anywhere from 7- and even parents,“ he says. Policy,” appeared in the Journal of els of psychological distress. 10 times more likely than their white Voisin hopes the consequences of Social Work Education (2007). Psychological distress, in turn, was peers to be exposed to violent crimes his work include drawing more atten- Community violence, defined as associated with low school achieve- such as homicides, muggings, and rob- tion to the developmental conse- violence that happens outside the ment. beries, and 30 percent of the males in quences of community violence. “The home, takes many forms. In inner cities, “Previous studies have looked at Voisin’s research study reported some effects of violence exposure don’t start it can include witnessing or being a vic- some of these relationships in a vacu- involvement in gangs. with the actual event,” he says. “There tim of a robbery, witnessing or being a um,” Voisin explains. “What our The issue of inner-city violence has is a whole sequel, a negative lingering victim of a mugging, sexual assaults, research has done is show that the been intensely scrutinized in Chicago aftermath, as a result of being exposed and witnessing gang-related deaths. relationship between community vio- during a recent run of gang violence to violence.”

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 7 a voice from the field

the nation. The group is at the forefront years. Then, wanting to pursue a career of the movement to decriminalize in social work, she enrolled as a gradu- addiction—though not to legalize ate student at SSA in 1980. She says drugs—regularly pushing cutting-edge that professors like Bob Coates, who ideas into practice. taught her how to evaluate data, and Rodriguez is a deeply religious Karen Teigeser, an expert in systems- woman, a Lutheran, and her religion thinking, imparted lessons that have has, in many ways, guided her career remained with her over nearly three trajectory. “It’s important to have sec- decades. “And Chuck Shireman, [a Crime, Addiction, ond chances,” she explains. “Being criminal justice expert], he always hopeful, believing that change is possi- believed in people’s ability to change,” ble, that people are good.” In many she says nostalgically. and Second Chances ways, this is not just her philosophy, but Now aged 51, Pam Rodriguez has a guiding principle for the whole TASC two sons of her own and lives in the BY SASHA ABRAMSKY movement. Addicts, TASC believes, Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village. At

“Pam’s one of the people in the room who helps keep people focused on the reality in the drug culture and the courts.” 1

AMELA RODRIGUEZ GREW Since shortly after graduating retain their humanity as well as their TASC, her days are a mix of meetings UP IN RURAL northern from SSA with a master’s degree in potential to recover and to do good with policy makers and national treat- Minnesota, the oldest of four 1982, Rodriguez has put that belief into things with their lives. “TASC recom- ment experts, work on program man- kids. Her parents split when action at TASC, Inc., where she now mends dealing with addiction as a dis- agement, and ensuring that services are Pshe was a young child, and her mother serves as executive vice president. ease and a public health problem,” of a high quality. Several days out of raised the children alone. They were TASC, which stands for Treatment Rodriguez says simply, “and not a crimi- the month she’s on the road, visiting poor—Pam’s mother had re-enrolled in Alternatives for Safe Communities, is a nal justice problem.” drug treatment programs, and attend- college to study to be a teacher, and for 31-year-old national organization that ing meetings and conferences. a while, until the teaching qualification helps get substance abuse treatment to >>> . <<< “Frankly, I’m a problem solver,” she came through and her mother got a job those ensnared in the criminal justice says. “I’m the leader, the director.” teaching in the southern part of the system and designs and advocates for AS A HIGH SCHOOL TEENAGER, “She never loses sight of why we state, the family relied on public assis- model programs. Rodriguez says she befriended all sorts, do the work we do,” says her friend tance. When launched, TASC was a bare- from jocks to druggie kids struggling to and erstwhile colleague Leslie Balonick, The experience taught the young bones operation in Illinois and a hand- stay afloat. “I saw in them all something now senior vice president at WestCare Pam that government programs, when ful of other states, pushing the then- worthwhile,” she recalls. “And I felt Foundation, a drug treatment organiza- run well, can make a difference in peo- radical notion that drug addiction and there was a lot of prejudice against peo- tion that operates in seven states and ple’s lives. “I think we have forgotten crime were linked problems and that ple who were different, who didn’t have the U.S. Virgin Islands. “Pam’s one of what government is for, the role of institutions like rehab programs, com- advantages. I really identified with peo- the people in the room who helps keep government, and what government can munity mental health centers, and ple who were struggling to fit in, to people focused on reality—in terms of do and should be doing for us,” she halfway houses might offer the best make it, to overcome obstacles.” what’s going on out there in the drug argues. It also left her with the stead- solutions. Today, TASC is a multi-million After doing her undergraduate culture and the courts. She takes a fast belief that sometimes all that is dollar institution that connects drug work at Bemidji State University in practical, commonsensical approach.” needed for a person to flourish is a addicts to treatment programs with Minnesota, Rodriguez worked in the Illinois TASC employs more than helping hand. chapters in more than half the states in juvenile justice system for a couple 400 people, nearly 100 of whom are

8 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 full-time case managers, working direct- these, fully 85 percent stay arrest-free support network of another 150 or so addicted criminals. ly with clients. TASC staffers trawl regu- for the three years following their com- community groups has developed to Rodriguez convenes discussions lar criminal courts, drug courts (courts pletion of the program. In comparison, work with TASC clients after they com- between top state politicians on drug set up in several states specifically to less than half of the prisoners released plete their formal rehabilitation pro- policy and is generally thought of as a deal with drug offenders and to look in Illinois in 2002 stayed out of jail over grams, making sure they stay on the voice of reason, able to cut to the chase for alternatives to incarceration), county the next three years, according to the straight and narrow for the long haul. in complex debates and with all the jails, and state prisons looking for Illinois Department of Corrections, “We’re advocates for clients. leadership skills needed to keep a large addicted offenders whom they judge, including those arrested for drug crimes We’re intermediaries between systems. organization running smoothly. She through use of sophisticated assess- or property crimes. We match them to appropriate care gives testimony at Congressional hear- ment tools, to be good candidates. For TASC’s allies argue that the and appropriate levels of treatment,” ings on crime and drug addiction and example, if a defendant’s case is tied to approach works well for everyone: Rodriguez says. was recently made a member of the substance abuse—if the crime was Addicts get the help they need in spe- “It’s a win-win to have these col- federal Coordinating Council on committed to support a drug habit, for cialized treatment settings. The courts laborations between systems,” argues Juvenile Justice and Delinquency instance—TASC has found that there is don’t have to send so many petty Mary Shilton, the Alexandria, Virginia- Prevention. TASC also has strong work- more likelihood of rehabilitation. offenders to prison. Taxpayers save based director of the national consor- ing relationships with large institutions

“TASC comes at substance abuse from a social justice mindset.”

1 : Pamela Rodriguez, executive vice president of TASC, Inc. 2 : Rodriguez with Hon. Paul P. Biebel, Jr., presiding judge of the criminal division, Circuit Court of Cook County 2

Ten years ago, TASC had about money, since even the best drug treat- tium of TASC programs. “TASC is kind around the country such as Texas 18,000 clients a year, according to ment programs cost less per person per of entrepreneurial. It’s a bridge between Christian University and the federal Rodriguez. Today, it has about 30,000, year than do prisons (A white paper by systems, long-term advisory groups, and Substance Abuse and Mental Health more than half of whom are from the TASC release earlier this year found that projects. TASC is there at the systems’ Services Administration. Chicago area. Much of the growth is Illinois could save more than $220 mil- level, getting people to sit down and “What TASC does is a reasonable due to TASC’s relationship with courts, lion annually with a more aggressive problem solve, bringing community alternative to the all-or-nothing sheriffs, and police departments— drug-treatment program). And commu- resources out.” approach,” says Shilton, referring to where personnel use TASC to steer nities are made safer because large her belief that the ‘Just Say No, War offenders into treatment rather than numbers of addicts are getting better, >>> . <<< on Drugs’ philosophy has signally into the regular court system and then rather than simply being warehoused failed. “If the all-or-nothing approach imprisonment—and parole systems that behind bars, released with all the same IN AN ERA OF CRIMINAL justice policies only feeds back into the use of drugs, turn to the state chapters for help in problems they had on the day they were that have been largely defined by rather then the reasonable approach is you dealing with addicted clients in the peri- first incarcerated. simplistic “lock-’em-up” messages and have to do something else to break od following their release from prison. Unlike other similar organizations politicians overeager to play to a fearful the cycle.” For example, the Cook County such as Delancey Street in San Francisco, crowd, TASC’s steadfast focus on second “TASC comes at substance abuse Diversion Program, an innovative pro- and Fortune in New York, TASC doesn’t chances—and its success in that from a social justice mindset and rec- gram that moves non-violent first provide drug treatment services directly approach—have stood out. Now, as the ognizing that our criminal justice sys- offenders into drug education and crim- to its clients. Instead, it links them up get-tough movement around crime and tem has turned into our safety net. It’s inal justice education classes rather than with licensed treatment programs in the punishment has stalled somewhat in where people who’ve failed in other straight into jail or prison, sends about community, ranging from intensive drug recent years and with electorates systems land,” Rodriguez explains. 4,000 men and women to TASC a year. treatment communities to mental health increasingly reluctant to fund an ever- “But we’re human beings, for Pete’s Of these offenders, a rather impressive services and job training. About 150 larger correctional infrastructure, TASC sake. We’re all flawed, but hope nine in 10 complete the program and such programs now work with TASC has become an influential voice when it springs eternal. You have to believe it see their charges dropped. And of clients. In the last few years an ancillary comes to innovative sanctions for drug- can be better.”

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 9 Protective Services We know that helping moms and dads be better parents helps prevent maltreatment of very young children. But what works best?

BY CARL VOGEL

isha Lemmons Lemmons says. “I work with their needs. Abuse can strike spends a lot of the youngest moms in the pro- once or repeatedly, while neg- gram, so a lot don’t understand lect tends to be a chronic con- time riding the what it will take to be a mother dition. Both can be terribly CTA. Lemmons yet.” damaging to a young child. doesn’t drive, “It’s a strengths-based pro- Nearly 900,000 children gram, working with parents were determined to be victims but a big part of her job at the k who are at high-risk, promoting of abuse or neglect by a care- University of Chicago Doula good parenting behavior,” says taker from referrals to child Project is to make a weekly SSA Professor Sydney Hans, protective service agencies home visit to each of her dozen who launched the University of nationwide in 2005, according Chicago Doula Project in 2000. to the U.S. Department of or so clients, all first-time teenage mothers. “A really important part of the Health and Human Services So she crisscrosses through some once the baby is born. The para- underlying philosophy is to (HHS). More than 60 percent of Chicago’s most distressed professionals in the University of work with the family before of those cases were neglect, and neighborhoods via train and bus Chicago Doula Project, however, anything bad happens, the earli- another 17 percent were vic- to sit on family couches and at keep visiting the mom for weeks er the better.” tims of physical abuse (the kitchen tables, providing sup- after the birth. And their job isn’t The most lurid tales of remainder were cases of sexual port, answering questions, and just to ease labor—it’s to help child abuse—parents who have abuse or emotional maltreat- giving reminders to young girls support a healthy family and pre- systematically starved their own ment). And nearly eight times just starting parenthood. vent child maltreatment. children or burned them with out of 10, the perpetrator of Lemmons isn’t an archetypal By giving mothers someone cigarettes—sicken us when this kind of child maltreatment doula, and not just because her to talk with about the new baby they make the headlines. But was a parent. clients are low-income moms, in the house, Lemmons and her these horrific cases are only a Designed to support rather than middle-class expec- colleagues offer parents what has small part of the issue. Many mothers, home-visitation pro- tant mothers who have hired a proven to be a powerful mix of more children are abused in grams, particularly for parents doula to help during labor and emotional support and practical smaller but still hurtful ways, of new infants, have proven to delivery. In that more typical advice. “They ask questions like, and more still are neglected: not be an effective way to lower arrangement, the mother/doula ‘Can you spoil a baby?’ and adequately fed or left with rates of child maltreatment. relationship ends more or less ‘How long should a baby cry?’” someone who cannot care for “Few people intentionally

