In their journeys to prison and community re-entry, women leaving prison tend to share overarching challenges connected to lives of poverty, trauma, and abuse. Community Re-Entry: Uncertain Futures for Women Leaving Prison provides a rare opportunity to hear directly from women who have spent time in a Canadian federal penitentiary. Based on more than a decade of engagement with women in prison, the authors gathered rich and personal information on women's lived experiences during incarceration and what they anticipated and hoped for on release. This book relates their narratives and the authors' critical analysis of their experiences both within and outside prison. By bridging relational and other critical theories (critical feminist, critical race, critical disability, and post-structural understandings) with lived experience, this volume sheds light on the challenges incarcerated women face as they seek to return to the community as valued and contributing citizens. Community Re-Entry's unique perspective on women's post-imprisonment policy will appeal to academics, community-based advocates and activists, and undergraduate and postgraduate students studying criminology and social science courses on gender and crime, correctional policy, and qualitative research methods.

In their journeys to prison and community re-entry, women leaving prison tend to share overarching challenges connected to lives of poverty, trauma, and abuse. Community Re-Entry: Uncertain Futures for Women Leaving Prison provides a rare opportunity to hear directly from women who have spent time in a Canadian federal penitentiary. Based on more than a decade of engagement with women in prison, the authors gathered rich and personal information on women's lived experiences during incarceration and what they anticipated and hoped for on release. This book relates their narratives and the authors' critical analysis of their experiences both within and outside prison. By bridging relational and other critical theories (critical feminist, critical race, critical disability, and post-structural understandings) with lived experience, this volume sheds light on the challenges incarcerated women face as they seek to return to the community as valued and contributing citizens. Community Re-Entry's unique perspective on women's post-imprisonment policy will appeal to academics, community-based advocates and activists, and undergraduate and postgraduate students studying criminology and social science courses on gender and crime, correctional policy, and qualitative research methods.

How has it come to be that paid work is seen as the primary avenue for attaining sustenance, self-esteem, and human dignity? This book encourages scholars and practitioners to rethink the relationships between leisure, social policy, and human development. Drawing on the expertise of some of the most innovative minds in the field of leisure studies from across Canada, Decentring Work questions how and why we have come to value paid employment as the marker of social success and individual self-worth and, more provocatively, investigates the role that leisure might play in its stead. The contributors probe the dimensions of marginalization and oppression experienced by groups such as women living in poverty, aboriginal youth, new immigrants, and older adults and show how leisure can be a vital element in confronting issues in the social construction of homelessness, incarceration, dementia care, disability, and ethnicity. Using a mix of approaches from in-depth empirical studies to more conceptually driven discussions, the chapters in Decentring Work weave together effectively into a treatise on notions of work, leisure, power, and social change. This collection is essential reading for anyone in the field of leisure studies, recreation, or social work who is interested in the role that leisure can and should play in reshaping human and community development.

Unsatisfactory working conditions and job stress may be indicative of working in a society where work-life balance is a desired, but often elusive, goal. Working conditions in the healthcare sector are reported to be particularly problematic and stress inducing compared to other work sectors. This study examines quality of work life (QOWL) from the perspective of healthcare staff. A particular focus is on how initiatives aimed at improving QOWL affect staff perceptions of the care they provide. The analysis should help answer the questions: How do staff members experience their work environment in terms of stress, work load, time pressure, and work-life balance? What is the experience of staff relative to QOWL initiatives? How do staff members perceive their managers in relation to supporting their involvement in QOWL initiatives? What role can leisure play in helping to shape QOWL initiatives that aim to reduce work related stress and promote work-life balance? What is the perception of staff regarding the quality of care they provide and to what extent do they feel it is influenced by QOWL initiatives? This book addressed to managers and healthcare administrators. It is also directed towards researchers interested in work life, stress, leisure, and the provision of quality care within the healthcare sector.