In 2003 and 2004, the Government of Canada introduced versions of a bill that would “decriminalize” minor marijuana-related offences. This paper reviews Canada’s international obligations in relation to cannabis laws and discusses varying interpretations of those obligations. It then examines the impact that marijuana decriminalization might have on Canada’s foreign policy programs. Finally, the paper discusses statements made by other governments and international bodies relating to this possible change in Canadian law.

Older Americans are disproportionately likely to die by suicide.
- Although they comprise only 12 percent of the U.S. population, people age 65 and older accounted for 16 percent of suicide deaths in 2004.
- 14.3 of every 100,000 people age 65 and older died by suicide in 2004, higher than the rate of about 11 per 100,000 in the general population.
- Non-Hispanic white men age 85 and older were most likely to die by suicide. They had a rate of 49.8 suicide deaths per 100,000 persons in that age group.

- California’s foreign-born population has increased tremendously in recent decades. Between 1970 and 2005, the number of immigrants in California increased more than fivefold, from 1.8 million to 9.6 million.
- One in four Californians is an immigrant, a higher proportion than in any other state. The proportion of the state’s population that is foreign born is at its highest level since 1890. California has a much higher share of immigrants in its population than does the United States as a whole (27 percent versus 12 percent).
- Most of California’s immigrants are from Latin America or Asia. Eighty-nine percent of the state’s immigrants are from Latin America or Asia, with slightly over half from Latin America (55 percent) and one-third (34 percent) from Asia. While California is home to sizable populations of immigrants from dozens of countries, the leading countries of origin are Mexico (4.3 million), the Philippines (739,000), China (469,000), and Vietnam (451,000).

The median tenure for all wage and salary workers age 25 or older was virtually unchanged from 1983 (5.0 years) to 2006 (4.9 years). However, the median tenure for male wage and salary workers declined from 5.9 years in 1983 to 5.0 years in 2006. In contrast, the median tenure for female wage and salary workers increased from 4.2 years in 1983 to 4.8 years in 2006. Consequently, the increase in the median tenure of female workers offset much of the decline in the median tenure of male workers, leaving the overall level essentially unchanged.

This SFR updates outcomes published in ILR/SFR10 on 11 April 2006, which showed learner outcomes in LSC funded further education (FE) and in Work Based Learning for Young People (WBLYP) in 2004/05, with data for 2005/06. For FE, it will show outcomes by institution type by age (16-18, 19 and over), level by age, level by qualification type by age, sector subject area by gender, ethnicity by gender, and disability status by age. For WBLYP, the SFR will show outcomes by programme strand by age, by programme strand by sector subject area by gender, and by programme strand by ethnicity.

This study, by a research team from the Centre for Research in Social Policy and Essex University, explores what existing data sources can tell us about the needs and resources of older people, with a particular focus on poverty and hardship in later life. In addition to income, the analysis examines expenditure, health, social networks, services, housing and neighbourhoods. It considers how the circumstances of people over 65 change as they age and whether life is improving or worsening for successive generations of older people.

HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus. This is the virus that causes AIDS. HIV is different from most other viruses because it attacks the immune system. The immune system gives our bodies the ability to fight infections. HIV finds and destroys a type of white blood cell (T cells or CD4 cells) that the immune system must have to fight disease.

With increasing numbers of older people living longer, the future of their financial and service provision is a key policy concern, while poverty among the present generation of older people remains an important issue. This qualitative study, by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University, explores how older people use and value available resources, and how they had planned for retirement and are planning for future later life.

This Fact Book examines hospital care for adults age 18 and older with mental health or substance abuse problems who were treated for those conditions in community (as opposed to specialty) hospitals. Information on patient characteristics, length of stay for various conditions, and costs is presented as well as detailed statistics on stays related to dual diagnosis, suicide, and maternity care.

Dating violence is a serious public health concern both per se and because victimization in the young adult years can be a precursor to more severe incidents of domestic violence later, in the context of cohabitation or marriage. To date, no quantitative studies have examined dating violence among college students in Chile. To address this gap, a survey on this topic was administered to students at a major public university. The present analyses focused on the female sample (n=441). Generalized ordered logit models were used to assess factors associated with physical victimization since age 14, considering three categories: no victimization, victimization with no injury, and victimization with injury. Approximately 21% of subjects reported one or more incidents of physical dating violence not involving injury since age 14, and another 5.0% reported at least one incident resulting in injury during this time period. The corresponding figures for the past 12 months were 12.9% and 2.4%, respectively. Childhood sexual abuse and witnessing domestic violence as a child were associated with substantially elevated odds of physical victimization later in life. Low parental education was also associated with higher vulnerability, in part because of its linkage with childhood experiences with aggression. Protective factors included maternal employment and religious service participation at age 14, residence in the parental home during the college years, and never having had sexual intercourse. The findings suggest that it would be desirable to develop public health initiatives to prevent and respond to this form of violence among Chilean college students.

The U.S. Census Bureau tracks extended measures of well-being in the SIPP. The SIPP’s “Extended Measures of Well-Being” topical module, on which this report is based, covers five broad domains: (1) appliances and electronic goods, such as possession of refrigerators, landline and cellular telephones, and computers; (2) housing conditions, including level of satisfaction with overall home repair, adequate living space, and sufficient privacy; (3) neighborhood conditions and
community services, such as: road conditions and the presence of abandoned buildings; satisfactory police, fire, and medical services; and attitudes towards local schools; (4) meeting basic needs, including the ability to pay bills in full, to avoid eviction, and to have sufficient food; and (5) the expectation of help, should need arise, from friends, family, and the community. For this report, extended measures of well-being are used to describe living conditions in the United States for the time period 1992–2003.

Workers slow to see or adapt to a changing U.S. retirement system: The 17th annual wave of the Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS) suggests that American workers may be slow to recognize how the U.S. retirement system is changing, and those who are aware of these changes may not be adapting to them in ways that are likely to secure them a comfortable retirement.

Drug abuse is implicated in at least three types of drug-related offenses: (1) offenses defined by drug possession or sales, (2) offenses directly related to drug abuse (e.g., stealing to get money for drugs), and (3) offenses related to a lifestyle that predisposes the drug abuser to engage in illegal activity, for example, through association with other offenders or with illicit markets. Individuals who use illicit drugs are more likely to commit crimes, and it is common for many offenses, including violent crimes, to be committed by individuals who had used drugs or alcohol prior to committing the crime, or who were using at the time of the offense.

This volume of essays presents the thoughts of leading researchers and policy experts regarding models and policies that can help guide the rebuilding efforts in the Gulf Coast region. The essays focus on six issue areas: affordable housing; services for children and families; strengthening the arts and culture community; public and environmental health concerns; rebuilding financial assets; and the role of nonprofits in preparing for the next disaster. Together, the essays lay an important foundation for developing action plans to address the underlying issues of poverty, inequality, and weak social infrastructures that have been persistent in the region for decades.

"The facts are clear: reforms to both Medicare and Social Security are urgently needed. The serious concerns raised by the Trustees Reports demand the attention of America's policymakers and the public. Americans who depend on Social Security and Medicare are relying on those of us in public to address the long-term funding issues. Successful long-term reform of these programs is a shared responsibility and we all have to rise to the challenge."