10 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 11 injure a child, but many can and avoid all the costs that accrue, but unhurt. Guterman points do lose control when they are socially and economically, when out that about 80 percent of unable to stop a baby from cry- the child protective services sys- fatalities related to child maltreat- ing or find themselves simply tem becomes involved.” ment occur in children age 3 or overwhelmed. We want to create younger. a sense in the parent that you >>> . <<< . What we’ve learned in the have to take hold of yourself last decade or so about the before you take hold of a child,” importance of the first years of a child’s life—the impetus to fund Head Start and similar programs—has also lead to more efforts to protect babies. For example, research has shown that, starting prenatally, exposure to abuse and neglect can affect brain development in children. “We know a lot more about how the brain develops until age 3. You can literally see the difference in brains of children who have been hurt or exposed to violence,” says Ben Tanzer, the director of strategic communica- tions at Prevent Child Abuse America, which works with chapters and Healthy Family America home visiting sites focused on the prevention of child abuse and neglect in 41 states, Washington, D.C., and Canada. You can says Deborah Daro, a Chapin ONCENTRATION Parents themselves are the Hall Research Fellow and the AND FOCUS of other part of the equation. literally see former director of the National child maltreatment Raising a baby can be stressful, Center on Child Abuse prevention these days and stress is a major precursor for the Prevention Research. concerns babies and abuse. “No expectant mom difference “Most cases of neglect in thisctoddlers. In large part, that’s imagines that her baby will be country are parents who are because it’s the age when many fussy, or that the baby will be in brains of struggling and just can’t handle children are abused or neglected: resilient to her soothing,” says the challenges of parenting. HHS has found age 0-3 to have Larry Gray, a development and children They’re not responding adequate- the highest rate of victimization, behavioral pediatrician at the ly to their child’s needs,” says at 16.5 per 1,000 children. University of Chicago Comer who have Neil Guterman, a professor at Babies can’t report that they’re Children’s Hospital. In fact, the been hurt SSA who is in the process of run- living in unhealthy conditions or need for help for parents to cope ning several research studies on have been hit, and very young with a screaming baby can be so or exposed to the issue of child maltreatment. children are also more likely to acute that Gray and colleagues “There’s growing empirical suffer serious injuries due to have launched the Fussy Baby violence. research that in many cases we abuse—a vigorous shaking that Network based at the Erikson can prevent child maltreatment can cause a fatal case of Shaken Institute. before it ever starts, avoid unnec- Baby Syndrome would leave a “Parents can start seeing a essary trauma to the child, and 10-year-old scared and crying child in a negative way, and that

12 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 can get locked in,” says Linda pediatrics, psychiatry, and preven- due to alcohol and drug abuse. Gilkerson, the founder of the tive medicine at the University of Over the years, similar home Fussy Baby Network and a sec- Colorado, began to operate and visitation programs have been ond-year master’s student at SSA. study a program that sent highly launched throughout the country The network offers an 800 num- trained nurses to visit at-risk and internationally, and many ber for parents at the end of their young mothers at home repeated- of these have shown similar rope and home visitations for ly, before birth and two years success in a wide variety of socio- parents who need extra help. after their first child was born. economic, geographic, and racial “Parents who shake a baby aren’t trying to kill the baby,” she says. “They’re trying to stop the crying.” Many new parents are also misinformed about how babies act and their developmental stages, and bad expectations can lead to more stress. If a mom or dad doesn’t know that a baby will cry more a few weeks after birth—when an infant’s sleep patterns change—they can get frustrated. Parents who expect a toddler to potty train before the child is a year old will be stymied again and again, and perhaps take out their anger on the child. On the other hand, programs like the home visitation option at the Fussy Baby Network show success because of the positive side of working with parents of very young children: The results were impressive. settings. A 2003 report by the Few people They can be more receptive to In the group of low-income, Centers for Disease Control, advice about parenting. “During unmarried teen mothers who did which reviewed 21 studies of intentionally pregnancy or right after the not receive nurse visits, the inci- early childhood home visitation birth, parents are especially open dence of child neglect or abuse on child maltreatment, found a injure a to new ideas. It’s a real window was 19 percent. For those who median reduction of cases of child, but of opportunity,” Hans says. did receive visits, the incidence child abuse or neglect of approxi- Home visitation for new was 4 percent. In a 15-year fol- mately 40 percent. Based on this many can and parents has a long history, dating low-up study, the moms who “strong evidence of effectiveness,” back to the earliest years of social had been served by the nurse- the report recommended home do lose control work and child protection more family model had 79 percent visitation for families at risk for than a century ago. In the last fewer verified reports of child maltreatment, including disad- when they find few decades, variations on the abuse or neglect—and the vantaged populations and fami- themselves practice have been studied closely results paid dividends in other lies with low-birth weight and research has shown they help ways as well. There were 56 per- infants. simply some parents avoid hurting their cent fewer arrests of the adoles- “We believe we have some- children. The best-known cent children whose moms had thing that works with home visi- overwhelmed. research on home visitation was worked with the nurses, for tation,” Daro says. “Now the launched in Elmira, N.Y., in 1977. instance, and 44 percent fewer struggle is how to take it to David Olds, now a professor of maternal behavioral problems scale.”

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 13 N THE LATE 1990s, how to build a program that, if and to become a trusted ally. The Sydney Hans learned proven to be effective, can be comfort and emotional assurance about several community more widely replicated. the doula provides at the birth service organizations in The type of care provided by further builds that bond. Chicago that were provid- a doula is also distinct. “In the “It’s not an effective strategy iing a variation on home visita- Olds method, it’s more about to approach a teenage mother tion that utilized a doula rather health and parenting education. and say, ‘I know more than you, than a nurse. With the support The doula project works more and I’ll teach you.’ If I was in the of the Irving Harris Foundation, from a family support model, hospital myself with a new baby she established a doula home vis- offering support and information and someone came in and said, iting program based at the as a way of empowering,” Hans ‘Let me make you a better moth- University of Chicago. A federal says. “The doulas become surro- er,’ I don’t know how well I’d lis- Maternal and Child Health grant gate family members, like an ten,” Hans says. “First there allowed her to initiate a five-year older sister.” needs to be a relationship.” study of how well the program Each of the doulas has For six weeks after the baby “A policy helps young families. grown up herself in the same is born, the doula continues to The focus of the University urban neighborhoods as her make a weekly visit to the mom, to promote of Chicago Doula Project, like clients; most were teenage moth- maintaining the themes that the marriage in the nurse-family model, is on ers themselves. The mothers, doula and mother were dis- young, at-risk mothers, but Hans who are referred to the program cussing before the child and of itself says that outreach conducted by from local clinics and social serv- arrived—the importance of a doula creates a different pro- ice agencies, usually enroll in the breastfeeding, how to return to might not have gram in several ways she thinks program when they’re six or school and care for her baby, the anticipated may be very important. For seven months pregnant. The how to read the baby’s cues, how starters, since the doulas are para- time the doula spends with the to lower the stress. impact in reducing professionals, the cost is lower mom preparing for birth is “We go through scenarios of cases of abuse than using nurses—a notable important, both to support what will happen with a new distinction when considering strong prenatal care for the child baby and say, ‘What will you do and neglect.” in that situation?’ We try to help them understand that you’re NEIL GUTERMAN dealing with a newborn baby, SSA Professor and a big part of that is the par- The findings suggest that the ent/child bond. We’re big propo- moms think differently about nents of reading to the baby, their roles as mothers. We’ve also interactions you can have with a found some limited positive baby,” says Deborah Bump, the health-related outcomes, such as program’s clinical supervisor. more initiation of breastfeeding.” “And we’re there for them Although the University of beyond the home visits. Chicago Doula Project is past the Sometimes they call and want to federal grant support period for talk, and we just listen.” operation, Hans has been able to Hans has finished gathering continue to provide services by the data from the five-year study connecting to funding from the and is in the process of analyzing Illinois Ounce of Prevention it for publication. “We’re very Fund, a partnership between pri- “It’s not an effective strategy pleased with what we’ve found so vate donors and the state of to approach a teenage mother far,” she says. “We’ve seen Illinois that supports programs to improved mother/infant interac- help children who are born into and say, “I know more than you, and tion, as measured by how much poverty. “The idea of using I’ll teach you.’” they talk with their babies, hold doulas for this work originated SYDNEY L. HANS their babies, take pleasure in with community agencies here in SSA Professor their babies’ accomplishments. Chicago, and the model is

14 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 spreading throughout the state under review from the study, and nationally,” Hans says. which was funded by the National Institutes of Health and >>> . <<< . the Centers for Disease Control, and some of the findings could HE POWER OF have an impact on public policy. THE SOCIAL For example, Guterman’s team CONTEXTS in found that while married moth- which early child ers are less likely to abuse or neg- rearing occurs is just lect their children than non-mar- beginning to receive ried moms, it appears that mar- tgreater attention. Fathers, for riage to fathers, per se, is not instance, are over reported in responsible for the lower risk. most severe cases of abuse and Rather the factors that make a neglect, and their role in the difference are the “psychosocial family can also be an important resources” that fathers bring to factor in cases where the mother the marriage, such as his positive is the perpetrator. For example, interactions with the child, his confirmed incidents of child supportive behaviors toward the abuse and neglect among Army mother, and his higher educa- families increased significantly tional level. when a father is deployed specif- “Another interesting finding ically to a combat zone, accord- is somewhat counterintuitive. ing to a study from the Contrary to what we might University of North Carolina at think, the economic resources a Chapel Hill School of Public father brings to the family do not Health released this summer. seem to impact the mother’s mal- When soldier-husbands left treatment risk. Along with what mothers at home to care for the we found in terms of the impact children in these circumstances, of social resources, it suggests the rate of physical abuse nearly that a policy to promote mar- doubled, and the rate of neglect riage in and of itself might not was nearly four times higher. necessarily have the anticipated Despite findings such as impact in reducing cases of abuse this, research into the role of and neglect,” Guterman says. fathers in abuse cases has been Guterman is also examining rare, says Neil Guterman, who how tapping social networks can brings together a dozen or so the clinical trial stage, with three has been involved in collecting complement home visitation young mothers to meet together sites in New York City and two in data from 4,800 families in 20 services and leverage even greater weekly. There, they develop new Chicago. In initial research cities over the first three years of reduction of the risk of child skills aimed at improving the rela- Guterman says that they’re already the babies’ lives for the first abuse and neglect. Participants in tionships in their lives, even turn- seeing significant improvements in national longitudinal study on the University of Chicago Doula ing a situation that can challenge lowering mothers’ stress and child the topic. “We’re trying to figure Project now have the option of parenting into an asset. “The abuse risk, beyond home visitation out what it means for dads to be meeting regularly with other mothers work together and sup- services, even with a relatively an economic resource, what is mothers in the program to dis- port each other, ultimately devel- modest six-week set of profession- the relationship with the mom, cuss parenthood with each other, oping into their own self-sustain- ally led sessions. “One of the how do they relate to the chil- and augmenting the one-on-one ing mutual support networks. clearest risks for abuse and neglect dren—and how all these kinds home visitation model with this They learn to see their own is whether the mother is isolated of factors impact risk for child kind of connection with peers is strengths and how important or involved in undermining rela- maltreatment,” he says. becoming increasingly common. social networks are to their moth- tionships,” he says. “Giving and Guterman and his team Also funded by the CDC, ering,” Guterman says. getting support from other moms currently have several articles Guterman’s research on the idea The program is currently in is a way to counteract that.”

