An important component of welfare reform aimed at minor teenage parents is a requirement that the teenager live in an appropriate living situation, typically with a parent or guardian. The State of Massachusetts developed Teen Living Programs as an alternate living arrangement for minor teenage parents receiving welfare who are unable to live with family members. This article reports on a survey of 199 teenage parents who lived in the Teen Living Programs. Three research questions were asked: Who are the teenagers served by these programs? What services were provided? To what extent have teenagers attained key outcomes? Outcomes measured included educational attainment, employment, welfare status, homelessness, and subsequent pregnancy. Implications for social policy, further program development, and clinical intervention are discussed.

Changes in welfare programs are likely to have several important effects on populations served by social workers. While most attention has addressed the work requirement and time limits imposed by welfare reform, other aspects of the legislation also require attention. Living requirement legislation for teen parents receiving welfare has led the state of Massachusetts to develop Teen Living Programs (TLPs). TLPs are residential programs that allow teen parents to fulfill the living requirement when they are unable to live in the home of a parent or adult guardian. Data collected during program site visits to report on the implementation of the programs are used in this paper. This report identifies and analyzes issues related to service delivery that may be useful to social workers, policymakers, and program developers interested in supporting adolescent mothers affected by living requirement legislation. Analysis includes discussion of programming and staff, standardization of services, flexibility and individualized services, the residential model, and limitations of the program response.

This article presents an assessment of the functioning and training needs of consumer advisory boards in Massachusetts (CABs) who advise the Massachusetts agency and the consortia funded through Title II of the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act. The study found that the stage agency and the CABs valued the role of consumers in policy making, but the mechanisms for translating this goal into reality were not always clear or available. The CABs wanted more opportunities to interact with HIV/AIDS Bureau staff and with one another. The CAB members expressed need for ongoing training and technical assistance for themselves and for consortia staff. This project was an example of action research, for the purpose of change and mobilization.

This article describes and recommends a participatory method of developing, implementing, and evaluating a learner-driven community-based continuing education effort for HIV workers and supervisors. The Boston University School of Social Work (BUSSW) created and delivered a training program in partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health HIV/AIDS Bureau (the Bureau). Because teaching empowerment-based practice was an overarching goal, every step of the process modeled collaboration and self-determination. The program was unusual in several ways: the workshops focused on basic helping skills rather than the medical aspects of HIV; community stakeholders shaped the workshops in consultation with staff from the Bureau and BUSSW; a formative evaluation led to adaptations of the curriculum in the first few months of the project; objectives were set in part by learners, who evaluated themselves on goal attainment; and follow-up interviews explored the effects of the workshops on practice. Most supervisors and direct care workers reported that the workshops were highly relevant to their work and that they were able to incorporate their learning into practice, suggesting that the empowerment approach has utility. The report includes the genesis and necessity of the project; the principles underpinning it; the use of empowerment at each stage; and implications for administrators, service providers, and educators in the HIV field. We propose that resources dedicated to collaborative or participatory curriculum development, implementation, and evaluation are well spent.

Student development has connections to important academic purposes in higher education (King, Baxter Magolda, Barber, Kendall Brown & Lindsay, 2009). In particular, a growing body of work on self-authorship, a social-constructive theory of development, has demonstrated relevance to the purposes of higher education (Baxter Magolda, 2001; King & Baxter Magolda, 2004). The conditions which support self-authorship development in academic settings have been studied in detail, drawing attention to what King et al. (2009) frame as developmentally effective educational experiences. Explorations of self-authorship development in academic settings have focused on students’ experiences and outcomes. The classroom experiences of faculty, particularly those working outside institutional initiatives, to support self-authorship have received less attention. This study used a theory-driven (Baxter Magolda, 2001; Pizzolato, 2005), practice-based research framework, to explore a faculty-student affairs collaboration through participant observation as the collaborators sought to align their teaching practices with the tenets of self-authorship development in the context of a senior undergraduate course in Service-Learning. Four themes emerged, which have relevance for those who wish to consider student personal and academic development concurrently. We argue that individual faculty members can collaborate with student affairs professionals and use self-authorship theory to expand their constructions of what it means to be a “good professor” by approaching teaching as a mirror image of the self-authorship journey travelled by students. Les programmes de perfectionnement des étudiants sont liés aux objectifs académiques importants de l’enseignement supérieur (King, Baxter Magolda, Barber, Kendall Brown & Lindsay, 2009). En particulier, les travaux de plus en plus nombreux qui portent sur l’épistémologie personnelle (self-authorship), une théorie constructive sociale de développement, ont démontré leur pertinence par rapport à l’enseignement supérieur (Baxter Magolda, 2001; King & Baxter Magolda, 2004). Les conditions qui soutiennent le développement de l’épistémologie personnelle en milieu universitaire ont été étudiées en détail et attirent l’attention sur ce que King et al (2009) formulent comme des expériences éducatives efficaces de développement. Les explorations du développement de l’épistémologie personnelle en milieu universitaire se sont généralement concentrées sur les expériences et les résultats des étudiants. Les expériences des professeurs en salle de classe, en particulier celles des enseignants qui oeuvrent en dehors des initiatives institutionnelles dans le but de soutenir l’épistémologie personnelle, ont été beaucoup moins examinées. Cette étude a été menée dans un cadre de recherche guidé par la théorie et axé sur la pratique. Elle explore la collaboration entre professeurs et affaires étudiantes par le biais de l’observation des participants alors que les collaborateurs tentent de faire correspondre leurs pratiques d’enseignement avec les principes du développement de l’épistémologie personnelle, dans le contexte d’un cours de premier cycle de niveau avancé d’apprentissage du service communautaire. Quatre thèmes ont été mis en lumière. Ceux-ci sont pertinents pour ceux et celles qui souhaitent tenir compte à la fois du développement personnel et du développement académique des étudiants. Nous soutenons que les professeurs peuvent collaborer avec les professionnels des affaires étudiantes et faire usage de la théorie de l’épistémologie personnelle pour élargir leur compréhension de ce que cela signifie d’être « un bon professeur » en abordant l’enseignement comme le pendant du chemin d’épistémologie personnelle suivi par les étudiants.