Medicare Report

Social Security Report

Key findings
- Obesity in the U.S. population has been increasing steadily over the past two decades — and severe obesity is increasing the fastest.
- Obesity is linked to higher health care costs than smoking or drinking, and plays a major role in disability at all ages.
- The explosive increase in bariatric surgery has had no noticeable effect on the prevalence of severe obesity.
- The cost consequences of disability among the young could swamp recent Medicare and Medicaid savings stemming from increasingly good health among the elderly.

Economists rely heavily on self-reported measures of health status to examine the relationship between income and health. In this paper we directly compare survey responses to a self-reported measure of health that is commonly available in nationally-representative individual and household surveys, with objective measures of the same health condition. Our particular focus is on hypertension, which is the most prevalent health condition in Western countries. Using data from the Health Survey for England, we find that there is a substantial difference in the percentage of adult survey respondents reporting that they have hypertension as a chronic health condition compared to that from repeated measurements by a trained nurse. Around 85% of individuals measured as having hypertension do not report having it as a chronic illness. Importantly, we find no evidence of an income/health gradient using self-reported hypertension, but a large (about 14 times the size) gradient when using objectively measured hypertension. We also find that the probability of false negative reporting, that is an individual not reporting to have chronic hypertension when in fact they have it, is significantly higher for individuals living in low income households. Given the wide use of such self-reported chronic health conditions in applied research, and the asymptomatic nature of many major illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and cancer at moderate and sometimes very elevated levels, we show that using commonly available self-reported chronic health measures is likely to lead to an underestimate of true income-related inequalities in health. This has important implications for policy advice.

The results of our 2006 national survey of people with diabetes are now available. They will be used at a local level to improve services for people with diabetes and will feed into the performance ratings for primary care trusts (PCTs) in the 2006/2007 annual health check. We will also use the results as part of our service review of diabetes services, in which we are focusing on supported self-care. The results of the survey will not be used to assess individual general practices.

Today’s children are staying in education longer and are increasingly likely to live in a one-parent family, and young adults are staying with their parents for longer, according to this year’s edition of Social Trends, published today by the Office for National Statistics. The underlying theme of Social Trends 37 is children and young people. It shows that family structures are changing and looks at how children and young people are interacting with modern society, both with the education system and today’s digital age of mobile phones and the Internet.

We examine the issue of identification stability for U.S.-born Mexican Americans, by far the largest of the ethnic groups growing as a result of contemporary immigration. We demonstrate a significant exodus from the Mexican-American group as identified by the census. The major part of this loss, revealed by comparisons of birth cohorts across the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Censuses, occurs because individuals who identified themselves as Mexican American at an earlier point in time do not do so at a later point. In addition, there are exits that occur between generations because of past intermarriage, visible in the number of non-Hispanics who claim Mexican ancestry. The losses in the Mexican-American group appear to be accounted for by two kinds of identity shifts: toward identities that have a mainstream character and thus appear reflect conventional assimilation; and toward identities that have a pan-ethnic character, i.e., with Hispanics or Latinos. These exits are selective, but in complex and partially off-setting ways. Nevertheless, the comparison of the characteristics of U.S.-born members over time is likely to be affected by changing patterns of identification with the group.

The structure of family relationships influences economic behavior and attitudes. We define our measure of family ties using individual responses from the World Value Survey regarding the role of the family and the love and respect that children need to have for their parents for over 70 countries. We show that strong family ties imply more reliance on the family as an economic unit which provides goods and services and less on the market and on the government for social insurance. With strong family ties home production is higher, labor force participation of women and youngsters, and geographical mobility, lower. Families are larger (higher fertility and higher family size) with strong family ties, which is consistent with the idea of the family as an important economic unit. We present evidence on cross country regressions. To assess causality we look at the behavior of second generation immigrants in the US and we employ a variable based on the grammatical rule of pronoun drop as an instrument for family ties. Our results overall indicate a significant influence of the strength of family ties on economic outcomes.

The United States of America has always been a nation of immigrants—a land of opportunity where newcomers can, through hard work and perseverance, achieve better lives for themselves and their families. But in today’s world, realizing the American Dream is now almost impossible without at least some college education, and many immigrants face significant barriers to gaining access to and succeeding in higher education. Higher education for immigrants isn’t an issue narrowly focused on the well-being of these immigrants as individuals but has major implications for the nation as whole. As the United States moves into the 21st century as part of a global economy in which postsecondary education is a key to economic competitiveness, it is imperative to develop policies at the federal, state, local, and institutional levels to help immigrants gain access to and succeed in higher education. Without such policies, the nation may find itself with a workforce that does not have sufficient education to enable the United States to remain economically ompetitive.

Contrary to right-wing claims that same-sex couples are largely white, male, upper-class citizens, 2000 Census data shows same-sex couples are even more racially diverse than the general population, are from all types of backgrounds and live in 99% of the counties in America. As they try and take care of each other and their families, they have the same sets of economic decisions to make as everyone else. But same-sex committed couples experience numerous economic injustices directly connected to their exclusion from the protections married couples take for granted every day.

The ten occupations with the highest median weekly earnings among women who were full-time wage and salary workers were
1. Pharmacists, $1,564;
2. Chief executives, $1,422;
3. Lawyers, $1,333;
4. Physicians and surgeons, $1,329;
5. Computer and information systems managers, $1,300;
6. Computer software engineers, $1,272;
7. Physical therapists, $1,086;
8. Management analysts, $1069
9. Medical and health services managers, $1,064; and
10. Computer scientist and systems analysts $1039

This study draws on detailed analysis of flows of population for neighbourhoods in England and Scotland, based on 2001 Census data. It examines whether deprived neighbourhoods have less stable populations, whether they are poorly connected to the wider housing market through movements of people in and out, and whether they are losing better qualified individuals through net movement out of the area. The study, by Nick Bailey and Mark Livingston at the University of Glasgow, challenges several conventional wisdoms about deprived areas.

A nontraditional occupation for women is one in which women comprise 25 percent or less of total employment. Nontraditional occupations span all major occupational groups and provide many employment options for women.

To track smoking trends at the movies, previous analyses have studied the U.S. motion picture industry's top-grossing films with the heaviest advertising support, deepest audience penetration, and highest box office earnings. This report is unique in examining the U.S. movie industry's total output, and also in idnetifying smoking in movies, tobacco incidents, and tobacco impressions with the companies that produced and/or distributed the films - and with their parent corporations, which claim responsibility for tobacco content choices. Examining Hollywood's product line-up, before and after the public voted at the box office, sheds light on individual studios' content decisions and industry-wide production patterns amenable to policy reform. We surveyed all U.S.-produced live action films released to theaters in the eight years between December 25, 1998, and December 24, 2006, and offer three different measures of smoking in movies.

