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The use of self-psychology, a theory first developed by Heinz Kohut, is discussed and illustrated with case examples from child welfare practice. The cases demonstrate that self-psychology can enhance an ecological model. The ways in which self-psychology can enrich the social worker's therapeutic role in permanency planning are emphasized. (Author/GLR)

Growing resistance to redistribution through welfare entitlements confronts social work professionals interested in closing the poverty gap. New political and economic realities require that social workers give more attention to the potential of the Internal Revenue Code in stimulating job growth and in making work more financially rewarding for welfare recipients and low-income workers. Because welfare entitlements are increasingly politically unpopular, social work advocates need to place greater emphasis on job growth and alternative mechanisms for redistribution at the state and federal level, including entitlement to refundable tax credits for working poor people. The Internal Revenue Code is likely to be a more effective weapon in combating poverty when antipoverty approaches in the code are incorporated into a national industrial policy. Key words: economics; poverty; social action; social policy; special populations, Over the past several decades, various interest groups, depending on their ideological views, have attempted to use the Internal Revenue Code to accomplish different social and economic objectives. Liberal reformers [...]

The use of self psychology, a theory first developed by Kohut, in formulating and guiding treatment planning and implementation in child welfare, is discussed, with accompanying illustrations from child welfare practice of key concepts.

While the family and Catholic church remained important sources of preferred support, increased willingness to utilize institutional long-term care was noted. Favoring proprietary services indicated continued negative attitudes towards public auspices and possible support for a multi-tiered service delivery system for the aged. (Author)

The article discusses that the use of traditional culture models or paradigms for the assessment of ethnicity is fraught with serious problems. The most fundamental problem is that ethnic culture is now being proposed as a variable that is ipso facto vital in an individual or family situation. rather than as a concept whose importance must be assessed along with other potentially significant factors. Even when this problem is recognized, the tendency is to slip into reification of ethnic culture, that is. to attribute an independent or real existence to a mental creation. Accepting traditional ethnic culture as a given leads to a number of possible analytical errors, including reductionism and unwarranted generalizations. Reductionism occurs when the effects of factors such as class and religion are mistakenly assumed to be the effects of ethnicity. Unwarranted generalizations take many forms, but among the more common are characterizations about ethnic groups that ignore important intra-ethnic group differences. Even a quick sampling of the recent literature on ethnicity reveals a large number of attributions that may be questionable in relation to contemporary ethnic populations in modernized, industrialized societies such as the United States.

A sample of 113 Italian-American men in Columbia, MD responded to a questionnaire about their continued reliance on traditional structures of assistance to care for aged relatives. While the family and Catholic church remained important sources of preferred support, increased willingness to utilize institutional forms of long-term care was noted. The trend towards favoring proprietary services indicated continued negative attitudes towards public auspices for programs and possible support for a multi-tiered service delivery system for the aged. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Italian and Polish residents of the Highlandtown area of Baltimore were sampled to ascertain their attitudes toward care of aged relatives. Preferred living arrangements for elderly relatives, attitudes toward nonfamily resources, and feelings toward nonethnic caretakers were probed. A majority of the respondents indicated a preference for intergenerational household arrangements for ambulatoy relatives, a preference for church rather than governmentally operated services, and a positive attitude toward well-trained nonethnic professional caretakers. The policy and program implications of the results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]