Developing new models for paraprofessionals in human service occupations : final report. /

Prepared under contract no. 82-34-70-29 for the U.S. Dept. of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Research and Development.

New careers for the disadvantaged in human service : [report of a social experiment /

Final report on Contract #82-08-43 for the U.S. Dept. of Labor, Manpower Administration, Office of Manpower Policy, Evaluation, and Research--MDTA.

Defining failure in the nonprofit organization: The case of four human service agencies

Private nonprofit human service organizations provide a spectrum of services that aim to resolve societal problems. Their failure may leave needed and desired services unprovided or not provided sufficiently to meet public demand. However, the concept of organizational failure has not been examined for the nonprofit organization. This research addresses the deficiency in the literatures of organization failure and nonprofit organizations.^ An eight category typology, developed from a review of the current literature and findings from expert interviews, is initially presented to define nonprofit organization failure. A multiple case study design is used to test the typology in four nonprofit human service delivery agencies. The case analysis reduces the typology to five types salient to nonprofit organization failure: input failure, legitimacy failure, adaptive failure, management failure and leadership failure.^ The resulting five category typology is useful to both theory builders and nonprofit practitioners. For theory development, the interaction of the failure types extends the literature and lays a foundation for a theory of nonprofit organization failure that diffuses management and leadership across all of the failure types, highlights management and leadership failure as collective functions shared by paid staff and the volunteer board of directors, and emphasizes the importance of organization legitimacy.^ From a practical perspective, the typology provides a tool for diagnosing failure in the nonprofit organization. Using the management indicators developed for the typology, a checklist of the warning signals of potential failure, emphasizing the key types of management and leadership, offers nonprofit decision makers a priori examination of an organization's propensity for failure. ^

Coordination of Family Preservation Services in a Rural Community: A Case Study

Family preservation programs designed to prevent the out-of-home placement of children depend on the coordination of services from multiple agencies. Little is known regarding how coordination occurs. This case study examined this issue. Information was sought from all workers who provided services to each of five families and 'from families' case records. Thirty-one workers were interviewed with a semi-structured interview schedule containing rating scales and questions with open-ended response formats. Case records were reviewed with a case record review form. Analyses of data revealed the following. Services were coordinated to a moderate degree but that coordination deteriorated over time. Workers elaborated how aspects of communities, human service agencies, workers, and families affected coordination. Implications of findings for future research were drawn.

Nonverbal narratives: Listening to people with severe intellectual disability

This article describes an exploratory study that examined the perspectives of practitioners who spend much of their working day listening to and in some ways interpreting for people with severe intellectual disabilities. On the basis of focus group interviews with 23 professional disability-sector workers, including speech therapists, psychologists, and human service workers, the article reports on the importance of a practitioner's values and experience in successful interactions with individuals who rely on self-developed nonsymbolic communication repertoires. The article includes a discussion of the likelihood of including individuals with severe intellectual disabilities in narrative research.

Title IV-B Child and Family Service Plan 2010 Annual Progress and Service Report, June 2010

In June 2009, the Iowa Department of Human Service (IDHS) developed a Child and Family Service Plan (CFSP) that sets forth the Department’s vision and goals to be accomplished for FYs 2010 through 2014. The purpose of the CFSP is to strengthen the States’ overall child welfare system and to facilitate the state’s integration of the programs that serve children and families into a comprehensive and continuum array of child welfare services from prevention and protection through permanency. These programs include title IV-B, subparts 1 and 2 of the Act, the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), the Chafee Foster Care Independence Program (CFCIP), and the Education and Training Vouchers (ETV) programs for older and/or former foster care youth. IDHS administers the IV-B, CAPTA, CFCIP and the ETV programs described within Iowa’s CFSP. Iowa’s Annual Progress and Services Report (APSR) provides an annual update on the progress made toward accomplishing the goals and objectives identified in the state’s CFSP for the previous fiscal year (2009-2010) and the planned activities for next fiscal year (2010-2011) .