Inflation is down, and full-time faculty salaries are finally back up. These would seem to be encouraging signs for the economic status of higher education. Unfortunately, however, one good year cannot reverse discouraging trends that have been developing over decades. Growing financial inequality in the United States has become a prominent public issue. In February 2007, President Bush publicly acknowledged the growing gap between rich and poor Americans and recommended that firms reconsider the size of the salaries they pay to chief executives.1 In a fall 2006 speech, Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, said that U.S. income inequality has risen to such a level that “there are signs that [it] is intensifying resistance to globalization, impairing social cohesion, and could, ultimately, undermine American democracy.”

The long-running discussion about academic freedom at American universities must be broadened to encompass a new approach to rights and responsibilities in the academy. If colleges and universities are to fulfill their mission, then all stakeholders must take a responsible approach to ensuring that the environment in which students learn, teachers teach and academics conduct research is hospitable to the open, challenging and tolerant discourse on which the human mind thrives. This publication assesses the current climate and sets forth recommendations for enhancing the university climate.

More than 18 months after the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, thousands of low-income people remain in FEMA trailer parks. Social science research teaches us that clustering large numbers of vulnerable families in isolated, underserved communities is a recipe for disaster. Public policies should focus on providing meaningful, permanent housing choices in decent neighborhoods for the low-income families currently living in trailers. In addition, as long as some families remain in trailer communities, they need on-site services to counteract the damaging effects of isolation and distress.

The Committee decided to conduct further scrutiny of this Bill on the basis of preliminary advice from its Legal Adviser that it raised significant human rights issues. It appointed Professor Philip Fennell, Professor of Law at Cardiff Law School, as a specialist adviser. In reaching the conclusions set out in this Report, the Committee has taken into account the Minister’s reply to its request for further information and explanation, as well as evidence from a range of bodies and individuals (paragraphs 1-3). In the Committee’s view, the Bill raises nine main human rights compatibility issues and
omits two means to enhance or promote human rights.

This leaflet has been written to help answer some of the issues and
questions raised by adopted people and their birth relatives
approaching a reunion.

This report presents the behavioral impact findings of four selected programs that received funding through the Title V, Section 510 grants: (1) My Choice, My Future! in Powhatan, Virginia; (2) ReCapturing the Vision in Miami, Florida; (3) Families United to Prevent Teen Pregnancy (FUPTP) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and (4) Teens in Control in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Like most programs supported by the Title V, Section 510 grants, these four programs all served youth in school settings, usually in the upper elementary or middle school grades. All programs offered more than 50 contact hours and lasted for one or more school years, making them relatively intense among programs funded by the Title V, Section 510 grant. One of the programs, FUPTP, served youth on a voluntary basis in an afterschool setting. The other three programs served youth in classrooms during the school day much like any other course, although ReCapturing the Vision augmented these classroom based services with a number of extracurricular offerings.

Recent demands on the military have raised concerns about the impact of extended deployments on military marriages. To evaluate this impact, the authors draw on marital status data in service personnel records to estimate trends in marriage and marital dissolution between 1996 and 2005 and the specific effects of time deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq on subsequent risk of ending a marriage. The results generally run counter to expectations. Although rates of marital dissolution have increased since 2001 for most services and components, they had declined in the five years prior to 2001. As a result, marital dissolution rates across the services and components are currently similar to those observed in 1996, when the demands on the military were measurably lower. In most cases, service members who were deployed had a lower risk of subsequently ending their marriages than service members who did not deploy or deployed fewer days.

This publication has a dual purpose—to help managers think through what they might put in place to cope with disasters, and to highlight how taking these steps can improve systems for serving children and families. This publication, developed to update a 1995 Children’s Bureau publication, Coping with Disasters: A Guide for Child Welfare Agencies, draws on an extensive literature review and recent presentations by and consultations with State staff members who have experienced disasters. Additionally, members of the Children’s Bureau’s Training and Technical Assistance Network shared insights from their experiences with relief efforts following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf Coast States, and central office and regional office Administration on Children and Families (ACF) staff provided input.

The effects of a recent Swedish child-care fee reform are compared with those of an alternative reform, increased child benefits. The fee reform implied considerably decreased fees and was intended to increase both labor supply among parents and their economic wellbeing. We estimate labor supply effects using a discrete choice labor supply model, and simulate behavioral responses to the changes. We find positive, but small, effects on labor supply from reduced fees, while increased child benefits would make single mothers decrease their labor supply. On the other hand, increased child benefits would make income distribution more equal. We make a social welfare comparison and conclude that for plausible values of inequality aversion, the alternative reform would have been preferable to the implemented fee reform.

Recent claims of an ‘urban renaissance’ have suggested that cities are magnets for younger and better-qualified people who can sustain urban economic growth and community development. This study by Newcastle University analysed population movement over the year prior to the 2001 Census to discover whether 27 large British cities attracted more people from elsewhere in the country than they lost. It also looked in more detail at population movement within three city regions.

Is the way that people make risky choices, or tradeoffs over time, related to cognitive ability? This paper investigates whether there is a link between cognitive ability, risk aversion, and impatience, using a representative sample of the population and incentive compatible measures. We conduct choice experiments measuring risk aversion, and impatience over an annual time horizon, for a randomly drawn sample of roughly 1,000 German adults. Subjects also take part in two different tests of cognitive ability, which correspond to sub-modules of one of the most widely used IQ tests. Interviews are conducted in subjects' own homes. We find that lower cognitive ability is associated with significantly more impatient behavior in the experiments, and with greater risk aversion. This relationship is robust to controlling for personal characteristics, educational attainment, income, and measures of credit constraints. We perform a series of additional robustness checks, which help rule out other possible confounds.

Across Africa, for too many aching years, there has been an immense silence about African men and women who yearn for, desire, love and embrace same-sex partners. The silence denied truth, for throughout history same-sex practice has been as prevalent here as anywhere else in the world. The silence wrought injustice, for it was born from repression and fear, and from disrespect for the humanity of those who yearned, desired, loved and embraced. Worst, the silence has exacted a terrible toll in lives. As our continent has faced a deathly epidemic of sex-borne disease, the silence has cost lives, for the muteness about same-sex practice has extended, devastatingly, to a muteness about prevention, care and treatment.

The Shape of Things to Come presents evidence that certain age structures in populations can support governments’ efforts to create and maintain political stability, and that others can impede such efforts. The report does not argue that these demographic structures and their dynamics directly cause development failures or successes. Yet the influence of age structure on a state’s progress toward democracy, on the risk of an outbreak of civil conflict and on economic development is both significant and quantifiable. This report identifies for the first time four main types of age structures present in current populations: very young, youthful, transitional and mature. Chapters for each structure type describe their basic demographic parameters and the common development challenges and opportunities faced. A quantitative analysis shows that each structure has distinct traits in vulnerability to civil conflict, governance and economic growth.

In an effort to better understand the attitudes and behaviors of young people in America around volunteering, service-learning, and other forms of community involvement, the Corporation for National and Community Service, in collaboration with the U.S. Census Bureau and Independent Sector, conducted a national survey, the 2005 Youth Volunteering and Civic Engagement Survey (the Youth Volunteering Survey). Between January and March of 2005, 3,178 Americans between the ages of 12 and 18 were asked about their volunteering habits and experiences with school-based service-learning projects, as well as their attitudes and behaviors related to other forms of civic engagement. In the first two reports in the Youth Helping America Series, “Building Active Citizens: The Role of Social Institutions in Teen Volunteering” and “Educating for Active Citizenship: Service- earning, School-Based Service, and Civic Engagement,” we explored the role of social institutions in engaging youth in volunteering and service-learning.1 We were also able to show that there was a connection between school-based service and a youth’s sense of community and ability to make a difference.

