Through the lens of administrative burden and ordeals, we investigate challenges that low‐income families face in accessing health and human services critical for their children's healthy development. We employ a mixed methods approach—drawing on administrative data on economically disadvantaged children in Tennessee, publicly available data on resource allocations and expenditures, and data collected in purposive and randomly sampled interviews with public and nonprofit agencies across the state—to analyze the distribution of resources relative to children's needs and provide rich descriptions of the experiences of organizations striving to overcome administrative burdens and support families. We also scrutinize the place‐based resource deserts and environmental contexts of resource gaps and deficiencies in public policies governing the distribution of public resources that exacerbate administrative burdens and inequities in access to public resources. Our insights into the costs imposed on individuals and organizations and how they impede or spill over into other aspects of organizational work point to specific state and local program and policy changes that could be implemented to address resource constraints and alleviate burdens on organizations and poor families.
This study details the research practices that were developed to operationalize the guiding principles of the transformative mixed methods design. A transformative, explanatory-sequential mixed methods design was utilized to examine the workplace experiences of academic migrants and findings from the study supported better work conditions for the population. Two critical theoretical frameworks were implemented—migrant identity and intersectionality—and the study also illustrates how theoretical frameworks can serve to amplify the transformative paradigm in both phases of the mixed methods design. This study makes a significant contribution to the field of mixed methods by exhibiting rigorous research practices that operationalize the transformative criteria and demonstrates how to actualize social justice with and for the studied population.
Children across all races/ethnicities and income levels experience adverse childhood experiences (ACEs); however, historically excluded children and families must contend with added adversities across ecological levels and within higher-risk conditions due to systemic inequality. In this grounded theory study, the authors examined how health and social service providers (N = 81) from rural and urban counties in Tennessee provided services to low-income families, children exposed to opioids, and children of immigrants. Guided by an intersectional framework, the authors examined how rural and urban settings shaped higher risk conditions for ACEs and impeded access to resources at the individual, group, and community levels. Findings from this study identified additionally marginalized subpopulations and demonstrated how inequitable environments intersect and compound the effects of ACEs. The authors present their Intersectional Nature of ACEs Framework to showcase the relationship between high-risk conditions and sociopolitical and economic circumstances that can worsen the effects of ACEs. Ultimately, the Intersectional Nature of Aces Framework differentiates between ACEs that are consequences of social inequities and ACEs that are inflicted directly by a person. This framework better equips ACEs scholars, policymakers, and stakeholders to address the root causes of inequality and mitigate the effects of ACEs among historically excluded populations.
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