Volume 21 | Issue 2 | Summer 2014
A Nurturing, Caring Relationship
How home visits from a doula help young mothers and their children
In late April, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel held a press conference about Chicago Public Schools’ rising high school graduation rate, touting the latest studies from SSA Professor Melissa Roderick and her colleagues at the UChicago Consortium on Chicago School Research. Graduating from high school and accessing higher education is arguably the most reliable ticket to the middle class in the U.S., opening up a lifetime of opportunities.
Deborah Gorman-Smith spoke with Enlace’s executive director, Michael D. Rodríguez, AM ’07, and its director of violence prevention, Kathryn Bocanegra, AM ’09, about how to measure impact, choosing evidence-based programs, and community/academic partnerships.
Social work has long strived to place itself on a more scientific foundation, and in recent years, many policymakers and government officials have insisted that social services show results. But a new study concludes that social workers have not yet embraced evidence-based practice as their primary approach.
In the early 2000s, single women were the fast growing group of homebuyers in the country. When the foreclosure crisis hit, they figured disproportionately among those who lost their homes. And in most cases, says the author of a new study, social services have failed to help them.
The practice of treating juvenile offenders differently from adults began among social workers in Chicago more than a century ago. Now a new study concludes that social work has strayed too far from those beginnings, abandoning juvenile offenders to law enforcement and allowing punishment to replace rehabilitation.
For the last seven years, SSA students enrolled in the Beatrice Cummings Mayer Program in Violence Prevention have learned the skills and knowledge needed for evidence-based interventions and programs to prevent violence before it happens. Today, alumni of the program work in schools, at early childhood programs, in hospitals, in academia and beyond.
A growing body of research shows that ethnic and cultural differences hamper the bond between therapists and client. That can be even more true when the clients are parents who may already feel insecure about seeking help for a young child with disruptive behavior.
In a new book examining the “global workfare project,” SSA Associate Professor Evelyn Brodkin and her collaborators look beyond what welfare reform and workfare policies appear to do to investigate how they actually take shape on the ground.
