A supportive, practical guide for the recovering addict's family - From the author of Treating the Alcoholic, and Treating Adult Children of Alcoholics - A supportive, helpful, practical book for family members of recovering addicts - Offers both practical, immediate assistance, and a long-term perspective - Includes progress charts and exercises for each family member to record experiences of the recovery program ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Successful recovery from drug and alcohol addiction is not only a harrowing journey for the addict, but for the addict's family as well. Even though recovery often places a severe stress on recovering families, they are rarely encouraged to go outside to find the support they need. If outside help is unavailable, families are left to struggle with an unhealthy system of relating that's often all wrong for recovery. This guide seeks to help and support recovering families.

This is the fourth in a Series of five manuals produced by the Social Security Department of the ILO to provide the reader with information on all the major elements of social security, including the principles, administration, financing, pension schemes and social health insurance. This manual takes a look at and makes comparisons between public and private pensions, methods of protection in public schemes, old age benefits, invalidity benefits, survivor's benefits. Of particular interest to certain countries will be a section dealing with transforming existing "provident fund schemes" into ones based on social insurance. Other manuals in this series: - Social security principles (Vol. I) - Administration of social security (Vol. II) - Social security financing (Vol. III) - Social health insurance (Vol. V)

This is the second in a Series of five manuals produced by the Social Security Department of the ILO to provide the reader with information on all the major elements of social security, including the principles, administration, financing, pension schemes and social health insurance. This manual deals with one of the most important aspects for any social security institution or scheme administration. It provides a general overview, looks at policy, structures, common features and examines principles of good management, as well as levels of administration, coverage, registration procedures, collection and recording of contributions, and the award and payment of benefits. The public relations element is also dealt with and a close look is taken at the management of human resources, recruitment, training, career development and performance. Other manuals in this series: - Social security principles (Vol. I) - Social security financing (Vol. III) - Pension schemes (Vol. IV) - Social health insurance (Vol. V)

Why, in the recent campaigns for universal health care, did organized labor maintain its support of employer-mandated insurance? Did labor's weakened condition prevent it from endorsing national health insurance? Marie Gottschalk demonstrates here that the unions' surprising stance was a consequence of the peculiarly private nature of social policy in the United States. Her book combines a much-needed account of labor's important role in determining health care policy with a bold and incisive analysis of the American welfare state.

Gottschalk stresses that, in the United States, the social welfare system is anchored in the private sector but backed by government policy. As a result, the private sector is a key political battlefield where business, labor, the state, and employees hotly contest matters such as health care. She maintains that the shadow welfare state of job-based benefits shaped the manner in which labor defined its policy interests and strategies. As evidence, Gottschalk examines the influence of the Taft-Hartley health and welfare funds, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (E.R.I.S.A.), and experience-rated health insurance, showing how they constrained labor from supporting universal health care.

Labor, Gottschalk asserts, missed an important opportunity to develop a broader progressive agenda. She challenges the movement to establish a position on health care that addresses the growing ranks of Americans without insurance, the restructuring of the U.S. economy, and the political travails of the unions themselves.

Welfare reform was supposed to end welfare as we know it. And it has. The welfare poor have been largely transformed into the working poor but their poverty persists. This hard-hitting book takes a close look at where we've gone wrong and where we might go next if we truly want to improve the lot of America's underclass.

Tracing the roots of recent reforms to the early days of the war on poverty, A Poverty of Imagination describes a social welfare system grown increasingly inept, corrupt, and susceptible to conservative redesign. Author David Stoesz details the new ideas, hatched in conservative think tanks of the eighties and elaborated through state experiments in welfare reform, that provided the outline for the 1996 Federal Welfare Act. Welfare-to-work and other behavioral objectives were the basis of these reforms; and an informed skepticism about such approaches is at the heart of Stoesz's book. Investigating the causes of the ongoing failure of welfare assistance, Stoesz focuses on the economic barriers that impede movement out of poverty into the American mainstream.

Stoesz suggests that a form of "bootstrap capitalism" would allow individuals and families to participate more fully in American society and achieve upward economic mobility and stability. This proposal, emphasizing wage supplements, asset building, and community capitalism, sets the stage for the next act in poverty policy in the United States. With its valuable insights on the American welfare system and its positive agenda for change, this book makes a significant intervention in our ongoing struggle to come to terms with widespread poverty in the wealthiest nation on earth.

