A panel of five social work experts met Wednesday at Manning House for a public forum that explored the impacts – often hidden – of the struggling economy on families across Arizona. Each panelist agreed that the stressors exacerbated by the current recession are negatively impacting families and social work programs and services, and that the effects could extend to future generations.

“The toll is serious,” said Craig LeCroy, professor of social work in Arizona State University’s College of Public Programs. Download Full Image

“We have some good evidence that with economic difficulties there are increases in all the major social problems such as domestic violence, child maltreatment, substance abuse and mental health.”

The panel was moderated by Arizona PBS affiliate KAET 8 producer Mike Sauceda and featured LeCroy, Cynthia Lietz, an assistant professor of social work at ASU; Arizona State Representative (Dist. 15) Krysten Sinema; Pete Hershberger, executive director of the Arizona Center for the Study of Children and Families; and Neal Young, director of the Arizona Department of Economic Security.

The forum, “Life on the Edge: The Hidden Social Impact of the Recession,” was hosted by the Tucson">http://ssw.asu.edu/tucson">Tucson Component of ASU’s School of Social Work and organized by ASU Public Affairs. It featured a free-flowing discussion of topics from family stressors to social service limitations, and from those people most at risk during the economic recession to how high-risk groups will be impacted in the future.

“A lot of the hidden impact of this recession is the result it may have on our children and future generations,” said LeCroy, who has been a professor at ASU’s Tucson Component of the School of Social Work since 1994. “If parents are not able to do as much for their children – for example, providing reading material, buying equipment for sports, provide adequate meals – this can impact achievement. If parents can’t do as good as a job in their parenting, children may be more vulnerable to other influences.”

Rep. Sinema focused on the state’s governance and funding of public programs during the current economic downturn.

“This current recession is actually worse for Arizona than was the Great Depression,” she said. “Social service programs are offering less in the way of assistance than it has in the past; we are offering fewer services. The changes in governance that we are seeing are having a direct and significant impact on today’s families and also on the way we engage in governance and service to families in the future."

“We have seen many deep cuts; the situation is quite dire for people living on the edge,” she noted. “The Legislature isn’t just curtailing programs or not funding them, but eliminating them. What we have to do now is protect against the long-term impact of our ability to serve and assist in the future; not enough is being done currently to address this.”
Hershberger added that many services are funded by the state and on a local level, but that more and more the state is asking the cities and counties to foot a larger portion of the funding, which further stresses the system.

The panelists discussed a long list of social services that have been negatively impacted during the recession as more people seek relief, including childcare, health services, economic services, education, family services, shelters, transportation services, school reading and after-class programs, faith services and more.

“This crisis has led to severe stress on our social service workforce,” said Lietz. “Our ability to respond now and in the future is affected by having a workforce that is very stretched, carrying high caseloads, working extra hours, and having to do more with much less, and these are people with their own challenges. The system is stressed to capacity, which impacts our ability to help those in need.”

Young, who has announced he will be leaving DES in January, said the department is seeing more first-time applicants than ever before and noted that one in six Arizonans are receiving nutritional assistance, while more than 142,000 without jobs are receiving unemployment insurance.

Professor LeCroy noted that many people don’t appreciate the impact of job loss on a family.

“On the surface, there is a likely increase in family stress, and this stress is compounded by other difficulties,” he said.

“In some research, unemployment was the best predictor of domestic violence.

“A recent study found that unemployment and low wages can lead to increases in the crime rate. Because these may be families that did not face such difficulties in the past, they may be reluctant to seek help.”

The panelists encouraged forum attendees to reach out to elected leaders.

“Now is the time to get in touch with your local elected officials,” said Young.  “It’s important to let legislators know what’s important to you, whether it is lower taxes or childcare services; whatever it is. It’s a good way to be heard, and legislators are interested in the voices of their constituents.”

For Leitz, as services see funding and donations dwindle, altruism is a win-win opportunity.