America’s Baby Boomers will begin turning age 65 in 2011. Twenty years from now, Boomers will double the size of the older population, making it more than 20% of the total population. If this generation ages with the same risks of chronic health problems as today’s elderly, the healthcare burden in the U.S. will cripple an already fragile medical delivery system. The economic and social consequences could be dire. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2030, spending on Medicare and Social Security alone will consume 15% of the country’s GDP, double what it is today. More than 85 national not-for-profit health advocacy and patient groups, comprising the Task Force on Aging Research Funding, are putting forth a simple and clear proposal: keep our aging population healthier, more vital, and independent longer.

The present government is undoubtedly ‘pro-housing’. It has been active and innovative in many aspects of housing policy and has recognised the real significance of good housing outcomes in facilitating neighbourhood renewal, poverty reduction and wider economic progress. Government expenditures on housing investment policies have risen in recent years. However, annual output of housing for low income households in England still lies well below the performance of the mid-1990s while homelessness, housing needs and investment requirements remain resolutely high. John Hills (2007) was right to emphasise that there is no deepening crisis in housing provision in England: but there are still too many places that people only want to leave and too many young lives that are blighted by inadequate homes and neighbourhoods. The government can reasonably claim, in this area of policy, ‘a lot done, a lot still to do’ but the golden age is still a serious number of leaden steps ahead.

The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) assessed the English literacy skills of a nationally representative sample of more than 19,000 U.S. adults (age 16 and older) residing in households and prisons. NAAL is the first national assessment of adult literacy since the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey. Three types of literacy were measured: Prose, Document, and Quantitative. Results were reported in terms of scale scores (on a 500-point scale) and in terms of four literacy levels—Below Basic, Basic, Intermediate, and Proficient. This report, Literacy in Everyday Life, presents findings from the 2003 assessment. It examines changes in literacy levels for the total adult population of the United States, as well as for adults with different demographic characteristics (gender, race, age, and ethnicity). Changes in literacy levels are reported for 2003 as well as between 1992 and 2003. In addition, the report describes how American adults age 16 and older at varying literacy levels use written information in their everyday lives.

America appears to be in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Should we care? RAND Corporation researchers have conducted a series of studies analyzing obesity trends and estimating their eff ects on future health care costs. They found that
• obesity in the U.S. population has been increasing steadily over the past two decades—and severe obesity is increasing the fastest
• obesity translates into higher health carecosts and contributes to disability at all ages
• traditional clinical approaches, in particular bariatric surgery, cannot slow the trend
• Medicare and Medicaid savings stemming from increasingly good health among the elderly could be swamped by the cost consequences of disability among the young.

All 50 States, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Territories have mandatory child abuse and neglect reporting laws that require certain professionals and institutions to report suspected maltreatment to a child protective services (CPS) agency. Examples of these mandatory reporters include health care providers and facilities, mental health care providers, teachers and other school staff, social workers, police officers, foster care providers, and daycare providers. The initial report of suspected child abuse or neglect is called a referral. Approximately one-third of referrals are screened out each year and do not receive further attention from CPS. The remaining referrals are “screened in” and an investigation or assessment is conducted by the CPS agency to determine the likelihood that maltreatment has occurred or that the child is at risk of maltreatment. After conducting interviews with family members, the alleged victim, and other people familiar with the family, the CPS agency makes a determination or finding concerning whether the child is a victim of abuse or neglect or is at risk of abuse or neglect. This determination often is called a disposition. Each State establishes specific dispositions and terminology.

Underage drinking is a significant problem in the United States: Alcohol is the primary contributor to the leading causes of death among adolescents. As a result, communitywide strategies to prevent underage drinking are more important than ever. Such strategies depend on the involvement and education of adolescents, parents, law enforcement officials, merchants, and other stakeholders. This guide is designed to take communities through the process of planning, implementing, and evaluating strategies to prevent underage drinking and youth access to alcohol. The guide is structured according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA’s) Strategic Prevention Framework, a five-step prevention approach. Within the five steps, the guide adopts the Getting To Outcomes model of empowerment evaluation, results-based accountability, and continuous quality improvement. The result is a comprehensive, step-by-step manual for developing, implementing, and evaluating a high-quality communitywide plan to prevent underage drinking and its related consequences. Recommendations include the development of educational strategies for parents, adolescents, and alcohol merchants; attracting the involvement of civic leaders; working to reform legislation governing underage access to alcohol; and training law enforcement officials to be vigilant but safe in their efforts to police underage drinking in the community.

This paper studies the test-retest reliability of a standard self-reported life satisfaction measure and of affect measures collected from a diary method. The sample consists of 229 women who were interviewed on Thursdays, two weeks apart, in Spring 2005. The correlation of net affect (i.e., duration-weighted positive feelings less negative feelings) measured two weeks apart is 0.64, which is slightly higher than the correlation of life satisfaction (r=0.59). Correlations between income, net affect and life satisfaction are presented, and adjusted for attenuation bias due to measurement error. Life satisfaction is found to correlate much more strongly with income than does net affect. Components of affect that are more person-specific are found to have a higher test-retest reliability than components of affect that are more specific to the particular situation. While reliability figures for subjective well-being measures are lower than those typically found for education, income and many other microeconomic variables, they are probably sufficiently high to support much of the research that is currently being undertaken on subjective well-being, particularly in studies where group means are compared (e.g., across activities or demographic groups).

Ruth Kelly announced on 5 April 2007, a new action plan to step-up work with Muslim communities to isolate, prevent and defeat violent extremism. This document sets out a range of concrete actions by which the Government will work with Muslim organisations to tackle violent extremism. Most of the actions flow directly from suggestions made to us by those working most actively to tackle these issues in their own communities.

This report focuses on the outcomes of the children's services inspection resulting from the first 37 joint area reviews, which began in September 2005, and the annual performance assessment process undertaken in 2006. It draws together the findings from across each of the five Every Child Matters outcomes and judgements of all the inspectorates that work in partnership to deliver children's services inspections in accordance with the Children Act 2004.

The increased diffusion of computers is one of the fundamental changes at workplaces in recent decades. While the majority of workers now spend a substantial fraction of their working day with a computer, research on the wage effect of computer use effectively came to a halt after DiNardo and Pischke [1997] found that wages were also positively associated with pencil use, calling into question the ability to distinguish the effect of computers from other confounding factors. Using the same data set as DiNardo and Pischke, but a more recent wave, this paper revitalizes the discussion by showing that the pencil effect disappeared in 1998/99, whereas the computer effect is still present. Computer users – but not pencil users – have experienced a pronounced shift towards analytical and interactive tasks, for which they are rewarded in the workplace.

