Lisa Brush This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. Pittsburgh City Paper - ONLINE

   www.pghcitypaper.com/archives/ - [Cached]

   Published on: 5/11/2002   Last Visited: 1/23/2003

   "If you're being battered, it's really hard to be that ready-to-work person," says University of Pittsburgh sociology professor Lisa Brush. "Women who are in abusive situations shouldn't be sanctioned for being beaten."
   
   or Brush, head of Pitt's Family Violence and Self-Sufficiency Project, four years of research began with an anecdote. In 1997, an Allegheny County welfare administrator told her about a woman who had been progressing in a welfare-to-work program. "The night before she was going to take her final test in her computer course," Brush says, "the boyfriend said, 'If you take that test, I'm going to break your fingers.'"
   
   In 1998, Brush studied 122 women on welfare who were enrolled in a local job-training program. Of those women, 38 percent reported that their current or most recent boyfriend hit, kicked, or threw things at them; 27 percent were cut, bruised, choked or seriously injured by a significant other; and a quarter had gone to court for protection-from-abuse orders. The impact of battering on their success in the program was profound: Women who'd had to seek a PFA were six times as likely to drop out of the return-to-work program as other women.
   
   The Family Violence Option was designed to help. It allows states to exempt victims of current or prior domestic violence from three key requirements of the federal welfare program, now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. First, abused women can get temporary waivers from job-training and job-hunting requirements.
   ...
   If the state can help battered women on the TANF rolls, it will mean a more effective and humane welfare-to-work effort, says Brush. "It will keep us from wasting time and energy sanctioning women for taking a beating."
   
   And the price of failure? Brush says kicking women off welfare could force them back to their abusers.

2. 2. Pittsburgh City Paper - ONLINE

   www.pghcitypaper.com/fallguide - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/28/2001   Last Visited: 2/14/2002

   Brush up on the history of the city with Hidden Pittsburgh A-Z, which takes place Oct. 27-31.
   
   Silver Eye Center for Photography South Side, 412-431-1810. And speaking of Pittsburgh -- Pittsburgh Collects Photographs shows 30 photographs taken from private and local collections, continuing through Nov. 24.
   ...
   DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AWARENESS MONTH LECTURE SERIES Organized by University of Pittsburgh professor Lisa Brush. 412-624-6485.

3. 3. Pittsburgh City Paper - ONLINE

   www.pghcitypaper.com/nz91201.h - [Cached]

   Published on: 11/24/2001   Last Visited: 8/25/2002

   "If you're being battered, it's really hard to be that ready-to-work person," says University of Pittsburgh sociology professor Lisa Brush. "Women who are in abusive situations shouldn't be sanctioned for being beaten."
   
   or Brush, head of Pitt's Family Violence and Self-Sufficiency Project, four years of research began with an anecdote. In 1997, an Allegheny County welfare administrator told her about a woman who had been progressing in a welfare-to-work program. "The night before she was going to take her final test in her computer course," Brush says, "the boyfriend said, 'If you take that test, I'm going to break your fingers.'"
   
   In 1998, Brush studied 122 women on welfare who were enrolled in a local job-training program. Of those women, 38 percent reported that their current or most recent boyfriend hit, kicked, or threw things at them; 27 percent were cut, bruised, choked or seriously injured by a significant other; and a quarter had gone to court for protection-from-abuse orders. The impact of battering on their success in the program was profound: Women who'd had to seek a PFA were six times as likely to drop out of the return-to-work program as other women.
   
   The Family Violence Option was designed to help. It allows states to exempt victims of current or prior domestic violence from three key requirements of the federal welfare program, now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. First, abused women can get temporary waivers from job-training and job-hunting requirements.
   ...
   If the state can help battered women on the TANF rolls, it will mean a more effective and humane welfare-to-work effort, says Brush. "It will keep us from wasting time and energy sanctioning women for taking a beating."
   
   And the price of failure? Brush says kicking women off welfare could force them back to their abusers.