Puerto Rican elders' knowledge and use of community-based long-term care services.

We conducted 3 focus groups with 28 Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican elders to explore their knowledge and use of community-based long-term care services, including an exploration of whether their residential setting influences access to services. Analysis revealed themes relating to participants' difficulties and frustrations with formal services. A major theme was a reliance on formal services, given a lack of reliable familial help. Elders living in Latino senior housing reported the greatest access to services, with availability of Spanish-speaking housing staff and informal support from neighbors serving as critical components of their social networks. Practice and policy recommendations are provided.

[Haitian women living with HIV/AIDS in Guadeloupe: pregnancy between medical stakes, social benefits and administrative vulnerability. A qualitative study]. / Les femmes Haïtiennes vivant avec le VIH en Guadeloupe: la grossesse entre enjeux mérablité administrative. Une étude qualitative.

Guadeloupe (French West Indies) is a part of French departments which has the large number of persons living with HIV/AIDS. A large part of them consists of foreign women, mainly native of Haiti. This article is based on an anthropological study conducted in 2009 among professionals of health, social and associative sectors taking care of persons living with HIV in Guadeloupe, and among 10 infected women, 6 of them are native of Haiti. Semi-directive and individual qualitative interviews were conducted with each of these persons. During their course of illness and migration, many women experienced one or several pregnancies. The analysis of their discourses and trajectories underlines the articulation of the multiple stakes − medical, social, political, emotional stakes − with which they are confronted.

A perfect storm? Welfare, care, gender and generations in Uruguay.

This article claims that welfare states modelled on a contributory basis and with a system of entitlements that assumes stable two-parent families, a traditional breadwinner model, full formal employment and a relatively young age structure are profoundly flawed in the context of present-day challenges. While this is true for affluent countries modelled on the Bismarckian type of welfare system, the costs of the status quo are even more devastating in middle-income economies with high levels of inequality. A gendered approach to welfare reform that introduces the political economy and the economy of care and unpaid work is becoming critical to confront what may very well become a perfect storm for the welfare of these nations and their peoples. Through an in-depth study of the Uruguayan case, the authors show how the decoupling of risk and protection has torn asunder the efficacy of welfare devices in the country. An ageing society that has seen a radical transformation of its family and labour market landscapes, Uruguay maintained during the 1980s and 1990s a welfare state that was essentially contributory, elderly and male-oriented, and centred on cash entitlements. This contributed to the infantilization of poverty, increased the vulnerability of women and exacerbated fiscal stress for the system as a whole. Furthermore, because of high levels of income and asset inequality, the redistribution of risk between upper- and lower-income groups presented a deeply regressive pattern. The political economy of care and welfare has begun to change in the last decade or so, bringing about mild reforms in the right direction; but these might prove to be too little and too late.

A widening gap? The political and social organization of childcare in Argentina.

This article examines how social policies and programmes implemented in Argentina shape the political and social organization of childcare. The author seeks to analyse how welfare institutions are currently responding to emerging needs, and to what extent they facilitate the defamilialization of childcare for different social classes. Because Argentina lacks a truly unified 'care policy', four different kinds of facilities and programmes are examined: employment-based childcare services; pre-school schemes; social assistance care services; and poverty reduction strategies. It is argued that far from offering equal rights and services with a universalist cast, these 'caring' institutions reflect the ethos of the current welfare model in Argentina: a fragmented set of social policies based on different assumptions for different social groups, which in turn filter down to the social organization of childcare.

Patients of the state: an ethnographic account of poor people's waiting.

Drawing on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in the main welfare office of the city of Buenos Aires, this article dissects poor people's lived experiences of waiting. The article examines the welfare office as a site of intense sociability amidst pervasive uncertainty. Poor people's waiting experiences persuade the destitute of the need to be patient, thus conveying the implicit state request to be compliant clients. An analysis of the sociocultural dynamics of waiting helps us understand how (and why) welfare clients become not citizens but patients of the state.

Saberes ancestrales: para preservar el bienestar y la armonía en las comunidades indígenas: diagnóstico de la medicina tradicional,base de identidad de los pueblos indígenas del Pacífico, Centro y Norte de Nicaragua / Ancestral knowledge: to preserve well-being and harmony in the indigenous communities: diagnosis of traditional medicine, the basis of identity of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific, Central and Northern Nicaragua

La diversidad humana y las particularidades de actuaciones y comportamientos, a veces impredecibles, de una comunidad constituyen aspectos importantes de la riqueza de la sociedad, tanto en lo individual como en su convivir social. La riqueza del ser humano desde el punto de vista individual ha sido estudiada ampliamente por los psicólogos y psiquiatras, sus resultados se han descrito en múltiples publicaciones sobre la psicología humana.