The purpose of this toolkit is to set out the current learning and development issues for mental health; the priorities local health and social care organisations may wish to consider in developing their own learning and development strategies; and the future learning and development issues coming round the corner.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities. Title I of the ADA covers employment by private employers with 15 or more employees and state and local government employers of the same size. Section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act provides the same protections for federal employees and applicants for federal employment. Most states also have their own laws prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of disability. Some of these state laws may apply to smaller employers and provide protections in addition to those available under the ADA. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces the employment provisions of the ADA. This document is part of a question-and-answer series addressing particular disabilities in the workplace. It explains how the ADA might apply to job applicants and employees with hearing impairments.

In the demographic change, a prolongation of individual employment and thus of beginning a new employment in later stages of the work life is of growing importance. On the base of microeconomic data (establishment panel of the IAB), this paper analyses firms’ characteristics correlating with their recruitment behaviour towards the elderly (age 50 and more). Special consideration is given to the labour supply, which is here observed as the existence of an application from job seekers of age 50 and more, and which is a condition for recruiting of older employees. The results show that about 75% of the firms did not have an application of older job seekers. Of the remaining firms, which reported to have applications from older job seekers, about half of the firms recruited older job seekers, and the other half did not so. However, there are remarkable differences between firms which received applications from older job seekers and firms which are willing to recruit older job candidates. Possible explanations point to the search behaviour of job seekers as well as to the signalling of firms on the labour market towards the elderly.

- In 2004 and 2005, an annual average of 85.4 percent of persons aged 18 or older had some type of health insurance coverage in the past year, and 70.5 percent had private health insurance
- Adults aged 18 or older needing substance use treatment in the past year were less likely than adults not in need of treatment to have some type of health insurance coverage in the past year (74.4 percent vs. 86.6 percent)
- Of the persons aged 18 or older who needed and felt the need for treatment, but did not receive specialty treatment, 31.2 percent indicated they did not receive treatment because they did not have health insurance coverage and could not afford to pay for the cost of treatment

The shift from state-led ISI to more market-oriented economic models often has the result of shrinking and demobilizing the labor movement. Yet, evidence from Argentina suggests that a subsequent resurgence of even a down-sized labor movement may occur and furthermore that “neocorporatist” patterns may be established in the new economic context. We examine the recent resurgence of the Argentine labor movement and the establishment of a new form of interest intermediation, more akin to that in the more coordinated economies in Europe than to either liberal or traditional populist forms. We argue that the emergence of such a pattern may be driven by economic and political factors that are both immediate and longer-term. In addition to the short-term condition of the labor market and the political strategy of the government in power, of longerterm importance are structural and institutional conditions that derive from the earlier process of market reform, specifically the nature of sectoral shifts in the economy and the degree of labor law deregulation affecting the ”associational power” of unions.

Alcohol use by persons under age 21 has been identified as a major public health problem. Studies note that it increases the risks for disability, and may be detrimental to the developing brain. Minors who drink are more likely to commit suicide, break the law, or be victims of violence. Alcohol is implicated in nearly one-third of youth traffic fatalities. The total annual cost of underage drinking is estimated at $62 billion. While most laws intended to prevent underage drinking are passed at the state level, there has been legislative activity and interest at the federal level to support states' efforts to curb the problem. This report describes the extent of underage alcohol use, recent legislative activity on this issue, and various policy implications. It will be updated as new data become available.

This action plan brings together the measures underway and planned over the next year to deliver the Home Office's key objectives on sexual violence and abuse. The Home Office aims to maximise prevention, increase access to support and health services for victims and improve the criminal justice response to sexual violence and abuse.

■ The racial composition of the populations of Washington, D.C. and Prince George’s County have changed in opposite directions in the last fifteen years, as the region’s black population became more concentrated in Prince George’s County and less concentrated in the District. While they were still majority-white in 2005, Montgomery, Anne Arundel, Howard, and Charles counties have become increasingly diverse.
■ From 1989 to 1999, the population of Prince George’s County was consistently middle-income while the District lost middle-income households. In both years, Prince George’s median household income was well above the national average. Due to its middle-class character, Prince George’s poverty rate was much lower than the District’s though it was higher than poverty rates of more affluent nearby Maryland jurisdictions. In contrast to the District, Prince George’s County had virtually no neighborhoods with concentrated poverty in 2000.

The 2006 edition of the Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean maintains the modifications in content and design that were introduced in 2005. The objective was to reflect the changes in the demands of researchers who analyse the economic and social situation of the region and to incorporate the technological advances that modify the modes of dissemination and use of statistical information. This year's issue of the Yearbook is made up of four chapters. The first covers demographic and social indicators, which attest to the special effort made to incorporate the gender dimension in statistical information. The second chapter presents basic economic, trade and balance-of-payments statistics as well as national accounts. Reflecting the growing concern of the regional and international community for sustainable development, the third chapter provides available information on the environment and natural resources. Given the abundance of different and, at times, contradictory data now accessible to researchers through the Internet, special attention must be paid to the technical specifications relating to the source of the data as well as their definition and coverage. This information is presented in the fourth chapter, which deals with methodology and metadata. This chapter serves to supplement the more specific information contained in the footnotes to each of the tables of this Yearbook.

Some studies on child labor have shown that greater land wealth leads to higher child labor, thereby casting doubt on the hypothesis that child labor is caused by poverty. This paper argues that the missing ingredient is an explicit modeling of the labor market. We develop a simple model which suggests an inverted-U relationship between land holdings and child labor. A unique data set from India that has child labor hours information confirms this hypothesis. It is shown that the turning point beyond which more land leads to a decline in child labor occurs at 3.6 acres of land per household, which is well below the observed maximum value of land-holding.

Welcome to the Autism Toolkit for Healthcare Professionals. Experts define autism and related pervasive developmental disorders as severe neurodevelopmental conditions that seriously impair social, communicative and behavioral functioning. Pediatricians and other providers of primary care experience autism as a complex, poorly understood and challenging spectrum of disability that has an enormous impact on these patients and their families. We serve as trusted advisors, sounding boards and support systems for them. The increasing incidence of autism spectrum disorders and the growing sophistication of parents have made it increasingly difficult for us as primary care professionals to provide all that these patients and families expect and deserve from us.

In the last decade, policies aimed at renewing the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods have stressed the importance of community engagement. The JRF’s four-year Neighbourhood Programme was launched in 2002 to test out a ‘light touch’ approach to supporting community groups. . . . The programme showed that community engagement depends broadly on two factors – sustainable neighbourhood-based organisations and a responsive and engaged public sector.

This paper adopts a psycho-economic approach, based on the "Demonstration Effect" hypothesis, to analyze the effects that the presence of children has on the time devoted to elder care. We combine the approach of the Social Cognitive Theory and a three-generation altruism model. Using the 2003 Spanish Time Use Survey (STUS), we confirm the "Demonstration Effect", i.e, the presence of children, while parents are engaged in elder care activities, increases by 11.63% the time devoted to these activities. Additionally, we find that time devoted to child care as primary activity increases by 11.19 minutes per day when children are present during adult care activities.