A quarter century of trickle-down economics has failed. Economic inequality in the United States has dramatically increased. Many, alas, seem resigned to this growing chasm between rich and poor. But what would happen, ask Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott, if America were to make good on its promise of equal opportunity by granting every qualifying young adult a citizen's stake of eighty thousand dollars? Ackerman and Alstott argue that every American citizen has the right to share in the wealth accumulated by preceding generations. The distribution of wealth is currently so skewed that the stakeholding fund could be financed by an annual tax of two percent on the property owned by the richest forty percent of Americans. Ackerman and Alstott analyze their initiative from moral, political, economic, legal, and human perspectives. By summoning the political will to initiate stakeholding, they argue, we can achieve a society that is more democratic, productive, and free. Their simple but realistic plan would enhance each young adultis real ability to shape his or her own future. It is, in short, an idea that should be taken seriously by anyone concerned with citizenship, welfare dependency, or social justice in America today.

Why, in the recent campaigns for universal health care, did organized labor maintain its support of employer-mandated insurance? Did labor's weakened condition prevent it from endorsing national health insurance? Marie Gottschalk demonstrates here that the unions' surprising stance was a consequence of the peculiarly private nature of social policy in the United States. Her book combines a much-needed account of labor's important role in determining health care policy with a bold and incisive analysis of the American welfare state.

Gottschalk stresses that, in the United States, the social welfare system is anchored in the private sector but backed by government policy. As a result, the private sector is a key political battlefield where business, labor, the state, and employees hotly contest matters such as health care. She maintains that the shadow welfare state of job-based benefits shaped the manner in which labor defined its policy interests and strategies. As evidence, Gottschalk examines the influence of the Taft-Hartley health and welfare funds, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (E.R.I.S.A.), and experience-rated health insurance, showing how they constrained labor from supporting universal health care.

Labor, Gottschalk asserts, missed an important opportunity to develop a broader progressive agenda. She challenges the movement to establish a position on health care that addresses the growing ranks of Americans without insurance, the restructuring of the U.S. economy, and the political travails of the unions themselves.

Skillfully interweaving Bernice's own eloquent words about her harrowing abuse with descriptions of other women's similar experiences and a rich synthesis of statistical findings, Jody Raphael demonstrates convincingly that domestic violence and dependence on public assistance are intricately linked. In a work that is sure to stir controversy, she challenges traditional views and stereotypes (conservative and liberal) about welfare recipients, arguing that many poor women are neither lazy nor paralyzed by a "culture of poverty," but instead are trapped by their batterers.
Bernice's ordeals at the hands of her abusive partner -- brutal beatings, violent rapes, threats on her life, stalking, blocked access to birth control, and sabotage of efforts to find a job -- resonate throughout the work. The experiences she relates provide crucial insights into the welfare system and illuminate its failures, successes, and potential in helping women like her.
This disquieting yet inspiring book puts a human face on the heated public policy debate over welfare reform. Above all, it is Bernice's life story and, through her voice, the story of countless other battered women who are isolated in poverty and welfare by the power and control of their abusers.

Since the late 1970s, the high-rise developments of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) have been dominated by gang violence and drugs, creating a sense of hopelessness among residents. Despite a lengthy war on crime, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, the CHA has been unable to reduce the violence that makes life intolerable. Focusing on three developments--Rockwell Gardens, Henry Horner Homes, and Harold Ickes Homes--Sue Popkin and her co-authors interview residents, community leaders, and CHA staff. The Hidden War chronicles the many failed efforts of the CHA to combat crime and improve its developments, offering a vivid portrait of what life is like when lived among bullets, graffiti, and broken plumbing. Most families living in these developments are headed by African American single mothers. The authors reveal the dilemmas facing women and children who are often victims or witnesses of violent crime, and yet are dependent on the perpetrators and their drug-dominant economy. The CHA--plagued by financial scandals, managerial incompetence, and inconsistent funding--is no match for thegang-dominated social order. Even well-intentioned initiatives such as the recent effort to demolish and "revitalize" the worst developments seem to be ineffective at combating crime, while the drastic changes leave many vulnerable families facing an uncertain future. The Hidden War sends a humbling message to policy makers and prognosticators who claim to know the right way to "solve poverty."

Marriage is the foundation of the family and of society. Yet many of us find it difficult to keep our marriages alive and well. So many marriages today end in tears that young people often wonder whether they should marry at all. Mehri Sefidvash's Coral and Pearls looks at some of the reasons why relationships fail to thrive and offers practical suggestions for keeping our marriages vibrant, joyous and intact: * What we can do to keep our love for our partner alive * How we can develop mature love * How we can create a spiritual bond with our partner.

Social insurance in United States-including the Social Security Act of 1935 and the Medicare, Medicaid, and disability insurance programs that were added later -- may be the greatest triumph of American domestic policy. But true security has not been achieved. As Michael J. Graetz and Jerry L. Mashaw show in this pathbreaking book, the nation's system of social insurance is riddled with gaps, inefficiences, and inequities. Even the most popular and successful programs, Medicare and Social Security, face serious financial challenges from the coming retirement of the baby boom generation and the aging of the population.