Social networks among Indigenous peoples in Mexico.

We examine the extent to which social networks among indigenous peoples in Mexico have a significant effect on a variety of human capital investment and economic activities, such as school attendance and work among teenage boys and girls, and migration, welfare participation, employment status, occupation, and sector of employment among adult males and females. Using data from the 10 percent population sample of the 2000 Population and Housing Census of Mexico and the empirical strategy that Bertrand, Luttmer, and Mullainathan (2000) propose, which allows us to take into account the role of municipality and language group fixed effects, we confirm empirically that social network effects play an important role in the economic decisions of indigenous people, especially in rural areas. Our analysis also provides evidence that better access to basic services such as water and electricity increases the size and strength of network effects in rural areas.

Does money matter? The effects of cash transfers on child development in rural Ecuador.

A large body of research indicates that child development is sensitive to early-life environments, so that poor children are at higher risk for poor cognitive and behavioral outcomes. These developmental outcomes are important determinants of success in adulthood. Yet, remarkably little is known about whether poverty-alleviation programs improve children's developmental outcomes. We examine how a government-run cash transfer program for poor mothers in rural Ecuador influenced the development of young children. Random assignment at the parish level is used to identify program effects. Our data include a set of measures of cognitive ability that are not typically included in experimental or quasi-experimental studies of the impact of cash transfers on child well-being, as well as a set of physical health measures that may be related to developmental outcomes. The cash transfer program had positive, although modest, effects on the physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development of the poorest children in our sample.

Decentring poverty, reworking government: social movements and states in the government of poverty.

The significance of social movements for pro-poor political and social change is widely acknowledged. Poverty reduction has assumed increasing significance within development debates, discourses and programmes - how do social movement leaders and activists respond? This paper explores this question through the mapping of social movement organisations in Peru and South Africa. We conclude that for movement activists 'poverty' is rarely a central concern. Instead, they represent their actions as challenging injustice, inequality and/or development models with which they disagree, and reject the simplifying and sectoral orientation of poverty reduction interventions. In today's engagement with the poverty-reducing state, their challenge is to secure resources and influence without becoming themselves subject to, or even the subjects of, the practices of government.

Heads of household programme in Argentina: a human rights-based policy?

This study analyses the consultative councils (CC) of the Argentinian conditional cash transfer heads of household programme as an institutional innovation directed to put into practice some of the principles of the human rights' approach for eradicating poverty. Since the main responsibilities assigned to the CCs coincided with some of the main principles of the human rights' approach, the research is focused on how CCs responded in practice. Using a case study methodology we show that even when, in theory, the CCs incorporate some of the principles of the human rights' approach to the programme, they deviated from this purpose due to a persistent phenomenon in the social policy arena in developing countries: political clientelism. Policy recommendations are formulated in order to deal with clientelism in the framework of the human rights' approach.

Rights questioned. Limitations of poverty-reduction policies in Argentina.

This article analyses, from a human rights' approach, a group of social programmes implemented in Argentina from the year 2002, at the time of the biggest socioeconomic crisis that the country has suffered in the last decades. The main characteristics of the programmes are reviewed, and their anti-poverty strategy, along with design and implementation, are evaluated in relation to human rights. An assessment is also made of the existence of mechanisms for citizens to present claims. Finally, a set of recommendations are made to facilitate the adaptation of the programmes analysed to the duties the State of Argentina has as result of its adherence to international laws on human rights. The analytical methodology proposed by this article could be applied to other policy areas.

Envelhecimento, ciclo de vida e mudanças socioeconômicas: novos desafios para os sistemas de seguridade social / Ageing, life cycle and socioeconomic changes: new challenges for social security systems