• The number of people living with diagnosed HIV in the UK has grown by 6,500 to 7,000 in each of the last 3 years (2003-2005). By the end of 2005, the total number of people living with diagnosed HIV in the UK was over 47,000. There may have been a recent decline in the rate
of growth of numbers of people with diagnosed HIV but prevalence continues to increase by more than 10% every year.
• With the introduction of anti-retroviral treatment, the number of people with HIV dying every year radically declined ten years ago and has remained stable ever since (at about 500 deaths per year).
• Prevalence of diagnosed HIV infection is highest in England, then Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Half of people with diagnosed HIV in the UK today live in London.
• In the UK, HIV disproportionately affects men rather than women and adults rather than children.

Economists rely heavily on self-reported measures of health status to examine the relationship between income and health. In this paper we directly compare survey responses to a self-reported measure of health that is commonly available in nationally-representative individual and household surveys, with objective measures of the same health condition. Our particular focus is on hypertension, which is the most prevalent health condition in Western countries. Using data from the Health Survey for England, we find that there is a substantial difference in the percentage of adult survey respondents reporting that they have hypertension as a chronic health condition compared to that from repeated measurements by a trained nurse. Around 85% of individuals measured as having hypertension do not report having it as a chronic illness. Importantly, we find no evidence of an income/health gradient using self-reported hypertension, but a large (about 14 times the size) gradient when using objectively measured hypertension. We also find that the probability of false negative reporting, that is an individual not reporting to have chronic hypertension when in fact they have it, is significantly higher for individuals living in low income households.

Since the 1970s, social scientists have greatly enhanced an empirical andtheoretical understanding of various types of woman abuse in ongoing heterosexual relationships. However, although we know that breaking up with a violent man greatly increases a woman’s risk of experiencing lethal and non-lethal violence, relatively little empirical and theoretical attention has been paid to the victimization of women who want to leave, are in the process of leaving, or who have left their marital/cohabiting partners. Furthermore, the limited work that has been done on this topic focuses primarily on physical violence, such as beatings and homicide. Abuse, of course, is multidimensional in nature and a few studies show that women are also at high risk of being sexually assaulted during and after separation/divorce. Still, almost all of the research on this problem, regardless of whether it is qualitative or quantitative, was conducted in urban areas. Thus, the main objective of this report is to help fill two major research gaps bypresenting the results of a qualitative, exploratory study of separation/divorce sexual assault in rural Ohio.

This Fact Book examines hospital care for adults age 18 and older with mental health or substance abuse problems who were treated for those conditions in community (as opposed to specialty) hospitals. Information on patient characteristics, length of stay for various conditions, and costs is presented as well as detailed statistics on stays related to dual diagnosis, suicide, and maternity care.

This study examines retirement security between ages 67 and 80. Findings show that typical adults will experience a decline in projected wealth and income. More than two-fifths of retirees will have significantly less income at age 80 than they did at 67 (median income decline of $16,000 for current retirees and $23,000 for boomers). However, approximately two-fifths will have significantly more income at age 80 than at 67 (median income increase of $14,000 for current retirees and $17,000 for boomers). Some of the change in economic well-being is related to changing living arrangements, and marital, health, and work status.

Over the past three years, we have often asked children for their views about what the main risks are to children and young people living away from home, in care, or getting help from children’s social care services. When we asked children what they saw as their main rights as children (in “Children on Rights and Responsibilities”), they told us that the right to be safe, the right not to be abused, and the right not to be bullied were vital rights.
We have written two major reports on this – one in 2004 and another in 2007. . . . We also asked younger children about risks and staying safe – mainly children aged under 12 – who came to our national children’s conference at Legoland Windsor in 2005. We have included their ideas about policies in the list below.

Arkansas, which had the 4th fastest growing immigrant population and fastest growing Latino population of any state between 2000 and 2005, is the subject of this series of reports. Volume 1 provides detailed demographic information about the foreign-born in Arkansas and compares immigrants to natives on a wide variety of quality-of-life measures. It profiles immigrants' countries of birth, legal status, educational attainment, poverty, homeownership, employment, and the primary industries in which they are employed. Volume 2 assesses immigrants' impacts on the Arkansas economy, in terms of consumer spending, tax contributions, fiscal costs, and the savings that businesses and consumers realize by using immigrant labor. An executive summary is also listed below.

The American Community Survey (ACS), after a decade of testing, is a reality: the first set of ACS data products, released in August-November 2006, reports on the social, demographic, economic, and housing characteristics in 2005 of cities, counties, and other areas with 65,000 or more people. With the advent of the ACS, there will no longer be a long-form sample as part of the decennial census. The Census Bureau asked a panel of the Committee on National Statistics to assess the usability of ACS data. The report advises users on making the transition from the long-form sample to the ACS. It identifies areas for research and development by the Census Bureau so that the ACS can realize its full potential to improve the nation’s information on people and communities.

Pain is a fundamentally subjective experience. We have uniquely direct access to our own pain but can only make rough inferences about the pain of others. Nevertheless, such inferences are made all the time by doctors, insurers, judges, juries, and administrative agencies. Advances in brain imaging may someday improve our pain assessments by bolstering the claims of those who otherwise lack physical proof of their suffering or by impugning the claims of those who are exaggerating symptoms. These possibilities raise concerns about the privacy of our pain. I suggest that while the use of neuroimaging to detect pain implicates significant privacy concerns, our interests in keeping pain private are likely to be weaker than our interests in keeping private certain other subjective experiences that permit more intrusive inferences about our thoughts and character.

This framework was developed in conjunction with the British Institute of Human Rights and five NHS Trusts. It helps organisations across the NHS to use a human rights based approach to improve the way services are delivered.

A timely response and the delivery of disaster relief or humanitarian assistance is challenging in and of itself, yet decision makers often lack the requisite population data for the affected area, including the total number of people and their characteristics, density, and vital statistics—descriptors of the population that constitute its demographic features. Demographers study the characteristics and composition of human populations, in particular with reference to size and density, distribution, and vital statistics such as age, gender, fertility, mortality, and migration. Although location is implicit in these population analyses, the extent to which it is explicit varies tremendously. During humanitarian crises, it is not uncommon for humanitarian or emergency response teams to deploy without even rough estimates of the number and location, let alone ages and gender, of the people in the vicinity of the disaster. Even if the data are available, they are not always in a form that can be used by decision makers, and demographers are not always placed with the response teams. Once the initial emergency period has passed, accurate data on the characteristics and size of the population are also required for recovery, reconstruction, and resettlement.

Mentoring has been implemented as an intervention in the criminal justice context. In this setting, mentoring is usually viewed as a method of both reducing re-offending and increasing positive life outcomes such as increasing education, training and employment . . . . There have been a number of evaluations of the impact of mentoring on later life outcomes, but many of these have been based on limited research designs such as case studies, smallscale qualitative studies and evaluations which did not include a control or comparison condition. These studies have a limited ability to estimate the impact of mentoring on reoffending. The review summarised here analysed a range of studies on mentoring to assess how successful mentoring is in reducing offending. The general feature of all mentoring programmes is the contact of a less experienced or ‘at- risk’ individual with a positive role model. The mentor is more experienced and often older so that the mentor can provide guidance, advice and encouragement. The method used (a rapid evidence assessment) aimed to summarise the best available evidence on the effects of mentoring on re-offending in a systematic manner. The analysis was based on 18 studies where individuals were either ‘at risk’ of offending or had been apprehended by the police. Mentored and control/comparison groups were compared.