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 15 An international career: Top row, left to right: 1. Froma Walsh at a training in Seoul, Korea, with Professor Miyoung-Min Choi, part of the team that translated Strengthening Family Resilience into Korean; 2. With Mose and Sylvia Firestone at the Los Angeles event to celebrate Walsh being named SSA’s Mose and Sylvia Firestone Professor; 3. Conducting a lecture at SSA in 2006; 4. At a conference on strengthening families at the Chicago Historical Society with noted family therapists Salvador and Patricia Minuchin; 5. Sitting with the panel at a symposium at SSA upon her retirement earlier this year Bottom: With community mental health counselors at one of the trainings on traumatic loss, recovery and resilience in Jerusalem and Ramallah

16 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 Close Support Froma Walsh has made her reputation and a career advocating that families can provide the strength to work through almost any trauma or adversity

BY CHARLES WHITAKER

IFE IN NORTH AFRICA MIGHT SEEM AN UNLIKE- so startling for me and other volunteers was that the United States LY SOURCE OF INSPIRATION for a new approach to would come up with such an ethnocentric program in the first family therapy. Yet it was her experience as a Peace Corps vol- place,” Walsh says. “Fortunately they learned from our experience for unteer in Morocco that lay the groundwork for much of projects that followed.” Froma Walsh’s influential scholarship. In her second year in Morocco, Walsh helped establish psycho- Walsh, who has just retired from her joint appointment logical evaluations for delinquent youth who had been incarcerated. as SSA’s Mose and Sylvia Firestone Professor and professor in She found, contrary to the American assumption that their families lthe Department of Psychiatry, used ideas that took root in Morocco must have been to blame, that most families were loving and prob- to develop a framework that altered the shape and practice of mental lems stemmed from harsh economic conditions, which drove boys health approaches to the family. It is called resilience-oriented, fami- into the streets and girls into prostitution. ly-centered collaborative mental health. And for more than 20 years, Walsh marveled at how Moroccan families were bound together Walsh has been at the forefront of its advancement while on the fac- in kinship groups that provided emotional as well as financial sup- ulty at SSA. port. The practicality and resilience of those groups made her ques- In 1964, armed with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the tion family normality in the United States, particularly the isolation University of California at Berkeley, Walsh joined the Peace Corps of the suburban nuclear family after World War II. “In Morocco, I and was dispatched to North Africa along with 27 other young was struck by the diversity in family norms and patterns, and the women. Their assignment was to work in the country’s foyers femi- richness of family life,” she says. “It struck me that the taken-for- nine—traditional gathering places where young Muslim women are granted assumptions about family normality in our culture were schooled in cooking and the art of intricate embroidery. They were really less functional than the ones in Morocco.” told that by their example, the young Moroccans would yearn to When Walsh returned to the States and began pursuing a emulate them and become “modernized.” master’s degree in social work, she couldn’t help but notice the However, Walsh and her fellow volunteers discovered that local emphasis on dysfunction in families. “I found the heavy focus on families, with traditional values, did not see the Peace Corps crew— psychopathology in mental health training distressing,” she says. “I unmarried, living unchaperoned in a foreign country, and not partic- learned it all, but it made me more curious about what mental health ularly good at any of the domestic skills in which Moroccan women is, beyond treating mental illness. How can we as mental health take pride—as fitting models for their daughters. “What was really professionals facilitate and support positive mental health?”

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 17 >>> . <<< sultation in resilience-oriented family therapy and community mental health services. Many of the 10 books she has either written or edited TREATMENT MODEL WITH BROAD (sometimes in collaboration) have been translated into foreign lan- INTERDISCIPLINARY APPLICATIONS, guages and she has presented papers, delivered keynote addresses and resilience-oriented, family-centered therapy is a sys- participated in panels in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, France, Italy, temic approach that focuses on the family’s core Sweden, Switzerland, Korea, and Japan. In 2002, for example, she strengths, rather than the source of its weaknesses. was asked to go to Germany to share her resilience approach with aWalsh believes that nearly all extended families contain a reservoir of U.S. military chaplains who help military families who have loved strength and resources that can enable them to overcome trauma. ones in war zones. The therapist’s job includes identifying “islands of competence” She has also helped developing countries train and establish a within the family. In the first chapter of her book Strengthening cadre of mental health professionals. At the invitation of the United Family Resilience, Walsh writes: States Agency for International Development and the government of Morocco, she returned to the country to design the curriculum and “A family resilience framework fundamentally alters tradi- program evaluation for the first school of social work established in tional deficit-based perspectives. Instead of focusing on how that country. In December, she will travel to Taiwan to teach. families have failed, we redirect our attention to how they “She has been one of the major influences on the field,” says can succeed. Rather than giving up on troubled families and Monica McGoldrick, director of the Multicultural Family Institute in salvaging individual survivors, we can draw out the best in Highland Park, N.J., and Walsh’s collaborator on a number of books families, building on key processes to encourage both indi- and papers, including Living Beyond Loss. “A lot had been said about vidual and family growth.” resilience from an individual perspective, but Froma is the one who “Froma understood early on that we had been discussing said we have to look at the threads and connections. She challenged pathology and dysfunctionality in families without a clear sense of us to look at families in a more positive way, and that really helped us what it meant to have a good-functioning family situation,” says understand resilience contextually.” Celia Falicov, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Walsh readily acknowledges that she is not the first to apply the California at San Diego and, like Walsh, an alumna of University of resilience model to mental health. “One of Froma’s tremendous Chicago’s doctoral program in human development. “She was really strengths is her integrative approach to what already existed,” says a pioneer in helping us see that every family has normal aspects, Falicov. “It wasn’t a matter of her saying, ‘I have the truth and I’m even a family in crises. But we were so focused on dysfunction, we creating a new school of family therapy.’ She said, ‘How can we put had no framework for what normal was.” together what we already know and bring in some new ways of look- Mental health professionals attempting to tap into resilience ing at therapy?’” must avoid looking at families through an ethnocentric lens, Walsh notes. To help the family make the connections that will aid in its >>> . <<< recovery, therapists have to understand and appreciate the cultural context in which the family resides and be sensitive to ethnic, religious, and cultural values that may be helpful as the family attempts ORN IN KENOSHA, WISCONSIN, Froma was to repair. the only child of a mother and father who encoun- Walsh says the resilience framework actually dovetails quite a bit tered adversity throughout their lives, and she says with the recent developments in the medical field that view the body their perseverance taught her how strong families not as isolated pieces, but as interconnected parts of a whole that has can be. Her parents met in Hyde Park, in the natural immune potential and the ability to heal most wounds. “In bmidst of the Depression. Her mother was estranged from her own terms of mental health,” she says, “the research shows that individu- family, and her father dealt with the harsh consequences of a child- als who have suffered major traumatic experiences can and do recov- hood disability. Her father managed a struggling gas station and her er and are able to live well, work well, love well, play well.” mother, a gifted musician, taught piano lessons to make ends meet. When teaching, Walsh often uses an example that Maya As the family was starting to get on its feet, a fire swept through the Angelou has given about her own life. In a very difficult childhood, apartment building where they lived when Walsh was just two, and shuttled between relatives in St. Louis, Arkansas, and California, they were left homeless for a time. Angelou found a stable home with her grandmother and her mater- Throughout their hardships, however, Walsh says “my parents nal “Uncle Willie,” who constantly encouraged Angelou to study loved me well. In our neighborhood, where most children went to and believed in her potential, even though he was poor, disabled, work in the factories after high school, they believed in my potential and uneducated himself. “Every family has an Uncle Willie,” Walsh and encouraged me to go to college. Because of their support, I tells her class. “So rather than just pluck children out of families, we always knew I would make something of my life.” have to work to find those Uncle Willies.” When Walsh was 14, the family moved to California. At UC Walsh has traveled around the world, doing training and con- Berkeley she assumed she would have a career as a neuroscientist. But

18 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 having found a new goal during her time in the Peace Corps, Walsh entered the MSW program at Smith College when she returned from Morocco. In her first-year field placement at the psychiatric inpatient unit at Yale, she found her passion in family therapy, and during clinical work at the Yale Child Study Center had the opportunity to present cases to visiting scholars Anna Freud and Erik Erikson. Walsh moved to Chicago in 1971 to be the family studies coordinator in a schizophrenia research program at Michael Reese Hospital. The variety she found in her “normal control group” sparked her curiosity about so-called “normal families,” and this interest led her to the University of Chicago’s doctoral program in human development. “So where my clinical work had been focused on the influences in mal-adaptation, my doctoral work looked at what contributed to positive growth, and that was the most important scholarly influence,” she says. After a faculty appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and the Family Institute at Northwestern, Walsh joined the faculty Froma Walsh of SSA in 1982. During her time at the School, she has served as president of the American Family Therapy Academy and editor of Greatest Hits the Journal of Marital & Family Therapy. Along with her husband, John Rolland, a psychiatrist who specializes in the psycho-social Of all of Froma Walsh’s complications and challenges associated with illness or disability, publications, these four may Walsh co-directs The Chicago Center for Family Health, a nonprof- be the most influential. All of it institute affiliated with the University that provides advanced her books are still in print: training in resilience-oriented family therapy for community-based professionals and agencies interested in using the model to strength- Normal Family Processes: Growing Diversity and Complexity en vulnerable families. (3rd Edition, 2003, Guilford Press) First At SSA, Walsh says, “Above all, I love the teaching. U of C published in 1993, this book challenged students are bright and curious. So when I think about retirement traditional notions of family in the United from teaching, it is reluctantly.” States and presents the leading research “Froma has been an incredible asset to SSA and especially to on contemporary families. the students who have taken her courses,” says Sharon Berlin, SSA’s Strengthening Family Resilience Helen Ross Professor Emerita. “As a colleague, I have enjoyed (2nd Edition, 2006, Guilford Press) Froma’s incisive intellect and her wonderful sense of humor. These Originally published in 1998, the book is two assets make an unbeatable combination. I always loved sitting designed as a clinical resource for next to her at meetings because she brought a kind of spark, fresh- practitioners, providing guidelines to address a wide range of challenges. ness, and humorous irreverence to deliberations.” Retirement from SSA does not mean slowing down for Walsh. Spiritual Resources in Family She will expand her consulting and training of mental health profes- Therapy (2003, Guilford Press) This text sionals internationally. She is working on a new edition of her book examines the connection between faith Spiritual Resources in Family Therapy and has plans to begin research and resilience, bridging a gap that has long existed in mental health literature. into the relational significance of companion animals. “I want to draw from all the emerging research on the roles that pets play in Living Beyond Loss: Death in the family dynamics—including issues of divorce and custody—and Family (2nd Edition, 2004, W.W. Norton) their intimate relationship with people who live alone or need assis- Edited with Monica McGoldrick, the book tance. It’s a whole area that has barely received attention in the men- examines the effects of loss on an entire tal health field.” family system and helps families and therapists with a wide range of normative So while her time at SSA draws to a close, she presses on in and complicated losses. other areas of scholarly interest. And while she says she would love to continue teaching part time, she has plenty to occupy her. “All of my scholarly work will continue—at full speed,” she says. “And it will continue until I drop.”