O processo de envelhecimento populacional, ainda que amplamente reconhecido como uma das principais conquistas do século XX engendra o desafio de assegurar que o processo de desenvolvimento ocorra com base em princípios capazes de garantir a dignidade humana e a eqüidade entre os grupos etários na partilha dos recursos, direitos e responsabilidades sociais. Além dos desafios impostos aos já tradicionais programas constantes dos atuais sistemas de seguridade social, o envelhecimento populacional acrescenta uma nova questão ou risco social: os cuidados de longa duração, demandados pelos idosos com perda de capacidade instrumental e/ou funcional para lidar com as atividades do cotidiano. Por capacidade instrumental pode-se entender a capacidade para a realização de atividades relacionadas a, por exemplo: preparar refeições, fazer compras no mercado, ir ao banco, cuidar da casa etc. Capacidade funcional, por sua vez, refere-se às seguintes atividades: alimentar-se, banhar-se, caminhar distâncias curtas, vestir-se etc. A preocupação com os cuidados de longa duração dos idosos nos países desenvolvidos, onde o processo de envelhecimento populacional já se encontra mais avançado, surgiu como uma necessidade de se separar os custos crescentes com o tratamento dos idosos dos demais gastos com saúde. Os custos, tangíveis ou não, envolvidos na atividadede cuidar/assistir aos idosos tendem a aumentar em função da entrada maciça das mulheres no mercado de trabalho e das mudanças nos contratos de gênero, sugerindo crescentes dificuldades para que as famílias arquem com a responsabilidade pelo cuidado de seus idosos. Em países em desenvolvimento, como o Brasil, essa questão é agravada por se somar a uma ampla lista a ser respondida pelos sistemas de seguridade social, tais como a pobreza, a exclusão de crescentes contingentes da população e o nível de desigualdade vigente...

[The wind prophylaxis. Repressive and sanitary institutions in Argentina's Patagonia, 1880-1940]. / La profilaxis del viento. Instituciones represivas y sanitarias en la Patagonia Argentina, 1880-1940.

This article focuses on the study of some social control technologies and discourses, displayed in Argentina's provinces between 1880 and 1940, with particular reference to the so-called 'Territorios Nacionales' of La Pampa Río Negro and Neuquén, which were submitted to a direct federal authority. THe main purpose is to analyze - within these areas- - the building of repressive and sanitary institutions (i.e., police, prisons, asylums, hospitals) as well as the enforcement of positivists studying and classifying methodologies, intended to identify 'abnormality'. A straight and permanent rule of these "territorios Nacionales' on the federal State could have meant a longer attention to their social and economic development through a direct and intense presence of national, modernizing, positivist institutions. However, a deeper historical study of repressive and sanitary institutions allows to arrive to completely different conclusions. The sources show that these institutions had numerous daily problems, were frequently and severely under-budgeted and were obliged to develop not originally forseen functions and tasks. These situations imply revising not only these institutions' real regulation capacities but also the very existence of a generalized, efficient social control programme in Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century, as many scholars focused on Buenos Aires's study case have already argued.

["Medical Deputies": clinics and politics in the dispute for public resources in Buenos Aires (1906-1917)]. / Los <>: clínica y política en la disputa por los recursos públicos en Buenos Aires (1906-1917).

In June 1906, the conservative deputy and doctor Eliseo Cantón submitted in the Argentinian Parliament the project of a <>, which would take up four blocks, would be located in front of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires and would be made up by 20 institutes with a capacity for 80 beds each. The dispute over this huge project, which lasted until 1917, placed in the middle of the scene, a group of "medical deputies" who used the political platform as a space to define the main aspects of the hospital system. The controversy went beyond the Parliament reaching the public sphere. The lavishness of the project on the eve of the Centenary public festivities or the opulence of a Buenos Aires which inspired to be like Paris were related, in a symbolic view, to the progress of local medicine and its aspirations to be included in the international medical arena. The analysed case helps understand how an essentially political controversy - which led to economical, ethical and cognitive discussions - intervened in the process of building up a socio-professional space of the hospital medical practice.

Las personas con discapacidad: su calidad de vida y la de su entorno / The people with discapacidad: its quality of life and the one of its surroundings

El presente artículo se dirige no solo a los profesionales del área de la salud, sino a todas las personas interesadas en el mejoramiento de la calidad de vida de las personas con discapacidad, mediante la explicación de la diferencia entre los conceptos de discapacidad y minusvalía, y con argumentos que permiten el cambio de mentalidad hacia los individuos que la presentan

Impact of immigration on health and human services: Florida's experience.

Florida has been the destination for large numbers of immigrants fleeing political persecution or economic hardships. Cubans and Haitians have been two of the largest immigrant groups arriving and settling in Florida. Both have received national and local attention. This article describes the immigration experience of Haitians and Cubans in Florida. The descriptions emphasize the differences between these two groups in their adjustment to life in south Florida. The article also addresses Florida's reaction to federal policies regarding immigration and highlights Florida's struggle to meet the service needs of these immigrant populations. Fiscal impacts of immigration are quantified in several service categories, including education, social services, health care, and criminal justice. Florida's action based on the documentation of the immigration fiscal impact is explained. Finally, how the state allocated the $18 million in federal funding provided as a response to Florida's documented impact is covered.