Informal finance and rural finance policy in India: historical and contemporary perspectives

From the 1950s up to the early 1990s the All-India data show an ever-declining share of informal credit in the total outstanding debt of rural households. Contemporaneous micro-level studies, using more qualitative research methodologies, provide evidence that questions the strength of this trend, and more recent All-India credit surveys show, first, a levelling, and then a rise, in the share of rural informal credit in 1990/91 and 2000/01, respectively. By reference to findings of a study of village moneylenders in Rajasthan, the paper notes lessons to be drawn. First, informal financial agents have not disappeared from the rural financial landscape in India. Second, formal-sector financial institutions can learn much about rural financial service needs from the financial products and processes of their informal counterparts. Third, a national survey of informal agents, similar to that of the 1921 Census survey of indigenous bankers and moneylenders, would provide valuable pointers towards policy options for the sector. A recent Reserve Bank of India Report on Moneylender Legislation not only explores incentive mechanisms to better ensure fair practice, but also proposes provision for a new category of loan providers that would explicitly link the rural informal and formal financial sectors.

As ações político-pedagógicas do Serviço de Assistência Rural-SAR

This program resumes the history of the political-pedagogic actions on the Serviço de Assistência Rural SAR, of Natal archdiocese, and analyses the contributions of this actions on the process of rural workers organization in the social movements on the countryside. The educative actions of the RAS are happening in a permanent tension between the pedagogic project of a church in change and, a pedagogy of the groups, communities and social movements, that is centered in the cultural action, in the culture lived from its condition of citizens. This research reveals that this entity fulfilled a strategic attribution for the Natal s church on the formation of the community leaderships, at a first moment and leaderships for social movements. Before the military dictatorship, the work methodology of this entity had as priority, begin from the reality leaved by the rural workers in the expectation that these became to qualify themselves for a more citizen participation in the call development. During the military regime, the entity goes measuring theirs activities in the new context, until the moment that redefines the work line. Goes then defining regions and thematic of operation supporting the fights for land, salary campaigns, women agricultural workers organizations. The pedagogy of work has as one of its supporters the Paulo Freire s pedagogy, privileging the dialog as a source of production of knowledge from the reality leaved in a permanent transformation. The actions of this entity, with the groups and social movements, produces the necessary knowledge for the organization of the rural workers while individual and social subjects of a changing world. The process of action-reflection of the activities intended, by a creative form, a permanent production of strategies of fight of the workers. Research ever, not to make accommodate itself to the new knowledge acquired in the action-reflection it is part of the pedagogical idea of this Institution. One searched in this process of formation of the man and the woman to question the reality, to create actionreflection-action spaces on the fights for a possible transition of an ingenuous conscience for a critical conscience, in view of the transformation of the structures that oppresses them

Measuring Service Effectiveness for Families

While most professionals do not dispute the fact that evaluation is necessary to determine whether agencies and practitioners are truly providing services that meet clients’ needs, information regarding consistent measures on service effectiveness in human service organizations is sparse. A national survey of 250 not-for-profit family service organizations in the United States (52.8% return rate) yielded results relevant to client identified needs and agency effectiveness measures in serving today’s families. On an open-ended survey item, 52.3% agencies indicated that poverty represented the most pressing problem among today’s families because other psychological needs also take priority. Over two thirds of these agencies used multiple methods to evaluate their services. Clients’ feedback and outcome measures are the most popular methods. The findings reveal agencies' difficulties in determining what or who decides if the most appropriate services are being provided for the target population. Limited data collected on outcomes and impact may impose additional difficulties in program design and planning.

Annual rural manpower report.

Mode of access: Internet.

Human services plan

Issued as vol. 3 of a series of human resource plans issued by specific state agencies under the general title: Illinois human service plan.

Post season rural manpower report.

Mode of access: Internet.