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 19 The High Cost

of GivingBY JOHN PULLEY Back Can financial aid be fixed so graduate stude

ARA give back to her community, she supported scholarship. Without BUDOWSKY enrolled in SSA’s master’s degree this support, she says she would- had been an aca- program. “If I was able to get a n’t have been able to afford an demic standout degree from a place like the SSA education. But upon gradu- at Chicago’s pub- University of Chicago, I wanted ation from the School, she will lic schools, but to make sure I wasn’t forgetting also have accumulated approxi- swithout financial aid, she would my roots,” she says. mately $35,000 in total debt for have been unable to attend the After graduation from SSA her graduate and undergrad University of Chicago. Growing next spring, Budowsky says she degrees. Her spouse, a Chicago up in Chicago’s blue-collar looks forward to “working in the alumnus who teaches in the city’s neighborhoods, Budowksy had city in a mental health setting public school system, racked up The financial only a fleeting familiarity with with children, maybe doing out- an estimated $80,000 in under- squeeze can be financial security. Money was reach with the school system, graduate debt. always tight. The family business, and being financially secure. Not Like other graduate schools particularly a record store, failed, and income well off, but able to pay off the around the country that produce uncomfortable for provided by her father, a musi- loans and to buy a house.” alumni who are ready for a career cian, was as up and down as ran- Budowsky may have trouble in public service, SSA works hard those who work in dom notes on a musical scale. achieving the future she envi- to provide the necessary financial fields such as With grants and scholar- sions. She receives more than aid to enroll meritorious graduate ships, however, Budowsky gradu- $20,000 annually in financial aid students such as Budowsky. Due social work or ated in 2006 with a B.A. in from the School in the form of a to increasing costs of a graduate education. human development. Eager to paid assistantship and a donor- education and the difficulty of

20 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 raising adequate funds, a crisis is post-secondary costs and finan- new college graduates of four- brewing, one that may affect who cial aid that has failed to keep year institutions had student loan can afford to attend such schools. pace—has been building for debt. In 2004, two-thirds of new “We get concerned about years. In the 1980s, college grads had educational debt. the level of debt students are enrollment of students from fam- “Over the past two decades, acquiring and the salaries they ilies of modest means surged and undergraduate student loans have will be able to command,” says federal and state support of high- supplanted grant aid as the pri- Penny Johnson, SSA’s dean of er education began a long mary way students finance their students. “We are always looking decline. Tuition began increasing college education,” the report for scholarship funds. We have faster than median family concluded. lots of endowed funds for schol- incomes. The impact has turned The crisis isn’t confined to arships, but they are small. the traditional model of educa- undergraduate education. While Unfortunately, the capacity of tional financing on its head, with undergraduates are eligible for social work alumni to make large students “shouldering an increas- government grants and other donations to support the next ing share of the costs,” according support, most master’s degree generation is limited compared to the PIRG report. students who do not receive to other careers.” Even after adjusting for institutional financial aid rely on Average student debt inflation, average student debt loans. The federal government increased more >>> . <<< increased more than 50 percent provides $8,500 in government- in the past decade, according to a subsidized Stafford loans and than 50 percent THE FINANCIAL SQUEEZE recent report from the U.S. $12,000 in unsubsidized loans in the past decade. can be particularly uncomfort- Department of Education. In (the federal government pays the able for social workers, public 1993, fewer than one-third of interest on subsidized loans while nts can still afford to work in public service?

school teachers, and others who “Forty percent of students are in school), and stu- Education, indicates that 81 per- work in low-paying fields and dents who apply early can get up cent of graduates from master’s struggle to pay off hefty student students who to $4,500 in Perkins loans, programs had loan debt. The loans. Among graduates of public choose not to which can be forgiven if a gradu- median amount owed is four-year colleges, 37 percent ate takes a qualifying job, such as $25,000. The survey sought data pursue graduate have too much debt to manage working with children. only on debt accumulated while as a starting social worker and 55 study do so because On the other hand, the debt enrolled in a post-graduate pro- percent of private college gradu- of the fear of accumulated in the attainment of gram, but the data may be ates would face serious repay- bachelor’s degrees tends to exac- skewed by respondents who ment challenges as a starting mounting student erbate the financial struggles of included undergraduate debt, a social worker, according to debt.” students who pursue post-gradu- spokesperson says. “Paying Back, Not Giving Back: ate diplomas. At SSA, about half “Research shows that 40 per- Student Debt’s Negative Impact the students beginning the mas- cent of students who choose not on Public Service Career ter’s program in the current aca- to pursue graduate study do so Opportunities,” a report released demic year have undergraduate because of the fear of mounting last year by the Higher debt, which ranges from $5,000 student debt,” says Ben Baron, Education Project, an initiative to $74,000. The average is vice president of graduate pro- of state Public Interest Research $20,172. grams for Kaplan Test Prep and Groups. Preliminary analysis of the Admissions. “The reality is that Higher education’s afford- 2006 Annual Survey of Social for many students, there are ability crisis—essentially a Work Programs, conducted by enormous sacrifices that go along widening gap between escalating the Council for Social Work with the time and effort it takes

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 21 Supporting Those Who Support Children to do graduate school. No one study program. Unmet costs are should be deterred from their met by higher-cost loans from OR MUCH OF HER ADULT LIFE, DORIS JEAN KELLER has been dream because of educational private lenders. an advocate for children. Her $100,000 gift to the School of costs.” “We are steadily working to Social Service Administration ensures that others will contin- encourage alumni and other phi- F ue doing that work into perpetuity. >>> . <<< The William S. and Doris Jean Keller Family Scholarship lanthropists, including charitable Endowment provides annual financial help to a student “who plans to foundations and corporations, to work to improve the lives of abused and neglected children and to WITH AN ANNUAL tuition of give,” says Stephen Gilmore, assure that every child is raised in a safe, about $32,000, the School of SSA’s associate dean for external loving, and permanent home.” In select- Social Service Administration is affairs. “We simply could not ing recipients, preference is given to sec- one of the more moderately ond-year master’s degree students. attract students of great promise Social service professionals who priced options among University and diverse backgrounds who work with disadvantaged children of Chicago graduate schools. can be successful in a rigorous encounter daunting impediments, from Still, add in an estimated environment without significant inadequate resources to legal and bureau- $14,000 to live in Chicago, the tuition support.” cratic red tape to apathy. The enormity of expense of insurance and other the challenge and the high cost to society Increasing diversity—racial, of failing to overcome it mandates that outlays, and costs quickly ethnic, economic—often means people working in the field be smart, ded- become prohibitive. enrolling students who are least icated, and armed with the best educa- Doris Jean Keller To keep the School affordable to pay high educational tion available. “I think it’s so important to able for as many students as pos- costs. Linda Clum, SSA’s admis- get quality people like we have in the program right now,” Keller says. sible, SSA has made financial aid “These young people are excellent. They’re very innovative. They really sions director, regularly talks to are the best and brightest that I’ve ever met.” a priority for years, a commit- students who are interested in Keller’s role as a philanthropist resulted from decades of volun- ment that has only increased in SSA. Those conversations tend to teer work, which began with her involvement in the local and national the last decade. The School now cover a range of topics, but Parent Teacher Association. Over the years, she has served various provides some 92 percent of mas- “eventually we get down to the organizations dedicated to child welfare, including the National Safety ter’s degree students with scholar- Council and a local health board. In 1977 she founded Illinois Action price tag,” which can be the criti- for Children (IAC), a statewide group that advocates for foster chil- ships, the amounts determined cal factor in students’ deciding to dren. When IAC disbanded in 2003, Keller augmented the group’s primarily on the basis of merit. attend SSA or even to apply. scholarship fund to make the $100,000 donation to SSA. Awards range from $2,500 to Applications held steady last year, “We can’t have a just society with kids who aren’t functioning,” more than $20,000. In the com- and the entering class is strong, says Keller, the mother of four grown children, including a daughter petitive field of attracting the who graduated from SSA. Every year, the pair has lunch with the but some coveted students recipient of the family scholarship. “They all thank me tremendously,” very best doctoral students, SSA declined acceptance to SSA on she says. “They tell me they wouldn’t be there without it.” provides full tuition and fees, the basis of cost. “We’re con- including health insurance, to cerned that we will continue to students working toward a get the most highly talented stu- Ph.D., and a fellowship that dents,” Clum says. working in social welfare and the would pay 10 percent of his comes with a stipend worth “Because students with available resources falling prima- income for 10 years, which $15,000 to $18,000 annually. lower incomes are more depend- rily on students—and schools would be a hefty sum. My stu- SSA raises all this money ent on student loans than higher like SSA that are trying to ease dents who go into social work or from a number of sources. income students, students who that burden—the question become artists would pay 10 per- Endowed funds yield approxi- already face significant challenges becomes: Is there a better way? cent of theirs, which would be mately $600,000 for student to attending college will more In May, Robert Reich, a for- far less. The private-equity guy support each year and new gifts strongly feel the effect of loan mer Labor Department secretary would, in effect, subsidize the bring in approximately $2 mil- debt on career choice,” according in the Clinton administration, social worker and the artist. And lion more, of which about to the Higher Education Project. proposed a scheme for student- why not? This way all of them $500,000 provides merit- and loan repayment that seems radi- could follow their callings.” need-based scholarships. In addi- >>> . <<< cal on first glance. In a commen- It’s not an unreasonable idea; tion, SSA encourages students to tary for National Public Radio, in fact, a version is already in apply for research assistantships WITH THE COST of bridging Reich suggested that the well- place in other countries. In 1989, and other jobs that qualify for the gap between the expense of a compensated graduate “who’s the Swedish government intro- the government-subsidized work graduate education for those landed that private-equity job duced student loans with

22 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 income-contingent repayment that would allow the balance of private lenders, which he says schemes that link the amount of student loans to be forgiven for will encourage them to charge graduates’ repayments with their those working full-time in a pub- higher rates of interest on their level of income. Britain, South lic service profession for ten loans. More importantly, though, Africa, Australia, and New years. “Anybody in a public serv- he says, is that escalating tuition Zealand have introduced similar ice field with both high debt and costs will increase loan amounts. programs that calculate repay- low income will benefit,” says In the end, the new federal ment as a percentage of future Mark Kantowitz, college plan- loan forgiveness programs, while income. ning author and publisher of the certainly appreciated by many Closer to home, the Income website FinAid. He argues that graduates, may not have as large Contingent Repayment program there are a lot of good things in of an impact in helping grad stu- (ICR) from the U.S. Department the bill, even though it phases in dents enter public service as “Educational debts of Education offers a watered many of the new programs to hoped. Studies have shown that down version for graduates who keep to a budget—and reduces forgiveness after years or even dissuade even the pursue careers with lower salaries, federal subsidies to private decades does not have nearly as most dedicated such as careers in public service. lenders to help raise the funds. much of an impact as lower pay- The program pegs monthly pay- The hidden cost of lowering ments throughout the life of the graduates from ments to the borrower’s income, lender subsidies may still not be loan. taking low-paying family size, and total amount clear. “Some graduate students For example, Erica Field, a public interest jobs.” borrowed. Loan debt remaining will come out worse because of Harvard researcher, looked at after 25 years is discharged [Congress’s] cutting lender subsi- two groups of randomly assigned (although the amount forgiven is dies,” predicts Dan Thibeault, applicants admitted to NYU Law educational debt on students treated as taxable income). cofounder and president of School. One group was offered could choose to eliminate student However, banks and other pri- Graduate Leverage, a student- low-debt financial aid, the other loans from their financial-aid vate institutions that make gov- debt advisory service founded in group a financial aid package equations, a strategy that has ernment-guaranteed loans are 2003 by a group of Harvard that required them to carry debt gained adherents in higher educa- ineligible for participation and Business School classmates. that would be forgiven later on. tion. This spring, Davidson that and other restrictions make Thibeault notes that lower subsi- The packages had equivalent College became the first private the program unavailable or unat- dies mean less profit margin for monetary value. Participants liberal arts school to join Harvard tractive to the vast majority of offered the low-debt financial aid University and a handful of other borrowers. “We simply could not package were twice as likely to elite institutions in eliminating In the wake of a scandal in attract students of great enroll in law school as their peers loans as part of their financial aid how some universities and banks who were offered high-debt aid packages for undergraduates. have steered undergraduate stu- promise and diverse that would be forgiven. The cost of such plans is very dents to specific loans, a massive backgrounds who can Moreover, members of the low- high, though. Paying for $20 billion college aid bill was debt group were up to 45 per- Davidson’s no-loans policy will passed this fall by the federal gov- be successful in a cent more likely than their high- require the college, with an enroll- ernment. Much of the bill’s pro- rigorous environment debt peers to take a first job in ment of 1,700 students, to raise an estimated $75 million in new visions only affect undergrads, without significant public interest law. such as an increase in the “If there is debt aversion, or funds. The initiative was undertak- amount a Pell grant will provide tuition support.” psychic disutility of debt beyond en, in part, because graduates were annually and a phased-in reduc- borrowing costs, even education- abandoning social work for higher tion in the rate on Stafford loans. al loans that are repaid by a third paying jobs in other sectors. For graduate students, the party could influence career deci- “They wanted that debt to federal aid package includes a sions,” Field wrote. “Educational go away,” says Chris Gruber, new version of ICR, called debts of the current magnitude Davidson’s vice president and dean Income-Based Repayment (IBR), dissuade even the most dedicated of admissions and financial aid. which will lower the cap on graduates from taking low-paying “We wanted students to be guided monthly payments for low- to public interest jobs.” by their hearts as to what they moderate-income graduates, and Graduate schools eager to wanted to do in the future, as a loan-forgiveness component negate the impact of onerous opposed to their pocketbooks.”

