Women's Immersion in a Workfare Program: Emerging Challenges for Occupational Therapists

by Ellen Greer

Overview

Discover what challenges lie ahead for occupational therapists Single women receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) often find themselves tangled in difficulties because of current changes in welfare reform, including workfare. Women’s Immersion in a Workfare Program: Emerging Challenges for Occupational Therapists describes the journey of six single mothers in workfarea proactive alternative to conventional welfareand their emergence with unique talents and perseverance to balance motherhood and work in the face of adversity. This compassionate and informative text uses the participants’ own authentic voicesin poems, plays, and narrativesto tell their stories of survival and success in this unique governmental program. Women’s Immersion in a Workfare Program: Emerging Challenges for Occupational Therapists first provides a socio-historical overview to place the issues in context, and then comprehensively reviews the interaction between barriers to work and self-sufficiency, including kinship systems, mental health issues, complying with workfare, family role strain, and psychological well-being. The research findings examine how the women receiving TANF experience the mandatory work program as preparation for transition into the workforce, how the women fit the mandatory program into their daily life, and how the women feel about the transition into the workforce. Topics discussed in Women’s Immersion in a Workfare Program: Emerging Challenges for Occupational Therapists include:

• welfare reform
• history of single mothers transition to self-sufficiency
• experience of workfare
• qualitative research methodology
• surviving adversity
• impact of welfare reform on children

Women’s Immersion in a Workfare Program: Emerging Challenges for Occupational Therapists is a revealing, at times moving text for occupational therapists, nurses, social workers, welfare reform professionals, researchers, educators, and students.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781317994435
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/31/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	216
File size:	796 KB

About the Author

Greer, Ellen

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Chapter I. Introduction
• Chapter II. Single Mother’s Transition to Self-Sufficiency
• Chapter III. Preparing for the Journey
• Chapter IV. Entry into the Field: Can You Help Us Get a Job
• Chapter V. Promises to Keep: Portraits of the Volunteers
• Chapter VI. Surviving Adversity
• Chapter VII. Workfare Day to Day
• Chapter VIII: Issues and Concerns
• Chapter IX. Impact on the Children: Problems and Solutions
• Chapter X. Despite False Hopes, Forced Transition Creates Growth
• Chapter XI. Holding It All Together
• Chapter XII. What I Have Learned: Conclusions
• BIOGRAPHY
• Appendix A. Cover Letter to Participants
• Appendix B. Participant Consent Form
• Appendix C. Sample Analytic Memos and Field Log
• Index
• Reference Notes Included

What People are Saying About This

Anne Hiller Scott

COMPELLING. . . . POIGNANT . . . reveals the failure of the legislative reform to recognize the complexity of caregiver's lives in negotiating the lofty and meaningful goal of participation in the workforce with insufficient supports to meet the essential needs of themselves and their families. A COMPELLING AND CAUTIONARY TALE of poorly conceived legislative mandates, which threatened some of societies most vulnerable. The transformative role of the human spirit in adversity is an invaluable theme for occupational therapists concerned about advocacy for social justice. (Anne Hiller Scott, PhD, OTR, FAOTA, Associate Professor, Division of OccupationalTherapy, Long Island University)

Suzanne White

Each of the women's stories is described with KEEN OBSERVATION AND INSIGHT. As Greer gains trust, she gives these disenfranchised women voices. . . . THOUGHT-PROVOKING. . . . Compiles much-needed information to the occupational therapy profession about the fears and health disparities of this underserved population. . . . Readers will be enlightened by the women's journey; their experience, their strength, and their hope in finding meaningful occupations. (Suzanne White, MA, OTR, Clinical Assistant Professor, State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center, Occupational Therapy Program)