This research provides a review of statistics on gender differences and inequalities in Scotland across a range of key areas of social and economic life.

While there are lots of statistics available on poverty in Scotland, the voices of people living in poverty are largely missing from policy debates. This research, by Mhoraig Green on behalf of a group of Scottish charities, aims to ensure that the voices of people living in poverty are heard as policies to tackle poverty and disadvantage in Scotland are developed.

This document aims to ensure that children in custodial and other secure settings have access to comprehensive child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) to which all children are entitled.

As part of Budget 2007, the government announced an early comprehensive spending review settlement for the Department for Education and Skills, informed by the findings of the policy review of children and young people. This document sets out the actions that the government will now take to support parents and communities to improve children and young people’s outcomes further.

Good social care can, and does, make a real difference to children’s lives, their development, opportunities and achievement. Positive outcomes must be the driver for all social care, regardless of what structures are put in place for its strategic commissioning, purchasing, delivery and regulation. The implementation of Every Child Matters and the development of integrated services has been the significant policy driver for children’s services over the past few years. CSCI has carried out its responsibilities at a time of significant change for councils. It is important to recognise that these changes are still being embedded as organisational change takes effect. Much is going well. Children in care comment favourably on their experience of social services. There is greater protection of children from harm and improvements in placement stability. In many ways, the progress councils have made in implementing Every Child Matters has been impressive. The development of truly integrated services that place an emphasis on safeguarding children, and enabling the voice of the child, their family and carers to be heard, is a real challenge.

Social Security spouse and survivor benefits advantage single-earner families relative to dual-earner families paying the same total taxes. Our paper considers earnings sharing—through which husbands' and wives' earnings records are combined and averaged throughout their marriage when computing benefits—as well as other changes to spouse/survivor benefits, including caregiver credits and minimum benefits. All the roughly cost-equivalent packages examined improve adequacy and horizontal equity compared to current law. The earnings-sharing proposal, however, only reduced poverty with significant adjustments to the treatment of surviving spouses. The packages reveal tradeoffs among beneficiary groups, with particular tensions around work and marital status.

There has been a growth of one-person children’s homes in recent years that can in part be explained by the fact that such homes did not have to be registered before 2001. This raises key questions about:
• The nature and function of these homes
• What it is like to live in these homes and the outcomes for children
• Whether councils are purposefully commissioning one-person homes, based on evidence of successful outcomes for children, or whether they are using them because they cannot find any other options.

This statistical first release contains estimates of the levels, sources and the distribution of pensioners’ incomes and examines the position of pensioners within the income distribution of the population as a whole.

Despite the benefits of work at older ages, questions persist about the availability and quality of jobs for older Americans. This study examines older adults' employment opportunities by studying job changes at ages 45 to 75. Many older workers move to new occupations and industries when they switch jobs, often assuming positions that involve less stress and physical effort. Although most older job changers enjoy their new jobs, they generally experience sharp hourly wage reductions and often lose pension coverage and health benefits. The findings highlight the special labor market challenges faced by older displaced workers.

Discussion and debate about adoption and foster care by gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) parents occurs frequently among policymakers, social service agencies, and social workers. Three states currently restrict GLB people from adopting and more are considering similar policies. This report provides new information on GLB adoption and foster care from several government data sources. It offers a demographic portrait of the estimated 65,500 adopted children and 14,100 foster children living with gay and lesbian parents. It also assesses the costs to child welfare systems of proposed bans on allowing GLB people to foster.

The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills is a new organisation that brings together expertise from four predecessor inspectorates. It will retain the name Ofsted. The new Ofsted covers the regulation and inspection of daycare and children's social care, and the inspection of children's services, schools, colleges, initial teacher training, work-based learning, adult education and more. This Strategic Plan sets out how Ofsted proposes to discharge these responsibilities over the next three years.

This bulletin reports details of all racist incidents reported to the police, all crimes or offences associated with each incident, and, where possible, details of the victims and perpetrators. It is also important to note that these statistics cover only incidents reported to the police, not all racist incidents.

The number of people in employment is higher now than in the mid-1970s. There have, though, been substantial changes in the distribution of jobs between social groups. These trends have had important consequences for equality and inequality, and for the number of non-working families in Britain. This study, by Richard Berthoud of the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, is a detailed analysis of the trends over the past 30 years.

Prior research has demonstrated that summer learning rooted in family and community influences widens the achievement gap across social lines, while schooling offsets those family and community influences. In this article, we examine the long-term educational consequences of summer learning differences by family socioeconomic level. Using data from the Baltimore Beginning School Study youth panel, we decompose achievement scores at the start of high school into their developmental precursors, back to the time of school entry in 1st grade. We find that cumulative achievement gains over the first nine years of children’s schooling mainly reflect school-year learning, whereas the high SES–low SES achievement gap at 9th grade mainly traces to differential summer learning over the elementary years. These early out-of-school summer learning differences, in turn, substantially account for achievement-related differences by family SES in high school track placements (college preparatory or not), high school noncompletion, and four-year college attendance. We discuss implications for understanding the bases of educational stratification, as well as educational policy and practice.

During 2004, three pilots were introduced in selected Jobcentre Plus districts: Quarterly Work Focused Interviews (12+); Work Search Premium; and In Work Credit. The Department for Work and Pensions commissioned a qualitative evaluation of these three pilots and this report presents the findings.

The HOPE VI program has invested over $6 billion in federal funds for the redevelopment of severely distressed public housing. Drawing on the existing research evidence, this study systematically compares the costs (both monetary and nonmonetary) of maintaining severely distressed public housing developments to the potential costs and benefits of effectively revitalizing them. An effective redevelopment strategy can dramatically improve living conditions for families, resulting in better physical and mental health and increased employment and earnings. Moreover, redevelopment can trigger the revitalization of previously blighted communities. These outcomes also save public resources. In fact, for a typical distressed public housing project, mixed-income redevelopment can save the public more than $20 million over 20 years.

- SAMHSA's Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) provides national data on emergency department visits involving illicit drugs, alcohol, and nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals. In 2005, general non-Federal hospitals delivered 108 million emergency department visits. An estimated 1,449,154 of these emergency visits were associated with drug misuse or abuse.
- Over half (56%) of all drug misuse or drug abuse emergency department visits involved an illicit drug either alone or in combination with another drug type: Cocaine was involved in 448,481 visits; marijuana in 242,200 visits; heroin in 164,572 visits, and stimulants (including amphetamines and methamphetamines) were involved in 138,950 emergency department visits.
- Data on alcohol alone is collected only on patients under age 21. DAWN estimates there were 56,978 alcohol-related emergency department visits for patients aged 12 to 17 and 88,781 alcohol-related emergency department visits for patients aged 18 to 20.