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 23 inside social service review BY RICHARD MERTENS

Necessary Expenses Women who found work after leaving welfare Founded in 1927, Social Service aren’t spending more on their families Review is committed to examining VER SINCE THE 1996 WELFARE REFORM ACT, social scientists have social welfare policy and practice struggled to figure out how the major shift in policy has changed the and evaluating its effects. lives of America’s poor. Few dispute that welfare reform has succeeded in shifting many single mothers from welfare into jobs. But questions Providing multidisciplinary and Eremain about its broader consequences for poor families—and especially for children. multicultural analyses of current A new study of the spending patterns of single mothers suggests that in some ways reform did little to help children. Single mothers are spending more on policies and past practices, SSR work-related expenses like transportation and adult clothing but no more than publishes critical research from before on durable goods like refrigerators or on their children. The study, reported in the September 2007 Social Science Review, found no social welfare scholars and practitioners, as well as increase in spending on children’s clothing or on “education and enrichment,” sociologists, economists, theologians, historians, such as computers, books, and newspapers. The authors say that their findings, though tentative, suggest that social policies from the 1990s may have done little psychologists, and political scientists. Social Service to close the gap between poor and better-off families. Review is edited by the faculty of the School of “We were hoping we would see some increase in expenditures on children’s items. But welfare reform in the U.S. did not aim to increase expenditures on chil- Social Service Administration, led by Emily Klein dren. Its aim was to move women from welfare to work.” says Neeraj Kaushal, Gidwitz Professor Michael Sosin. professor of social work at Columbia University and lead author of “Welfare Reform and Family Expenditures: How Are Single Mothers Adapting to the New Below are summaries of three articles that appeared in the 2007 issues Welfare and Work Regime?” of Social Service Review. Qin Gao, assistant professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Social Service, and Jane Waldfogel, professor of social work and public affairs at

All on the Family Welfare reform’s effects on child welfare are unclear in a new study, but some of the indicators are troubling

IKE OTHER RESEARCHERS, welfare sanctions and child maltreat- KRISTEN SLACK worried that ment, Slack and her colleagues find welfare reform would hurt some good news. Using data from L families, increase child mal- Illinois, they conclude that families sanc- treatment, and overwhelm the capacity tioned under the new welfare laws are of child protection agencies to cope no more likely than other families to with it. become cases of child abuse or neglect. “My main concerns about the But their article, entitled “Do Welfare welfare plans being vetted in the early Sanctions Increase Child Protection 1990s were that they were just too System Involvement? A Cautious harsh on families, that there were impli- Answer,” tells a more complicated cations for family income that could story. Although sanctions seem to pro- have adverse effects on child welfare,” duce no increase in substantiated cases said Slack, an associate professor in the of abuse and neglect, they do result in School of Social Work at the University more reports of it. The authors say this that simply don’t rise to the level of fare payments due to marriage, higher of Wisconsin-Madison, who authored increase is itself worrisome. In practice, abuse, especially in states like Illinois, income, or failure to file the proper the paper with Bong Joo Lee from many families are reported several times which imposes a relatively high legal paperwork, did result in more proven Seoul National University and Lawrence before child protection agencies are threshold. cases of maltreatment when other Berger from the University of able to act on the reports. Also, families And there’s more troubling news. sources of income did not make up for Wisconsin-Madison. that fall under suspicion of child abuse The authors found that other kinds of the cuts. Now, in a study that compares may be experiencing real difficulties grant reductions, such as cuts in wel- Historically, researchers have

24 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 Parenting Trap Contrary to New indications about how lack of resources expectations, have a negative impact on children Columbia University’s School of Social welfare reform OW DOES ONE BECOME But how to explain these find- Work collaborated with Kaushal in the A GOOD ENOUGH PAR- ings? Berger and other researchers have study. seemed to ENT? What promotes been focusing on parenting as one of Kaushal and her colleagues used a Hgood parenting? And the links between how children grow three-part analysis to focus on single produce no under what conditions do parents up and their development and well- mothers with no more than a high-school struggle? being. One challenge researchers face is education and to pare away the effect of Such questions have no easy how to identify—and measure—inad- other factors. They looked at total spend- increase in answers. But social scientists have equate parenting. Reasoning that even ing but also different categories of spend- focused increasing attention on the adequate parents have different ing. Unlike previous researchers, they spending on complicated nexus of income, family strengths and weaknesses, Berger found no increase in total spending. But structure, parenting, and child well- looked at a range of indicators, includ- they did find that welfare reform changed childcare. being. A recent study tries to shed ing parental warmth, frequency of how mothers spend their money. light on factors that lead to poor spanking, neatness and cleanliness of One question that remains unanswered concerns childcare. Contrary parenting, with implications for both the home, and the number of outings to expectations, Kaushal and her colleagues found that welfare reform welfare reform and and activities. seemed to produce no increase in spending on childcare. Single mothers marriage-promotion Parents who fell in may be relying on family and friends for more child care, or childcare subsi- policies. the bottom 10 dies may be reaching the families that need them most, she said. In an article percent in any one published in the category were Kaushal, Neeraj, Qin Gao, and Jane Waldfogel. 2007. “Welfare Reform and Family Expenditures: September 2007 deemed to expose How Are Single Mothers Adapting to the New Welfare and Work Regime?” Social Service Review Social Service their children to 81 (3): 369-96. Review, Lawrence substandard par- Berger finds that chil- enting. dren are more likely to experience The data came from the National “substandard parenting” if their Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which mother has a partner who is not their followed over many years thousands of biological parent. At the same time, girls and young women, many of money moderates the effect in these whom became mothers. The survey families. Substandard parenting data allowed Berger to see how chang- decreases as income rises. ing circumstances affected parenting Berger also found strong evi- over time. found that families on welfare run a point to a “social welfare policy dence that single mothers who work Berger says his findings suggest higher risk of involvement with child frontier,” where families suffering longer hours are more likely to exhibit that policies to promote marriage need protection services. But Slack, the economic hardship under the new substandard parenting. to take into account their effect on pre- study’s lead author, said they have welfare rules find themselves in what “Potentially it’s a story of stress,” vious children, since the quality of par- found little evidence that welfare Slack calls a “programmatic limbo.” says Berger, an assistant professor in enting appears to decline for children reform has produced “huge effects “Many of them are doing the School of Social Work and an affil- whose mother lives with a man who is on kids, good or bad.” worse, but their hardships do not iate with the Institute for Research on not their biological father. They also And yet these findings have rise to the level of ‘abuse’ or ‘neg- Poverty at the University of Wisconsin- raise questions about how encouraging not laid to rest all her questions lect’ under state statutes,” she says. Madison. “You’ve got more to do. single mothers to work may hurt their about the reform effort, now 11 “What are we supposed to do with You’re splitting time between working ability to be good parents. But given years old. She noted that many stud- this group of families? Neither the and being with the kids. That’s one the shifting nature of modern families, ies of welfare reform date to the welfare system or the child welfare potential explanation. Another is that Berger sees still broader implications. economic prosperity of the 1990s system is addressing their needs. with things like accidents and injuries, “The demographics of families have and fail to take into account the Whose responsibility is it to help or being able to take kids on outings, changed a lot in the last 40 years,” he more difficult years that followed. these families? Where are they sup- you’re simply there less.” says. “About 50 percent of kids spend She also said it was important to posed to turn?” It’s well known that poverty is part of their childhood in a single look beyond welfare sanctions for hard on children. Researchers have mother family, and about a third spend Slack, Kristen S., Bong Joo Lee, and Lawrence signs of families in difficulty. consistently found connections time living with a step-parent. These M. Berger. 2007. “Do Welfare Sanctions between children’s well-being and transitions are going to affect a lot of “We shouldn’t just assume that Increase Child Protection System Involvement? only sanctioned families need help,” A Cautious Answer.” Social Service Review 81 family income and structure. Children families.” she says. She and her colleagues (2): 207-28. tend to thrive better in wealthier fami- Berger, Lawrence M. 2007. “Socioeconomic Factors lies and in families where they live and Substandard Parenting.” Social Service Review with both biological parents. 81 (3): 485-522.

