Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche.

Dramatic shifts from cash assistance to work, embodied in the 1996 replacement of Aid to Families with Dependent Children with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), highlight the need to understand how current cash assistance recipients participate in required work-related activities and obstacles faced in getting and keeping jobs. The 1997 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) describes recipient work activity and obstacles during early TANF implementation. A larger proportion of TANF recipients participated in work activities in 1997 than in the past. More than 4 out of 10 reported at least 2 significant work obstacles. As states continue to move TANF recipients into jobs, evidence is mixed about whether recipients still receiving TANF will face increasing obstacles to successful moves from welfare to employment. This report describes TANF recipients' participation in work-related activities, notes caseload obstacles and their work-limiting impact, and discusses differences between states. High work-activity levels in 1997 indicate that states should have no trouble meeting total caseload participation targets in the future. However, large numbers of recipients report personal and family characteristics that could present significant challenges to work. States face widely varying challenges in moving their caseloads into work activities. (SM).

A much-needed, indispensable volume for anyone involved in the social services or human services field, Pressing Issues of Inequality and American Indian Communities supplies you with vital information that will assist you in offering culturally sensitive services to your clients. You will gain a new perspective from the blending of traditional academic research with the voices of those most intimately affected. From Pressing Issues of Inequality and American Indian Communities, you will learn proven methods that will help you offer successful and effective services to your Native American clients. Pressing Issues of Inequality and American Indian Communities reveals the stark realities facing American Indian people today. Through this compelling book you will gain new insight into the challenges presented to Native Americans and how to help your clients face these challenges by: learning how to assist American Indian families through an increased understanding of the new time-limited welfare assistance that generally only impacts them if they live off the reservation examining how poverty and a lack of infrastructure and social services exacerbates the problems Navajo women face when leaving violence in their homes using the positive power of language through case examples of American Indian women to understand how stories and their implications change significantly depending on if they are interpreted from a deficit or strength perspective From the information in Pressing Issues of Inequality and American Indian Communities, you will gain new insight into specific problems facing American Indian people, including welfare reform’s devastating effects on American Indians trying live off the reservation and the impact of reservation isolation on domestic violence. The information in Pressing Issues of Inequality and American Indian Communities will help you provide culturally sensitive services to Native Americans and assist them in increasing their quality of life.