In the mid to late 1990s, child poverty was higher in the UK than in nearly all other industrialised nations. Over a period of twenty years, the proportion of children in relative low-income households had more than doubled. One in five families had no one in work and one in every three children was living in poverty. In March 1999, the Prime Minister responded to this by pledging to eradicate child poverty within a generation. This pledge was underpinned by ambitious targets – to reduce child poverty by a quarter by 2004/05, by a half by 2010/11 and to eradicate it by 2020. Though the Government narrowly missed the 2004/05 target, significant progress has been made. We have also succeeded in arresting and reversing the long-term trend of rising child poverty: there are now 600,000 fewer children living in relative poverty than in 1998/99. Instead of having the worst child poverty rate in Europe, the UK is now close to the European average. But there is a long way to go. The Government’s continuing commitment is demonstrated by the measures set out by the Chancellor in the 2007 Budget to increase financial support for children and working parents. These will lift an additional 200,000 children out of poverty.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) undertook this short-term evaluation of the implementation of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to inform Congress about the program’s progress 3 years after its authorizing legislation was passed. The IOM committee found that PEPFAR has supported the expansion of HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care services in the focus countries. For continued progress toward its 5-year targets and longer-term goals, PEPFAR should transition from a focus on emergency relief to an emphasis on the long-term strategic planning and capacity building necessary for sustainability. The committee identifies a number of opportunities for improvement that would support this transition.

This testimony addresses three topics: health coverage challenges facing displaced workers; the strengths and weaknesses of the HCTC program in helping these workers retain health coverage; and policy options to improve the HCTC program so it can be more effective in meeting the health coverage needs of workers who lose their jobs because of international trade.

Illinois’ “work support” benefits—such as earned income tax credits, health insurance, and child care subsidies—help low-wage workers provide for their families. But according to a new report from NCCP, small increases in earnings can trigger sharp reductions in benefits, leaving families worse off. The report argues that policy changes are needed to ensure that it always pays to work more. Using the Family Resource Simulator, Supporting Work in Illinois shows how benefit losses can outweigh increases in earnings. In all localities discussed, and in both single- and two-parent families, workers face similar challenges as they try to get ahead. The report offers policy strategies that better reward work.

The Supported Employment implementation resource kit is designed to help communities implement a well-defined approach to helping people with mental illnesses find and keep competitive employment within their communities. Supported employment programs are staffed by employment specialists who have frequent meetings with treatment providers to integrate supported employment with mental health services.

On average, in fiscal year 2005, the Food Stamp Program (FSP)— administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS)—served over 25 million individuals per month, providing over $28 billion in benefits for the year. However, households can be food stamp eligible, but entitled to no money in monthly benefits based on income level. Current food stamp regulations allow households that receive or are authorized to receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance or TANF noncash services to obtain automatic eligibility for food stamps, known as categorical eligibility. TANF is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS).

● In 2005, 30.8 percent of adults aged 18 or older attended religious services 25 or more times in the past year, 78.1 percent reported that religious beliefs are a very important part of their lives, and 75.1 percent reported that religious beliefs influence how they make decisions in their lives
● In 2005, 2.9 percent of adults who attended religious services 25 or more times in the past year used illicit drugs in the past month compared with 10.1 percent of those who attended religious services fewer than 25 times
● Adults who reported that religious beliefs are a very important part of their lives were less likely to use illicit drugs in the past month than those who reported that religious beliefs are not a very important part of their lives (6.1 vs. 14.3 percent)

The Growing Up in Scotland (GUS) study is an important longitudinal research project that tracks the lives of cohorts of Scottish children from the early years. The findings from the first year of GUS have just been published on January 19, 2007. Topics covered in the findings include: the characteristics and circumstances of children and their families, pregnancy and birth, parenting young children (maternity leave, the first three months, problems, breastfeeding), parental support, child health and development, parenting styles and responsibilities, childcare and parental health. An event with a speeches from the Deputy Minister for Education and Young People, key policy officials at the Scottish Executive and a presentation on the findings by the contractors was held on January 24, 2007.

This report examines the programs targeted to at-risk girls in each site. The report first sets the context for these programs by reviewing the risk factors for female delinquency, the history of government funding, and the literature evaluating girls programs. The report also includes a brief overview of some promising national programs. The report then specifically focuses on the efforts of the six SafeFutures sites in developing and maintaining programs targeted to at-risk and delinquent girls. The latter half of the report contains profiles of the specific programs targeted to at-risk and delinquent girls that each SafeFutures site operated, as well as a discussion of key cross-site issues, and implications for policy and practice.

The past ten years have seen a range of new policies to close the gap between the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods and the rest of society &ndash in England, Scotland and Wales. All these programmes have emphasised the need to engage citizens at neighbourhood level in achieving change. It was against this background that, in 2002, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) launched its Neighbourhood Programme to support community groups and organisations in 20 neighbourhoods across the three countries. This summary, written by the team evaluating the programme, highlights the key findings from the four-year programme.

Th e State of Aging and Health in America 2007 provides a snapshot of our nation’s progress in promoting the health and well-being of older adults and reducing behaviors that contribute to premature death and disability. The report
also highlights three key areas that can signifi cantly improve the quality of life for older adults: reducing falls, maintaining cognitive health, and improving end-of-life care.Improved medical care and prevention eff orts have contributed to dramatic increases in life expectancy in the United States over the past century. Th ey also have produced a major shift in the leading causes of death for all age groups, including older adults, from infectious diseases and acute illnesses to chronic diseases and degenerative illnesses. Currently, about 80% of older Americans are living with at least one chronic condition.

The Illness Management and Recovery implementation resource toolkit was produced by the Implementing Evidence-Based Practices Project as part of an effort to promote treatment practices in community mental health service settings that are known to be effective in supporting the recovery of adults with severe mental illnesses. The goal of the project is to improve the lives of consumers by increasing the availability of effective mental health services.

This brief is designed to equip organizations with strategies for effectively disseminating local reentry-related mapping and analysis findings and engaging community members on the topic of reentry. The brief outlines key elements of the process, including enlisting the support and involvement of local stakeholders, developing a diverse and complementary set of dissemination methods, and presenting research findings strategically to create a foundation for positive community action. The recommendations offered are based on the experiences of the fourteen Reentry Mapping Network (RMN) sites.

Government policy now clearly states that those with drug problems should be involved in decisions relating to their own treatment. However, the nature of such involvement in everyday practice is less clear. This study, by researchers at Glasgow University’s Centre for Drug Misuse Research and Oxford Brookes University’s School of Health & Social Care, explored demand for user involvement, the various forms that user involvement can take, what constrains it and what might improve practice.

This report summarises responses to the consultation on improving transparency and privacy in family courts. It includes discussions of views expressed at stakeholder events and in the online discussion forum for adults, children and young people.

- In 2005, about 2 million persons aged 12 or older (0.8%) reported that they had a sexually transmitted disease (STD) in the past year.
- Young adults aged 18 to 25 (2.1%) were more likely than any other age group to have had a sexually transmitted disease in the past year. Among the young adults, females were 4 times more likely to have had a STD in the past year than males (3.4% vs. 0.8%).
- Having a sexually transmitted disease among young adults was associated with their