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 25 faculty notes

Nancy Pelosi at Health, the Centers for Disease Control, Levine Wins SSA the Capital and a variety of private foundations. Mental Illness Pollak Award Building in Ludwig has also recently pub- Medication Washington, lished several pieces. His benefit-cost Judith A. Levine is the 2007 recipient D.C., on analysis of the Head Start early child- Management from of the William Pollak Award for May 22, 2007. hood education program was published Excellence in Teaching at SSA. Levine is Webcast as a Social Policy Report by the Society McCracken a faculty affiliate of the University of nationally, for Research on Child Development, Individuals with severe psychological Chicago Population Research Center Norton’s pro- and a mixed-methods study of under- disorders are significantly less likely to and Center for Human Potential and Dolores Norton gram was part ground gun markets in the city of maintain nec- Public Policy. Her fields of interest are of “The Chicago (with Duke professor Philip essary medica- social stratification, poverty and social Science of Early Childhood,” a panel Cook, Columbia professor Sudhir tions treatment policy, low-wage work, gender inequali- with neuroscientists who described Venkatesh, and Harvard professor unless they also ty, sociology of the family, social demog- early brain development and its rela- Anthony Braga) is forthcoming in the receive special- raphy, children’s tionship to learning and behavior. Economic Journal. ized counseling outcomes, Norton spoke about early interac- therapy, health, and tions, relationships, and communicative according to economic soci- experiences between babies and young Chaskin Co-Edits SSA Senior ology. Levine is children and their primary caretakers, Lecturer Stanley McCracken completing a Book on Child as well as the environments that con- Stanley book manu- tribute to developing brain architec- McCracken. In script entitled Welfare Practices ture. University of Chicago Professor a chapter of Clinical Applications of Reaching for James Heckman, the Henry Schultz in Several Motivational Interviewing (Guilford, Judith A. Levine the Bottom Distinguished Service Professor of 2007), entitled, “Motivational Rung: Low- Economics, gave the keynote address. Countries Interviewing for Medication Adherence Income Mothers’ Climb into the Labor Using research as an advocacy tool for in Individuals with Schizophrenia,” Market Before and After Welfare policies and practices that help children McCracken and co-author P.W. Reform, which provides a rare qualita- Ludwig on is the subject of Corrigan outline the methods for help- tive comparison of low-income women’s a new book co- ing therapists build effective relation- experiences with welfare and low-wage Housing Team, edited by ships with clients around medications work before and after welfare reform Robert J. management. through open-ended interviews with 95 Publishes New Chaskin, asso- low-income mothers. Research ciate professor Since 1994 the Pollak Award is at SSA and Pollack Joins presented annually to an SSA faculty The Housing and Urban Development research fellow member or instructor nominated by stu- Department has tapped SSA Professor at the Chapin Drug Committee dents and selected by past recipients. Jens Ludwig to join a research team Hall Center, Robert L. Chaskin Associate Professor Harold Pollack The winner is chosen to recognize con- evaluating the long-term impacts of and Jona M. has been appointed to the National tributions to classroom teaching, includ- Moving to Rosenfeld, the Gordon Brown Professor Academy of Sciences Committee on ing innovative or interdisciplinary Opportunity Emeritus and former director of the Understanding and Controlling the approaches or leadership in curriculum (MTO), a Paul Baerwood School of Social Work, Demand for Illegal Drugs, which is development, and unique ability to HUD-funded Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In attempting to identify what is known encourage, influence, and mentor randomized Research for Action; Cross-National about the nature and scope of markets students. residential mobility Perspectives on Connecting for illegal drugs and the characteristics experiment. Knowledge, Policy, and Practice for of drug users. Researchers will look at Childhood Summit Ludwig is Children, published by Oxford factors influencing drug demand in the Jens Ludwig helping lead University Press, Chaskin and Rosenfeld U.S., including the differences among Brings Norton to the effort to have assembled six child welfare case illegal drugs, characteristics of users, supplement HUD resources available to studies authored by noted experts and the influence of risk on users and sell- Washington support data collection for the evalua- teams from the U.K., Ireland, Israel, ers, and the effects of enforcement on South Africa, and the U.S. into a demand. The project will identify new Dolores Norton, SSA’s Samuel Deutsch tion. Nearly $9 million in federal and collection that provides perspective research directions. Professor, was a participant at the private funding has been invested in on different policy and cultural Pollack is a widely published National Summit on America’s Children, the research by the National Science environments. scholar on the relationships between an event sponsored by House Speaker Foundation, National Institutes of

26 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 New Faculty on Campus SSA welcomes three new professors to the faculty this fall

Charles M. Payne begin teaching at SSA Charles M. Payne joins SSA from in the winter, covering Duke University, where he taught topics like urban educa- African and African-American stud- tion and school reform, ies, history, and sociology, and served the civil rights move- as director of the African and ment, and the sociology African-American Studies Program. of race relations. Payne A prominent scholar in the areas of is no stranger to the urban school reform and the history Chicago area, having of the civil rights movement, Payne taught at Northwestern has been named the Frank P. Hixon from 1985 to 1997 Distinguished Service Professor at prior to his appointment at Duke. SSA. Charles M. Payne Jens Ludwig Michael Woolley Payne’s research on school reform, which draws from many Jens Ludwig years in academia as well as his expe- Professor Jens Ludwig joins SSA ty, mixed-income development or even “I’ve done research that shows rience as executive director of the from Georgetown University, where housing vouchers. “What are the how the social environment in the Urban Education Project from 1982- he taught public policy from 1994 implications of those different housing school, the relationships between stu- 86, has focused on why urban school until the spring. Ludwig’s primary policies on the life outcomes of kids?” dents and supportive adults—espe- systems have been so consistently appointment is at SSA, with affiliat- he asks. “Are they more likely to cially the relationships between stu- dysfunctional. His latest research will ed faculty appointments at the engage in crime? Are their mental and dents and teachers—all affect stu- appear in a new book, So Much Harris School of Public Policy and physical outcomes different?” dent outcomes,” Woolley says. Reform, So Little Change. the University of Chicago Law This fall, Ludwig will move for- “Similarly, family dynamics—how “Urban school systems as we School, where he also taught as a ward with research and helping his involved parents are in the education- used to know them are dying—the visiting professor in 2004 and 2006. wife, a lifelong Southerner, adjust to al process, whether parents talk to laissez faire systems that dominated He also has been affiliated in the Chicago’s weather. “We’re going to kids about schooling, and what they the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s have past with the Northwestern- spend the fall sweater shopping,” he did that day, and future plans—affect changed to something we don’t have University of Chicago Joint Center says with a laugh. In the winter, he outcomes.” a label for,” Payne says. “The leader- for Poverty Research. will teach a crime policy course for the When Woolley talks about ship of urban school systems has Ludwig’s research focuses on Harris School, and then in the spring school outcomes, he digs deeper than been much more aggressive. The improving the life chances of low- he will make his SSA debut teaching grades and test scores. “I look at the question is, does that mean they’ve income children and examines a advanced quantitative methods to attitudes and beliefs about school and been any smarter?” variety of systems ranging from doctoral students. education,” he says. “Students having Payne completed an anthology, schools to criminal justice. “My a perspective about their future that Teach Freedom, earlier this summer research winds up looking at all the includes school, their feelings about Michael Woolley that encapsulates his most recent programmatic areas that bear on the being connected or bonded to school, research on the civil rights move- question of how you help low- Assistant Professor Michael Woolley are also important outcomes that we ment. The focus is on liberation edu- income kids,” he says. “One of the joins SSA from the University of don’t measure or attend to enough in cation, a tradition of self-consciously things I hope to contribute to SSA is Michigan School of Social Work and research. My research supports the political schools in African-American to help people who are running School of Education, where he has idea that some of those behavioral, communities that include the “free- agencies and engaging in clinical taught since 2003. Woolley spent part psychological, or attitudinal out- dom schools” established in practice think even harder about the of last school year as a visiting profes- comes, in turn, affect academic out- Mississippi in the 1960s. larger policy context in which they’re sor at the Yonsei University School of comes.” Woolley’s research has also Such schools are “intended to operating.” Social Welfare in Seoul, where he indicated that longstanding achieve- produce students who had a deeper, Among the programmatic taught a course on clinical practice ment gaps, differences in student aca- more critical understanding of the areas Ludwig has tracked is public with children and presented at the demic outcomes by race/ethnicity, can systems they’re in, but who also housing. Over the past decade, HUD International Conference on School be explained by differences in those understood themselves as change funding through the HOPE VI pro- Social Work. critical social environmental factors at agents,” Payne says. “The research I gram has helped support the demo- A former school social worker, school, in the community, and in the have done on the civil rights move- lition of some of the nation’s high- Woolley has focused his research on family. ment has been on the theme of try- est-poverty public housing projects. the social, contextual, and environ- At SSA, Woolley will teach ing to understand the movement Policymakers continue to debate mental factors that influence children’s courses on social work practice and from the bottom up.” what form of housing assistance school outcomes. These can include school social work, and he hopes to After settling in and continuing should replace these projects, with school climate or culture, family get involved with the Chicago his research in the fall, Payne will possibilities that include lower-densi- dynamics, and neighborhood issues. Consortium on School Research.

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 27 faculty notes

Associate Professor Harold Pollack has joined a committee researching illegal drug markets for the National Academy of Sciences

poverty, policy, and public health. An cols to research that examines cause- Public Schools, has collected data from expert in health administration and poli- and-effect relationships between envi- NYC to Use K-12 across the city tracking students’ per- cy at SSA, and director of the Center ronment, lifestyle, race, and cancer vul- Research Methods formance over time, teacher turnover, for Health Administration Studies, nerabilities. and school spending priorities. Pollack’s recent research concerns HIV The National Institute of Health from U of C According to Easton, directly involving and hepatitis prevention efforts for (NIH) has also appointed Dr. Gehlert to a school officials is essential: “Part of injection drug users, drug abuse and five-person site visit team for reviewing Efforts to improve Chicago Public what has made us trusted is that we dependence among welfare recipients the social and behavioral research Schools led by had all the opposing voices together. If and pregnant women, infant mortality branch of the NIH National Human the University they don’t buy into it, it’s not going to prevention, and child health. Genome Research Institute. She has of Chicago, be listened to.” The University of recently authored a paper entitled including Chicago’s schooling data collection and “Early-Life Conditions and Mechanisms researchers assessment spans nearly two decades, Gehlert Added of Population Health Vulnerabilities” from SSA, will and has become one of the nation’s published in a special September/ be replicated in most important sources of insights on to Two Cancer October issue of Health Affairs on New York City, public education outcomes. according to Caring for the Vulnerable. As director of Melissa Roderick Research Teams the University of Chicago’s Center for New York The state of California has asked SSA Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Mayor Michael Grogan Book Professor Sarah Gehlert to be a mem- Research, Bloomberg and a partnership comprised ber of the strategy team of the Special Gehlert collabo- of social scientists from Columbia, NYU, Calls for Research Initiative of the California rates with a CUNY, and business leaders. Chicago’s Breast Cancer Research Program team of leading researchers on public education, Advocates’ Input (CBCRP). Gehlert will contribute to the University Melissa Roderick, Hermon Dunlap on Health Policy design of a plan to use California public researchers Smith Professor at SSA, and John Q. tax revenues to advance breast cancer examining the Easton, the executive director of the Having returned from her Fullbright research at the University of California. lives of African- University’s Consortium on Chicago Fellowship at Queens University of The plan, accompanied by a report enti- American School Research, will consult with the Belfast, Northern Ireland, Colleen tled, “Identifying Gaps in Breast Cancer Sarah Gehlert women in New York initiative. Grogan, associate professor at SSA, Research: Addressing Disparities and Chicago to Developed and fine-tuned over co-authored Healthy Voices, Unhealthy the Roles of the Physical and Social determine if stress and social isolation nearly 17 years, the University of Silence; Advocacy and Health Policy for Environment,” will link funding proto- contribute to breast carcinogenesis. Chicago, working closely with Chicago the Poor with Michael K. Gusmano,

28 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 assistant professor of health policy and management and Lauterstein Scholar in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia and former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in health policy, published by Georgetown University Press. The book is a call to action for public servants and health advocates for the poor who remain silent during policy development and debate. Grogan and Gusmano examine how representatives for the poor participate in the advisory board process, assess how well nonprofits affect policy debates, and provide pre- scriptive advice for creating a participatory process. The authors conclude that nonprofit groups with significant government funding are more likely to increase political advocacy when a change in government funding or government policy is contemplated that might affect them directly, but that they are also as likely to suppress political activity if that is in their agency’s best interests. Three New Voisin Papers on Youth Associate Professor Dexter Voisin is the lead author on several recently published papers. The Journal of HIV/AIDS and Social Services includes “Understanding Motivations for Having Sex among Detained Youth: Implications for HIV Prevention Programs.” The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry published “Community Violence Exposure and Health-risk Dexter Voisin Outcomes among Detained Adolescents.” And “A Commentary on Community Violence Exposure and HIV Risk Behaviors among African American Adolescents” appeared in African American Research Perspectives.

