ABSTRACT
Discover what challenges lie ahead for occupational therapists Single women receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) often find themselves tangled in difficulties because of current changes in welfare reform, including workfare. Women’s Immersion in a Workfare Program: Emerging Challenges for Occupational Therapists describes the journey of six single mothers in workfare—a proactive alternative to conventional welfare—and their emergence with unique talents and perseverance to balance motherhood and work in the face of adversity. This compassionate and informative text uses the participants’ own authentic voices—in poems, plays, and narratives—to tell their stories of survival and success in this unique governmental program. Women’s Immersion in a Workfare Program: Emerging Challenges for Occupational Therapists first provides a socio-historical overview to place the issues in context, and then comprehensively reviews the interaction between barriers to work and self-sufficiency, including kinship systems, mental health issues, complying with workfare, family role strain, and psychological well-being. The research findings examine how the women receiving TANF experience the mandatory work program as preparation for transition into the workforce, how the women fit the mandatory program into their daily life, and how the women feel about the transition into the workforce. Topics discussed in Women’s Immersion in a Workfare Program: Emerging Challenges for Occupational Therapists include:
- welfare reform
- history of single mothers transition to self-sufficiency
- experience of workfare
- qualitative research methodology
- surviving adversity
- impact of welfare reform on children
