UCLA social welfare research professor Yeheskel “Zeke” Hasenfeld and UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs alumna Eve Garrow have been named winners of the Social Service Review's 2017 Frank R. Breul Memorial Prize for social welfare research on professional power relations.
In their 2016 case study, “When Professional Power Fails: A Power Relations Perspective,” Garrow and Hasenfeld explain how social workers, when making important decisions on behalf of chronically homeless individuals in permanent supportive housing, can find their professional expertise undermined by the interests of external stakeholders who give priority to property management over social services.
Garrow and Hasenfeld’s findings led them to question how property managers, who lack educational professional credentials, could overrule social workers and their professional judgment. Their work attempts to utilize a power relations perspective, which provides a strong explanatory model to the understanding of institutions that affect the ability of social workers to exercise their ethics-bound professional expertise.
After conducting their work over a two-year period, the authors conclude that in order to exercise their professional power, social workers need to forge alliances with stakeholders who share their values and have the power to influence social policy and programs that promote the interest and well-being of vulnerable clients, such as homeless persons, who are powerless clients within organizations.
The Frank R. Breul Memorial Prize, established by the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, honors the career of its namesake, including his service as editor of the review. Awarded annually, the prize for the best article published in the review within a given year comes with a $1,000 stipend.
Garrow is currently the homeless policy analyst and advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California’s “Dignity for All” project. Hasenfeld is currently studying the role of nonprofit organizations in the provision of social services. He recently completed an analysis of the impact of welfare reform.