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 29 memoranda

1 2

Award to Honor Vitale (see page 1). Associate Professor Julia Henly, and development within the social work To honor Jarrett’s contributions to Victor Bernstein, a research associate field.” Jarrett as She Leaves the School, SSA announced the cre- professor and clinical psychologist. Visiting Committee ation of the Valerie Jarrett Award for The initiative is designed to edu- Faculty Leadership in May. The award cate and prepare future practitioners SSA Launches New Valerie Jarrett, who has been a member will be presented to a faculty member and researchers interested in infant Aging Initiative and chairman of the School’s Visiting who has demonstrated distinguished mental health. The School will establish Committee since 2001, stepped down leadership that has contributed to the a professional development training site SSA has received a John A. Hartford from the role this spring. A leading development and enrichment of the at SSA that offers classes in family sup- Foundation Practicum Partnership voice in sup- faculty, their research, the recruitment port to social work students and Program (PPP) grant to encourage sec- port of SSA, and retention of exceptional scholars, advanced training in infant mental ond-year social work students to study Jarrett is CEO and the greater good of the School. health through the School’s Professional the field of aging. Up to 30 Geriatric of The Habitat The recipient will be chosen by a com- Development Program. The project will Leadership Fellows (GLF) will be trained Company, and mittee led by the deputy dean for the support doctoral students with interests over the next three years through an vice-chairman Faculty. in young children, increase the visibility innovative collaboration with field of the Board of infant mental health within social instructors and agencies serving the eld- of Trustees of work education nationally, and develop erly. the University SSA Program a library of video/DVD/ training Fellows at SSA are required to of Chicago. Focusing on Infants resources to be shared with practitioner take two courses in aging: Aging and Valerie Jarrett She is also training sites. Mental Health, and Aging and Public chairman of and Young Children SSA has long been a leader in Policy. In addition to field placements as the University of Chicago Medical A new three-year SSA project funded training practitioners to support families their anchor sites, they have two or Center Board and of the Board’s by the Irving Harris Foundation will and young children and has produced more “rotations” over the course of the Executive Committee. “Valerie has been offer professional development oppor- scholarship that has transformed clinical year. These are opportunities to learn instrumental in raising awareness and tunities for social workers who practice practice, clinical education, and social different aspects of the continuum of support for SSA,” says Dean Jeanne with infants, young children, and their policies affecting families and children. care for older adults. Marsh. “She has also been crucial in parents. Sidney Hans, professor at SSA Announcing the grant, Phyllis Glink, Integrative Seminars, a unique fea- advancing understanding of the role and director of the School’s doctoral executive director of the Irving Harris ture of the Hartford PPP, are scheduled and value of social work in our society.” program, will lead the project and be Foundation, said, “We believe you have throughout the year. Fellows at the vari- Jarrett has been succeeded as chairman joined by colleagues Dolores Norton, identified a critical need to elevate the ous field sites introduce their GLF col- of the Visiting Committee by David J. the Samuel Deutsch Professor at SSA, field of infant mental health and child leagues to their anchor organization,

30 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 3 4 5

SSA Celebrates: Photos from the conferences to honor the careers of Froma Walsh and Sharon Berlin.

7 8 1. Panel discussion of the presenters at the conclusion of the Walsh symposium 2. Sharon Berlin and Froma Walsh 3. Bill Borden with Berlin 4. Beth Angell and Berlin 5. Keith Madderom 6. Walsh with daughter Claire Whitney and husband John Rolland 7. Dexter Voisin and Berlin 8. Dodie Norton and Sydney Hans

to the work they are doing, the clients munity-based school in Darfur for dis- is presented by SSA, William Brodsky, Taber, echoed Berlin’s dedication to they see, and projects they are engaged placed refugees. Partial funding for this Frank M. Clark, Jeanne Marsh, Alan critical thinking, theoretical pluralism, in. The settings include hospitals, senior program has been provided by the McNally, Linda Johnson Rice, and the and pragmatism. The program was centers, community-based mental University of Chicago Provost’s Office Pastora San Juan Cafferty Lecture Fund. made possible in part by the Ikuo health centers, and a unique volunteer from the Darfur Victims and Education Yamaguchi Memorial Seminar Fund. organization serving the socialization Fund. needs of elders. Second-year student Corrine Berlin Honored Walsh Symposium SSA and Loyola University School Widmer was the recipient of the 2007 at Conference of Social Work are collaborating in the SSA International Social Welfare (ISW) Celebrates Career Practicum Partnership Program, making Fellowship. Over the summer of 2007, “The Play and Place of Theory in Social On the occasion of her retirement, Chicago an ideal place for social work Widmer worked with street children in Work Practice,” a conference that cele- SSA hosted a symposium on October students interested in working with the Central America. Established in 2005, brated the career of Helen Ross 12th to honor the work and career elderly. the ISW group is a student organization Professor Sharon B. Berlin, was held on of Froma Walsh, SSA’s Mose and dedicated to promoting the discussion May 11. The conference, which includ- Sylvia Firestone Professor and profes- of international social justice issues and ed speakers Malcolm Payne, Jerome C. sor in the department of psychiatry Students Win Awards social work’s response to these issues. Wakefield, Susan Kemp, James Clark, at the Pritzker School of Medicine at Froma Walsh, Edwina Uehara, and Sara to Work Abroad the University of Chicago. The day- The U.S. State Department awarded Kennedy Gives San long symposium, entitled recent SSA graduate Jonathan Wildt a “Strengthening Resilience in critical language scholarship to study Juan Cafferty Lecture Vulnerable Families,” featured Arabic in Cairo, Egypt. One of 20 Randall Kennedy, the Michael R. Klein notable scholars and practitioners, Americans in the program, Wildt was Professor of Law at Harvard Law including Monica McGoldrick, Carol the only social worker. Upon comple- School, gave the Second Annual Anderson, Waldo E. Johnson, Jr., tion, Wildt, who earned a master’s Pastora San Juan Cafferty Lecture on Celia Jeas Falicov, Robert-Jay Green, degree from SSA in 2007, is preparing Race and Ethnicity in American Life on John S. Rolland, Evan Imber-Black, to go to Sudan where he will serve as April 12, 2007. Kennedy’s talk was Peter Fraenkel, and Michael Ungar. the assistant director of the Educational titled, “Sell-out: The Politics of Racial Frank M. Clark, Jeanne Marsh, Funding for this program was made Development Organization. As the sole Betrayal.” This annual lecture is held in Pastora San Juan Cafferty, and possible in part by the Ruth Knee non-Sudanese member of a 10-person honor of the career of SSA Professor Randall Kennedy at the 2007 Endowment for Spirituality in Social team, Wildt will work to start a com- Emerita Pastora San Juan Cafferty, and annual Cafferty lecture. Work.

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 31 memoranda

Scenes from 2007 Alumni Weekend (clockwise from upper left): Dean Jeanne Marsh and Edwina Uehara, Ph.D. '87; Susan Gail Austin, A.M. '87, and Deputy Dean of the Curriculum Karen Teigiser; Sharon Berlin delivering the 2007 Rhoda G. Sarnat Lecture; Roslyn Marshall Paine, A.M. '02, with her husband Andrew Stuart Paine and son Ian; Gregory Gaither, A.M. '84, talks with Richard Scott III, A.M. '98; the crowd at SSA Nite! raises their glasses to toast the upcoming Centennial. Alumni Weekend Celebrated for 2007 SSA and the University of Chicago celebrated Alumni Weekend on June 1-3, 2007. This year’s events included the School’s 50 Plus Luncheon, honoring the class of 1957 and emeriti alumni, and the third annual Rhoda G. Sarnat Lecture, “Why Cognitive Therapy Needs Social Work,” by Helen Ross Professor Sharon Berlin. SSA Nite!, a reception hosted by members of the SSA Alumni Association board of directors, honored Edwina Uehara, Ph.D. ‘87, with the Edith Abbott Award (see “Alumni Updates” on page 34), and also bid farewell to board president, Harley Grant, A.M. ‘96, and welcomed Molly Baltman, A.M. ‘98, as the president-elect.

Student Awards Highlight Graduation Ceremony

To honor the commencement of 162 graduates, SSA held its spring hooding ceremony on June 7, 2007. In addition to pre- senting the 2007 William Pollak Excellence in Teaching Award (see Faculty Notes on page 26), a number of student awards were celebrated during the event. SSA students Phoebe Cherenfant and Corrine Widmer were honored with the Wilma Walker Honor Award, which is presented to students for outstanding work in the first year and promise for future achievements in social work. Beth Ann McDowell and Caroline Ryan were the recipients of the Sonia Berz Honor Award, which is given to graduating master’s degree students for outstanding work and promise in the field of aging. Angela Habr was the recipient of the Evelyn Harris Ginsburg Memorial Prize, awarded to a graduating master’s degree student for outstanding work and promise for work in schools. Jarred Butto was honored with the Solomon O. Lichter Memorial Prize, presented to a master’s degree student for scholarship and professional leadership. Award winners—SSA students and graduates honored at commencement (from left to right): Jarred Butto, Angela Habr, Carolyn Ryan, Beth Ann McDowell, Corrine Widmer, and Phoebe Cherenfant. 32 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 the alumni community

Alumni Association News

Openings on Alumni Association Board SSA is seeking candidates to serve on the Alumni Association Board of Directors. Nominations and letters of interest are due by March 1, 2008. Board members act as ambassadors for SSA, encourage alumni participation in SSA and University of Chicago initiatives and events, partici- Presidents and Dean: Molly Baltman (left) with Dean Jeanne Marsh and outgoing pate in committees to develop and implement programs Alumni Association President Harley Grant. and events, contribute annually to The SSA Fund, strength- en the relationship between the SSA Alumni Association A Q&A with Molly Baltman, AA Board President and the University of Chicago Alumni Association, and initiate and encourage an open dialog with SSA alumni, stu- Incoming SSA Alumni Association President Molly Baltman serves as a dents, faculty, and administration. Members serve a term of program officer in the communities grantmaking area within the Chicago-based at least two years (but are eligible to serve two consecutive McCormick Tribune Foundation. She talked with SSA Magazine about her plans for the two-year terms) and attend quarterly meetings and alumni 2007-08 year. events. Q: What do you see as the role of the SSA Alumni Association? A: The three main goals of the alumni association are to advise the School on the needs of alumni and current practices in the field, provide opportunities for alumni to give back to the profession by mentoring students, and provide avenues for alumni to network and learn from each other professionally. Learning doesn’t stop at graduation. Client services and community impact improves when we are broadening ourselves, which we do by connecting to each other and to the School.

Q: What do you plan to emphasize during your term as president? A: This year, the focus of the alumni board is to support the 100th anniversary of the School. We want to engage all alumni in centennial activities and to support the centennial planning committee in helping them document the history of the School. This includes recognizing alumni who have made significant contributions to the history of the field. We also want to focus on engaging alumni outside of Chicago by recruiting volunteers in different cities to connect with fellow alumni and develop programming Elizabeth M. Butler, A.M. ‘46 (right) with SSA faculty and staff. that provides a connection back to the School. We have representatives on the board from many different cities, and have a committee dedicated to engaging alumni outside of Chicago.

Call for Butler Award Nominees Q: What does SSA stand for, in your eyes, and why is it important In 2008, the Alumni Association of SSA will honor a to you? recent graduate alumna/us who shows exceptional prom- A: SSA has a very well-respected curriculum, graduates who have an impact in the field, ise in the field of social work over the course of his/her and a rich history. One hundred years ago, our founders developed an approach to career. Nominees for the 2008 Elizabeth Butler Award improving social conditions—the intense study of the intellectual base of social work— must have earned an A.M. or Ph.D. from SSA between that SSA is still known for. The School’s emphasis on direct service and administration is five and 10 years ago and demonstrate extraordinary incredibly valuable in social work today. I think SSA does an excellent job of giving career success and consistent achievement. The successful students the tools they need to advance in their careers. candidate will show a strong commitment to social change, leadership in an agency or a community, creativity Q: Any last thoughts? in non-traditional or innovative approaches to practice, A: I would encourage alumni to get involved by joining a committee of the board, contributions to the field through research and publica- attending lectures, contributing to the School, or mentoring students. The centennial tions, and/or demonstrated professional skills. celebration is an important time for the future of the School. Regardless of where Nominations are due February 1, 2008. For more alumni live, I encourage people to get involved in centennial activities and come to information, please call 773-702-1431, email alumni@ Chicago for reunion weekend on June 7, 2008 to celebrate this significant milestone ssa.uchicago.edu, or visit www.ssa.uchicago.edu/alumni/. for SSA.