This book challenges the notion that American social insurance must remain inadequate, unaffordable, or both. In sharp contrast to policymakers and analysts who debate only one income security program at a time, Graetz and Mashaw examine social insurance whole to assess its crucial role in providing economic security in a dynamic market economy. They recognize that, notwithstanding a proper emphasis on individual freedom and responsibility, Americans share a common fate that binds them together in a common enterprise. The authors offer us a new vision of the social insurance contract and concrete proposals to make the nation's families more secure without increasing costs.

This is the first in a Series of five manuals produced by the Social Security Department of the ILO to provide the reader with information on all the major elements of social security, including the principles, administration, financing, pension schemes and social health insurance. This manual provides an introduction to social security, explaining what social security is and who it protects. It also takes a look at the range of benefits provided by social security schemes, explains briefly how those schemes are financed and administered, and deals with International Labour Standards in relation to social security issues. Other manuals in this series: - Administration of social security (Vol. II) - Social security financing (Vol. III) - Pension schemes (Vol. IV) - Social health insurance (Vol. V)

"This will be a much debated book among local, state, and national politicians and government officials. It makes a significant contribution in the fields of urban development, environmental planning, comparative urbanization, and U.S.-Mexico border studies. The scholarship is impressive." -- Lawrence A. Herzog, Professor of City Planning, San Diego State University

Today in Texas, over 1500 colonias in the counties along the Mexican border are home to some 400,000 people. Often lacking basic services, such as electricity, water and sewerage, fire protection, policing, schools, and health care, these "irregular" subdivisions offer the only low-cost housing available to the mostly Hispanic working poor.

This book presents the results of a major study of colonias in three transborder metropolitan areas and uncovers the reasons why colonias are spreading so rapidly. Peter Ward compares Texas colonias with their Mexican counterparts, many of which have developed into fully integrated working-class urban communities. He describes how Mexican governments have worked with colonia residents to make physical improvements and upgrade services-a model that Texas policymakers can learn from, Ward asserts. Finally, he concludes with a hard-hitting checklist of public policy initiatives that need to be considered as colonia housing policy enters its second decade in Texas.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, America's system of workers' compensation insurance was in trouble. As medical costs grew and benefits and compensable injuries expanded, costs of this insurance skyrocketed. In response, the states imposed price controls, but those controls caused unforeseen - and negative - consequences. The authors define the problems, trace the regulatory responses, and analyze the effects of rate regulation. Their study illuminates how rate regulation set up to control the cost of workers' compensation insurance reduced incentives for safety and cost control and subsidized high-risk activities and firms at the expense of others.

This handbook has been written to give general practitioners, hospital doctors and others involved in medical and social care an accessible, practical reference on benefits, welfare systems and services available to patients - an area not included in doctors' training. It should complement Oxford University Press's clinical medical handbooks.;The author asserts that doctors can give their patients a better service if they are well-informed about the NHS, disability and other benefits available, income and housing benefits, what to do when a patient dies, and many other situations and procedures.

The New Deal was not the same deal for men and women--a finding strikingly demonstrated in Divided Citizens. Rich with implications for current debates over citizenship and welfare policy, this book provides a detailed historical account of how governing institutions and public policies shape social status and civic life. In her examination of the impact of New Deal social and labor policies on the organization and character of American citizenship, Suzanne Mettler offers an incisive analysis of the formation and implementation of the pillars of the modern welfare state: the Social Security Act, including Old Age and Survivors' Insurance, Old Age Assistance, Unemployment Insurance, and Aid to Dependent Children (later known simply as "welfare"), as well as the Fair Labor Standards Act, which guaranteed the minimum wage.

Mettler draws on the methods of historical-institutionalists to develop a "structured governance" approach to her analysis of the New Deal. She shows how the new welfare state institutionalized gender politically, most clearly by incorporating men, particularly white men, into nationally administered policies and consigning women to more variable state-run programs. Differential incorporation of citizens, in turn, prompted different types of participation in politics. These gender-specific consequences were the outcome of a complex interplay of institutional dynamics, political imperatives, and the unintended consequences of policy implementation actions. By tracing the subtle and complicated political dynamics that emerged with New Deal policies, Mettler sounds a cautionary note as we once again negotiate the bounds of American federalism and public policy.