“It is important to get involved,” said the ASU assistant professor. “There is research available, and I have done studies, that demonstrate the positive impacts of altruism on those on the receiving end of assistance and support and those who are offering a hand. Families in need become stronger and those who are reaching out become stronger and even become more involved, often becoming agents of change.”

Attorney Regina Jefferies will be the featured presenter in the next Justice and Social Inquiry Colloquium, to be held Nov. 10, in the Memorial Union, Ventana C, on ASU's Tempe campus. The focus of the colloquium is "Transgender Migrants, Asylum and Immigration Law."  Jefferies successfully argued two asylum cases in Federal Immigration Court recently and will share a hands-on perspective on this important area of human rights, organizing and litigation. She will be joined in the discussion by representatives of the Tucson-based organization Colibrí. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. with light refreshments, followed by the discussion at 6 p.m. 

Jefferies is partner in the firm of Thomas & Jefferies and practices solely in the field of immigration and nationality law. She has extensive experience in family-based immigration, Federal court litigation and deportation defense. The firm works with individuals and families throughout the United States and abroad to find innovative solutions to complex immigration and nationality issues. Download Full Image

Previously, Jefferies was manager of the Immigration Services Program at Friendly House Inc., a non-profit, social services agency in Phoenix. Before joining Friendly House, Jefferies worked for the international firm of Littler Mendelson Global, focusing exclusively on employment-based immigration.

For additional information about Regina Jefferies’ visit, contact Alan Gomez, assistant professor in Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation, aeg">mailto:aeg@asu.edu">aeg@asu.edu. 

Seasoned professionals benefit from advanced training programs customized by Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering extended education team

The nation’s deep recession brought a big wave of job losses for those Mary Wolf-Francis calls “the unlikely unemployed.” Download Full Image

“These are people with decades of high-level work experience who have advanced degrees,” says Wolf-Francis, business liaison for Workforce Division of the city of Phoenix Community and Economic Development Department. “They are not the people you expect to see squeezed out of the work force so rapidly in such large numbers, but they have been.”

Earlier this year city administrators decided to use a portion of American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funds to help put out-of-work professionals back into the employment pipeline.

Phoenix officials turned to the Global Outreach and Extended Education (GOEE) office of Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

Assistant dean Jeff Goss, who directs GOEE, and Amy Sever, the manager of professional and executive programs, helped the city organize two intensive education programs designed to arm students with valuable skills that would give them an edge with potential employers.

They recruited ASU faculty and outside business consultants to teach two sessions of a two-week Lean Six Sigma Green Belt program and one session of the more advanced four-week Lean Six Sigma Black Belt program.

Intense immersion in business analyses

The programs focus on methods of analyzing business systems, services and operations with the aim of organizing and managing companies more effectively and instituting cost-efficiency practices.

This past summer more than 50 adult students participated in one or more of the Green belt and Black belt sessions.

The instructors were industrial engineering professors Douglas Montgomery, John Fowler and Dan Shunk, along with Gary Waissi, a professor in the College of Technology and Innovation’s Department of Technology Management, Connie Borror, a professor in the Division of Mathematical and Natural Sciences in the College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, and business consultants James Strickland and Russell Elias, both of whom also teach at ASU.

Their students were schooled in sophisticated decision-making and problem-solving processes, formulas for measuring productivity and customer-service effectiveness, and statistical analysis techniques.

In addition, they learned ways to identify the sources of fiscal and operational waste and how to eliminate it, and how to make fundamental changes in business management and organization take hold.

The program earned the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and its extended education office an award from the Phoenix Workforce Connection for its contribution to the city’s job-training and economic-recovery efforts.

Key to career opportunities

The more poignant recognition came from the students, and from the companies and organizations that benefitted from the service projects students performed as part of their Lean Six Sigma Program training.

"Completing 240 hours of classroom instruction for the Green Belt and then the Black Belt programs was intense.” says Joseph Behrens. “But the teachers' expertise and superb instruction allowed me to learn the practical applications of advanced methodologies, and the coordination and support from the city and university staff provided a strong platform for these classes to be a success." 