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 33 the alumni community

Alumni Updates

John Wax, A.M. ‘47, (1922-2000) chotherapy consisting of weekend con- served as city manager of several Lisa Boulden Williams, A.M. ‘92, was posthumously inducted into the ferences, supervision seminars with fac- Florida municipalities including South was recently named executive director Social Work Hall of Distinction at a cer- ulty, and personal group psychotherapy. Miami and Palmetto Bay. Scurr will of supportive housing for YMCA of emony in Burlingame, Calif., on May 4, have responsibility for campus master Metropolitan Chicago. The YMCA pro- 2007. The Hall is sponsored by the Vivian Loseth, A.M. ‘69, was planning and strategic real estate vides 1,500 units of housing and wrap- California Social Welfare Archives at the announced as Social Worker of the Year development, as well as the oversight around supportive services at five loca- University of Southern California. Wax by the National Association of Social of the design and construction of tions in the city and suburbs. Williams was a nationally known social work Workers - Illinois Chapter (NASW-IL) at Florida International University’s recent- also serves as executive director of leader, author, administrator, and theo- an awards dinner held June 27, 2007. ly approved medical school complex. Lawson House, the largest SRO sup- rist who provided new focus to team Loseth is currently the executive director portive housing facility in the Midwest. practice and staff development in of Youth Guidance, where she has A new book by Brian Quinn, A.M. health care settings throughout the spent the past three decades working ‘79, Wiley Concise Guides to Mental Maria L. Ugarte-Ramos, A.M. country. He was particularly well known on the front lines of social welfare Health: Bipolar Disorder, was published ‘93, is the president and chief execu- for his emphasis on building social work issues with the Chicago Public Schools in May of this year. The book focuses tive officer of FAMA Enterprises, LLC, a power through negotiation, mediation, and others to improve educational out- on issues of critical importance to clini- firm that focuses on improving the and interdisciplinary team develop- comes and to remove the barriers that cians concerning this mental illness: communication of organizations and ment. His career in the Veterans prevent children from realizing their differentiating unipolar from bipolar their clients through the use of the Administration health care system, the potential. In 1990, Loseth help found depression, alcohol and drug abuse in English and Spanish languages via largest employer of social workers in the Chicago Comer School bipolar patients, suicide, pharmacolog- translation, interpretation, business the United States, spanned more than Development Program. Since then, she ic and psychosocial treatments, and writing, and Spanish language training. 40 years and influenced the develop- has promoted extensive growth in the nonpharmacologic interventions. Ugarte-Ramos is a member of the ment of thousands of social work staff organization, which now works for sys- Quinn is in private practice in Latino Giving Circle, a donor-advised members. temic reform in several Chicago public Huntington, N.Y. His previous book, fund of The Chicago Community Trust, elementary schools and other schools The Depression Sourcebook, is now the Steering Committee of SSEEO Maryetta Andrews-Sachs, A.M. throughout the Midwest region. out in a second edition. In addition to (Stroke Survivors Empowering Each ‘68, has been elected chair of the his practice and writing, Quinn teaches Other), an advocacy group of the National Group Psychotherapy Institute Charles Scurr, A.M. ‘75, has been seminars around the country on bipo- American Stroke Association, and a at the Washington School of Psychiatry appointed associate vice president for lar disorder. He received a Ph.D. in clin- board member of Dorothy Stang in Washington, D.C. The Institute offers Florida International University in ical social work from New York Popular Education Adult High School. a training program in group psy- Miami. Prior to joining the university he University in 1994. She is also a part-time instructor at

Uehara Wins SSA’s 2007 Abbott Award Edwina S. Uehara, Ph.D. ‘87, was named the Edith Abbott Award recipient at a celebration held during SSA’s Alumni Weekend on June 2, 2007. The Abbott Award is given to an SSA graduate who has demonstrated extraordinary career success and consistent, long-term, high-level achievement. Uehara currently serves as dean of the University of Washington’s School of Social Work. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Washington, she completed a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellowship in mental health services at the University of Chicago. Her active research agenda looks at the effects of violence both in urban environments and on immigrants who experienced violence in Southeast Asia. In addition, she is interested in social networks, social support systems, and the financing and organization of health services, particularly as they affect economically disadvantaged ethnic minority populations.

34 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 Edwina S. Uehara, Ph.D. ‘87 Maintain the Connection: in memoriam Remember to stay in touch with the SSA community by sending your news to alumni@ ssa.uchicago.edu.

DePaul University’s School for New Earl L. Durham, A.M. '69, passed Learning, where she teaches a course away on October 27, 2007, after a entitled, “Exploring the Nonprofit brief illness. Durham was a member Workplace.” of the National Association of Black Social Workers and the National Evelyn Diaz, A.M. ‘98, has been Urban League. He also served as a appointed deputy chief of staff in the board member of the Chicago Area City of Chicago Mayor’s Office. She Project and vice president of the will work as the Mayor’s Office liaison Board of Trustees of the Edward to the city’s 10 human capital depart- Hazen Foundation in New York ments, including the Chicago depart- City. ments on aging, children and youth services, domestic violence, human Migdalia “Miggie” Baerga- relations, human services, people with Buffler, A.M. ‘89, died on August disabilities, public health, and work- 22, 2007. Born in Salinas, Puerto Rico, force development. Diaz will also Baerga-Buffler worked full-time in a serve as the liaison to the Chicago factory while attending high school in Public Library system and the Chicago New Jersey, earning scholarships to Public Schools. Additionally she will attend Rutgers University. Graduating work with the Chicago Housing with high honors, she earned one of Authority on resident services matters three Minority Merit Scholarships to and with several citywide initiatives to attend SSA and complete her graduate address homelessness, poverty, jobs, degree in clinical social work. While at and economic security. SSA, Baerga-Buffler received a National Hispanic Council on Aging Kari Hill, A.M. ‘06, received a Gerontology Fellowship and later Human Rights Fellowship from the served as a Congressional intern in the University of Chicago’s Human Rights United States House of Representatives Program to work in Kitgum, Uganda, Subcommittee on Human Services. one of the most conflict-affected During her social work career, Baerga- areas in the northern part of the Buffler served in the United States country. During her time in Africa, she Probation Office and as a probation provided support to vocational train- administrator in the administrative ing centers that provide many former- office of the United States Courts. She ly abducted youth with a means to also founded Jewels 4 the Spirit, an earn an income. Upon completion of inspirational jewelry business. Baerga- her fellowship, Hill was hired as a Buffler is survived by her husband, son, Protection Officer by AVSI, an Italian and grandson. non-government organization. She is based in Pader, Uganda, and plans to SSA has learned of the death of continue with AVSI as a program Betty Jean Allen, a University of manager overseeing the implementa- Chicago employee for 30 years, a tion of the camp management and member of Teamsters-Local 743 for 25 return movement monitoring pro- years, and an SSA employee from gram in 2008. 1985-2005. Allen began work at SSA in the Office of Student Recruitment and was SSA’s events coordinator at the time of her departure. She is survived by a daughter and grandson in Chicago and a sister in Colorado Springs, Colo.

www.ssa.uchicago.edu | 35 behind the numbers BY COLLEEN GROGAN

On Call without support from an employer is many low-income clients were eligible, How Medicaid has moved far beyond very expensive, or essentially unobtain- shifting programs and services that its role as a last-resort health care able if there are preexisting medical were paid for under state-only dollars conditions or risk of poor health. These on to Medicaid to take advantage of program for the poor uninsured end up knocking on state the federal matching rate. government’s door, and the states have turned to Medicaid to fund these costs. What’s Next edicaid is often make up only a third of Medicaid Put these factors together and the Federal Financial described as America’s enrollments, they consume two-thirds result is that Medicaid has become our health care program of expenditures. With an aging popula- Incentives to Expand health care safety-net for a wide range for the poor. Yet it has tion and no other LTC proposals seri- Since 1965, the federal government has of people across various illnesses, age- M12 million more participants than ously on the table, Medicaid will remain mandated that state Medicaid programs groups, and income levels. Indeed, Medicare, our universal program for the America’s de facto LTC program. cover specific types of poor persons. Medicaid has become an important elderly and disabled. Medicaid covers one out of five of the nation’s children, pays for more than one in every three childbirths, covers two- thirds of the elderly residing in nursing homes, and pays for half of all states’ Americans covered by Medicaid, making it the largest health insurance program in the U.S. mental health services, according to federal statistics from 2003. The U.S., which has repeatedly favored private-sector health insurance approaches, has such a 57,000,000 large publicly funded health care program for three interrelated reasons. Lack of Health Care Reform Understanding how they work gives a Today the mandatory coverage groups element of health care security for glimpse into how Medicaid can become America relies on private employer- represent a very restricted group of peo- middle-class families. a rallying point for middle-class sponsored health insurance for the ple with very low income levels, such as Considering how many people participants—and lead to universal majority of its citizens (61%) and yet children up to age 6 and pregnant are now covered or protected by health care coverage for all citizens. has never mandated that employers women who live in households under Medicaid, it is not unreasonable to offer this coverage. Starting in 1965, 133 percent of the federal poverty level think that the program could be Expensive Needs with the passage of legislation that cre- (FPL). Medicaid legislation, however, also America’s unexpected, but potentially Relatively few Americans have been ated Medicare and Medicaid, the specifies “optional groups” that states sturdy stepping stone to universal cov- able or willing to purchase private insur- assumption has been that workers and may cover, such as the same popula- erage. Once citizens feel entitled to ance to provide long-term custodial dependents had private insurance, the tions but at higher income levels, and support from a program, like the eld- nursing home care (LTC), which is enor- elderly and disabled had Medicare, and includes groups such as working parents erly do with Medicare, they can then mously expensive (an average cost of the poor and unemployed could fall up to 250 percent of the FPL. States advocate for the type of program they approximately $70,000 per year). Even back on Medicaid. have expanded health insurance cover- want. With middle-class political after adjusting for inflation, LTC costs The number of uninsured has con- age through Medicaid’s optional groups mobilization for the program, have increased 149 percent for the aged tinued to grow, however, and now in the last decade, which now consume Medicaid can become the country’s and an astounding 522 percent for the includes 47 million Americans, many of two-thirds of Medicaid expenditures. way to ensure everyone has decent disabled since 1975. However, since whom do have a job. Private insurance States also expand coverage to medical coverage. Medicare does not cover this type of is affordable if your employer subsidizes save money through various Medicaid care, the disabled and elderly rely on the cost of the premium, which is the maximization schemes. The most com- Colleen Grogan is an associate pro- Medicaid. Between 27 percent to 45 case for most middle- and upper-income mon example is mental health care serv- fessor at SSA, the faculty chair of percent of elderly nursing home resi- Americans. Health insurance is not ices. Although the federal government the Graduate Program in Health dents become eligible for Medicaid after offered, though, as an employment clearly limits which mental health diag- Administration and Policy, and a spending down their resources. benefit for many middle- and low- noses can be defined as a disability for research associate at the Center Although the elderly and disabled income people. Buying health insurance Medicaid eligibility, states realized that for Health Administration Studies.

36 | SSA Magazine Fall 2007 In the last 100 years... We explored outer space The nuclear age came of age Segregation of American schools was declared illegal The Berlin Wall fell The School of Social Service Administration placed its mark on society ...and you earned your SSA degree

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