The New Deal was not the same deal for men and women a finding strikingly demonstrated in Dividing Citizens. Rich with implications for current debates over citizenship and welfare policy, this book provides a detailed historical account of how governing institutions and public policies shape social status and civic life. In her examination of the impact of New Deal social and labor policies on the organization and character of American citizenship, Suzanne Mettler offers an incisive analysis of the formation and implementation of the pillars of the modern welfare state: the Social Security Act, including Old Age and Survivors' Insurance, Old Age Assistance, Unemployment Insurance, and Aid to Dependent Children (later known simply as "welfare"), as well as the Fair Labor Standards Act, which guaranteed the minimum wage.

Mettler draws on the methods of historical-institutionalists to develop a "structured governance" approach to her analysis of the New Deal. She shows how the new welfare state institutionalized gender politically, most clearly by incorporating men, particularly white men, into nationally administered policies and consigning women to more variable state-run programs. Differential incorporation of citizens, in turn, prompted different types of participation in politics. These gender-specific consequences were the outcome of a complex interplay of institutional dynamics, political imperatives, and the unintended consequences of policy implementation actions. By tracing the subtle and complicated political dynamics that emerged with New Deal policies, Mettler sounds a cautionary note as we once again negotiate the bounds of American federalism and public policy."

A helpful guide for all those now mediating family disputes, as well as for those who hope to become family mediators.

This volume explains why there is bipartisan interest in US privatisation of public housing and how it can be accomplished.

The Welfare and Retirement Fund of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) is widely acknowledged as the most innovative effort at group health care in the United States in the twentieth century. Ivana Krajcinovic describes the establishment, operation, and demise of the Fund that brought mining families from the backwater to the forefront of medical care in less than a decade.

The UMWA was one of the first unions to take advantage of conditions created by World War II to bargain for employer-financed health benefits. Spurning convention, the UMWA not only retained control of health benefits but also utilized then unorthodox managed care principles in arranging for the care of its members. Perhaps even more remarkable, the union designed the Fund to care for a beneficiary group with extremely high demands. Initially poor and neglected, miners were encumbered by the additional health burdens of a hazardous industry.

Krajcinovic analyzes the success of the Fund over nearly three decades in providing high-quality cost-effective care to miners and their families. She also explains the irony of its dismantlement at the very moment when its innovations gained currency among mainstream commercial plans.

In this book comparative analysis is given of the way governments and social security systems reacted to the challenges facing established social security systems - and also social security systems to be established - in the context of the end of the XXth century: globalization and the changes it has brought in the perception and possibilities of establishing or maintaining the welfare state. The selection of countries is due to both scientific criteria - it has been decided to start with western industrialized countries - and non scientific ones: the availability of specialists in selected countries. It is clear therefore that, even if restricted to western industrialized countries, the sample of countries which are studied here are not representative of all the main systems of social security. Countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands are clearly missing for those readers who are looking for a broad description of existing systems. Looking at the different chapters of this book, a rather diverse and broad overview of problems and solutions are given, adapting social security systems to the environment of the XXIst century.

Current welfare reforms -- including recently enacted federal legislation -- are largely symbolic politics, argue two experts in this important new book. According to Joel F. Handler and Yeheskel Hasenfeld, the real problem we face is not the spread of welfare but the spread of poverty among the working poor, a group that includes most welfare recipients. The surest way to solve the problem is to create jobs and supplement low-wage work. The authors offer proposals that would make it possible for individuals to support themselves and their families through working and that would establish a safety net for those relatively few individuals who arc unable to do so.

The authors discuss current policies, efforts, and programs designed to deal with the poor and analyze what works, what does not work, and why. Instead of income maintenance strategies, they promote policies that would facilitate leaving welfare for work -- particularly in the case of single mothers. Their proposals range from creating jobs and supplementing income through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to raising the minimum wage to providing health insurance and child care support. These are not inexpensive solutions, but they must occur if we truly wish to live in a society that strives to provide opportunities for all.

"A substantial contribution to the critical debate occurring in the states about structuring 'welfare reform.'" -- Lucy A. Williams, School of Law, Northeastern University

"This book contributes in innovative and significant ways to the ongoing discussion of poverty and welfare reform". -- Gary D. Sandefur, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Using a case example of how Pennsylvania Blue Shield trained, hired, and retained several hundred welfare recipients on its work force, From Welfare to Work offers a compelling success story and a broad discussion of welfare reform, public policy, and corporate social responsibility. It also offers a practical explanation of the specific steps needed to establish such a program, including corporate tax incentives, business and government collaborations, and the special needs of welfare recipients. Demonstrating that it is possible for corporate America to combine bottom-line goals with socially responsible goals, this book is essential reading for all corporate executives who combine concern for the well-being of their companies with a sense of social responsibility.