Behrens already has a bachelor’s degree in business management and human resources, and a master’s degree in higher education administration.  Still, the Lean Six Sigma program “strengthened my previous education in operations, training and leadership by providing me the tools and capabilities for many career opportunities.”

For out-of-class projects designed to apply classroom lessons, Behrens worked with a small team of fellow students on strategies to reduce costs while improving patient services at two large hospitals.

As a result, he’s now pursuing an entrepreneurial venture, attempting to organize a network of consultants to provide services to the health care industry.

Powerful skill set

Cindy Beck completed both the Green Belt and Black Belt programs, and joined student teams that did business analyses of two distinctly different types of organizations –Avnet, a distributor of electronics components, and Native American Connections, a behavioral health services organization.

“These experiences showed me that all businesses have room for improvement,” she says. “The skills I learned are always going to be valuable because I know that they can be applied in almost any job and for any type of company.”

Paul Albrecht says “I knew I couldn’t lose by having this [training program] on my resume. I would have taken this even if I’d had a job.”

For his outside class project he worked with a student team that evaluated a software development company. “We were able to bring some structure to the operation,” he says. “I think we gave [the company] some certainty about its longevity.”

Albrecht has a master’s of business administration and degrees in biology and physics. He’s a seasoned professional in the high-tech industry. Still, his business education “took a quantum leap” in the Black Belt program, he says.

“We all came out wiser about how the business world really is today. You have to understand the global economic game,” he adds. “The ASU people did a superb job. The skill set we learned is so powerful that it gives you hope.”

Something of real value

Albrecht has since started a job with an aerospace company as a quality engineer. He says his newly acquired skills will be put to work.

“They told me they were hiring me not just as another worker, but as someone who has the ability to change their business culture for the better,” he says.

ASU professor Borror mentored student project teams. “You could see their confidence growing” as they applied what they learned in the classroom to actual businesses, she says.

“In the end, I think they got a high quality of training that would have cost much more had it been provided anywhere else,” Borror adds, “and the companies whose operations they evaluated got something of real value.”

One student team did an operational assessment for A New Leaf, a human services agency with facilities 25 facilities throughout the greater Phoenix area.

“They went beyond simply defining our systems and processes. They gave us concrete recommendations for improving efficiency that we could wrap our arms around,” says Torrie Taj, A New Leaf’s executive vice president for resource development.

“Now we have a flow chart to follow for handling all our work processing contracts [with service providers], and we’re getting better bang for the buck,” she says.

Getting a professional edge

City of Phoenix business liaison Wolf-Francis credits the ASU Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering  extended education administrators for customizing the Lean Six Sigma Program training so that its scope covered skills applicable to everything from manufacturing and service industries, to health care, financial and accounting companies and more.

“Companies today are specifically looking for people with this training,” she says. “Earning [Lean Six Sigma certification] certification will set these students apart and bring their resumes to the top of the pile.”

More than 15 percent of the students landed jobs not long after participating in the program.

“This has been one of the most successful job-training programs the city of has ever done,” Wolf-Francis says.

Michael Stancliff rattles off the myths of human trafficking: slavery is a thing of the past, slavery and human trafficking are not problems in this country, human trafficking and human smuggling are the same thing, all human trafficking is sex trafficking.

How to begin to dispel the myths and address the issue is a much larger exercise. Download Full Image

A step in that direction takes place at Arizona State University’s West campus on Nov. 4 when Grace Chang, associate professor in the Department of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, presents “This is What Human Trafficking Looks Like: Sex Work, Immigration and Transnational Feminist Perspectives,” at 7 p.m. in the La Sala Ballroom in the University Center Building.

The event is free to the community; parking at the West campus is $2 per hour.

“This lecture is important because it brings a critical perspective to an issue that has quickly become a pressing matter of human rights and social justice in this country and globally,” said Stancliff, an assistant professor in the Division of Humanity Arts and Cultural Studies in ASU's New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. “Professor Chang will challenge the dominant paradigm that structures both national and international approaches to human trafficking; that these approaches risk mis-identifying and criminalizing trafficked people and misconstruing their actual needs.”

Chang, who received her master's and doctorate degrees in ethnic studies from the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of “Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy” (South End Press, 2000). The book is a study of how the feminization of poverty is being globalized; poor women of the Third World don’t immigrate voluntarily, but do so from necessity, following the flow of resources out of their countries to the First World, where they become exploitable commodities, disposed of when they are no longer needed.

“There is a complacency surrounding human trafficking outside of sex and child trafficking that is disappointing," Chang said. “Other forms, such as trafficking in the agricultural industry, domestic work, elder care – there’s a disconnect that isn’t just tied to awareness, but, sadly, it doesn’t seem to spark the same moral outrage.

“But anyone can be a part of the solution,” she said. “The beauty of education is that you can become educated about the issue of human trafficking and then spread the awareness about these social justice and human rights aspects among your friends and co-workers. I always say issues that at the core are complex are not ungraspable, that people can get their minds around them.”

Chang said she first developed an interest in human rights as a young mother of two pursuing her doctoral degree at Cal.

“I was dealing with raising a family and working on my Ph.D., and my own mother said to me that I could find an ‘old Chinese lady’ – and I’m Chinese! – to do the housework and that I wouldn’t have to pay much.

“I looked around and I saw, just like I saw in New York earlier in my life, an entire slave force made up of mostly poor women of color. That sparked my interest. In terms of my specific focus, I initially avoided the question of human trafficking because it was such a big mess in feminist circles. But I saw what was being done by some in feminist scholarship and politics wasn’t working, was unhelpful, to say the least, so I jumped into the fray.”

Chang sounds a cautionary note to those prepared to take the same jump.

“Anti-trafficking has many components,” she said. “Oftentimes, those who carry the anti-trafficking banner miss the mark when it comes to actually helping the survivors; they further the misguided rhetoric without helping the actual victims.

“Be careful what you put your money, your time or your energy into," she said. "Dig deeper and know that the majority of the human trafficking abuses that exist are in industries where most people don’t even realize it is going on.”

Stancliff, who teaches courses on slavery and human trafficking in the New College MA">http://newcollege.asu.edu/graduate/degrees/sjhr">MA program in social justice and human rights graduate degree program, said the human trafficking discussion is particularly relevant based on the Valley’s proximity to the U.S.-Mexican border.

“The Phoenix area is said to be a human trafficking hotspot,” he said. “While the data is still being gathered, it is certain that being positioned on a national border, and with one of the nation’s largest refugee communities, all of us in Phoenix should be thinking carefully about human trafficking and efforts to stop it. The fear for many is that in our diligent efforts to address trafficking, we tend to forget larger issues of vulnerability that put people at risk in the first place, beginning with issues of economic justice and immigration.

“Dr. Chang’s presentation is an opportunity to consider the crimes and complexities of human trafficking; she is particularly interested in advocating for the rights of immigrants and sex workers whose lives are impacted by trafficking and anti-trafficking policy.”

According to the Arizona League to End Human Trafficking, more than 17,000 people are trafficked into the United States annually and enslaved in conditions that are abusive, exploitative, inhumane and illegal. They are mostly economically disadvantaged men, women and children from around the world.

“This is What Human Trafficking Looks Like” is presented by New College and its Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies; the master's degree program in social justice and human rights, and the New College Center">http://newcollege.asu.edu/whatsnew2/centercreatessynergy">Center for Critical Inquiry and Cultural Studies. The center, launched earlier this year, supports faculty members as they cross disciplinary boundaries and engage in socially relevant research. It features five research clusters: Oral History; Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Literature; Sexuality in Practice and Theory; Public Art Challenge; and Law and Governance, Practice and Discipline. More clusters are expected to be added as the center grows in the coming years.

For more information, contact Michael Stancliff via email at michael.stancliff">mailto:michael.stancliff@asu.edu">michael.stancliff@asu.edu or call 602-543-5105.

ASU’s West campus is located at 4701 West Thunderbird Road in northwest Phoenix.