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Using data from the Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program, this paper explores involvement in intimate partner violence, and provides first-time results from face-to-face interviews with a group of 1,597 police detainees. The study found that the levels of intimate partner violence are much higher among this group (49%) than is found from general population surveys. More than two-thirds of the detainees who were involved in partner violence reported being both a victim and a perpetrator in the past 12 months. This is consistent with other criminological research that finds that a large proportion of offenders often report having been victims of crime. Factors found to be significant risk markers for detainees' involvement in partner violence included prior arrest, drug and alcohol dependency, having dependent children, and experiencing physical abuse as a child. Although a greater percentage of female than male detainees reported being involved in partner violence, once these other risk factors were controlled for, gender was not found to be a significant risk marker among this sample. The paper discusses the policy implications of the findings, particularly the need for early intervention with at-risk families and where drug and alcohol dependency issues are emerging.

This programme of work was a commitment in DH’s 2006 White Paper ‘Our Health, Our Care,Our Say’ . It includes a revision of the Prime Minister’s 1999 Carers Strategy, setting up a help/advice line, provision of cover in emergencies and an expert carers programme.

This paper examines comparative data on compensating families for birth and adoption. Cost data (costs as a percentage of gross domestic product) are examined for 21 OECD countries with more detailed analysis reserved for the United States and Canada. The paper develops an actuarial cost framework and applies it in three situations: (1) Canada from 1975 to 2004; (2) state temporary disability insurance (TDI) programs in the United States from 1985 to 2004, both total TDI costs and the costs of pregnancy benefits; and (3) California, which now compensates families for births and adoptions through both TDI and its new program of paid family leave.

Arson is a crime that is often committed by young people. An important strategy for preventing deliberate firesetting is intervention with young people who show an unhealthy interest in fire. Fire services in all Australian jurisdictions conduct juvenile arson intervention programs for such young people. These programs are usually run by specially trained firefighters, are carried out in the home of the young person with the involvement of the parents, and focus on the young person's behaviour and their family environment. Most programs are offered to children of all ages, and are not limited to those who have been involved in a criminal offence. The approaches that the programs take vary, but all include education about fire and cognitive behavioural approaches to problem behaviours. Most programs maintain strong linkages with mental health and other social services. To date, there has been limited evaluation of the programs, but anecdotal evidence suggests that they are viewed as successful. Formal, independent evaluation of programs should now be undertaken to ensure that they are effective in stopping firelighting behaviour among young people.

The present paper argues that intergenerational transfers between elderly parents and adult children are important determinants of any coresidency arrangement though generally overlooked in the existing literature. In this respect the paper distinguishes between exchange of both financial and other kinds of transfers between elderly parents and adult children and then examines the effects of these transfers on coresidency taking account of the inherent endogeneity of these transfers to coresidency decision. There is evidence that the effects of transfers on coresidency arrangements could be biased if one does not correct for the endogeneity bias. The corrected estimates derived from a system of correlated and recursive system of transfers and coresidency equations suggest that the probability of coresidence is generally lower among the better off elderly; the likelihood is also lower for the older and female elderly without a spouse and also those with poor health, thus necessitating social protection for these disadvantaged elderly.

SSA approved about 2.2 million Medicare beneficiaries for the low-income subsidy as of March 2007, despite barriers it faced in identifying the eligible population and soliciting applications; however, measuring the success of SSA’s outreach efforts is difficult because there are no reliable data on the size of the eligible population. In 2005, SSA mailed 18.6 million subsidy applications to Medicare beneficiaries who were potentially eligible for the subsidy. SSA knew that this mailing was an overestimate, but took this approach to ensure that all who were eligible would be contacted. SSA had hoped to more specifically identify the eligible population using IRS tax data, but current law restricts the use of taxpayer data unless an individual has already applied for the subsidy. Further, SSA conducted a campaign of about 76,000 events held nationwide to educate people about the subsidy and how to apply for it. Since the initial campaign ended, however, SSA has not developed specific performance goals and measures to assess the progress of its continuing outreach efforts. SSA’s efforts to solicit applications were hindered by beneficiaries’ confusion about the difference between the subsidy and the Medicare Part D prescription drug plan, and the reluctance of some individuals to share personal financial information, among other factors. While the early subsidy participation rate compares favorably to those of some other low-income programs, the lack of reliable data on the size of the eligible population means that the extent to which SSA has signed up the eligible population for the benefit is unknown.

This document presents the findings of a national survey of the status of Electronic Social Care Records (ESCR) in England. The survey was commissioned by the NHS Connecting for Health Electronic Social Care Record Implementation Board and the ADASS, with the support of David Behan, Director General for Social Care.

Direct care workers provide the majority of paid hands-on care, supervision, and emotional support to millions of people with chronic illnesses and disabilities. These paraprofessional workers hold a variety of job titles, such as personal care assistants, home care aides, home health aides, and certified nursing assistants (CNAs). They work in diverse settings, including private homes, adult day centers, assisted living residences, hospitals, and nursing homes.

This knowledge review looks at the significant gap in high quality and effective mental health advocacy in African and Caribbean men. Drawing on individual accounts the research raises questions about the services, advice and support services currently being provided and what is actually needed by this over-represented group in the mental health sector.

The guide draws on the following types of social care knowledge:
- Service user knowledge based on the expertise of service users who participated in the consultation events held by Shaping Our Lives and the Centre for Citizen Participation.
- Organisational and practitioner knowledge based on the experiences of people working in the organisations who gave us information for the practice survey which was subsequently used to compile the Practice Examples.
- Policy community knowledge derived from material produced by different government departments and national organisations.
- Research knowledge derived from the collective experiences of the project team and from the literature identified in the literature review. (Pawson et al, 2003)

Most of the literature on the evaluation of training programs focuses on the effect of participation on a particular outcome (e.g. earnings). The “treatment” is generally represented by a binary variable equal to one if participation in the program occurs, and equal to zero if no participation occurs. While the use of a binary treatment indicator is attractive for ease of interpretation and estimation, it treats all exposure the same. The extent of exposure to the treatment, however, is potentially important in determining the outcome; particularly in training programs where a main feature is the varying length of the training spells of participating individuals. In this paper, we illustrate how recently developed methods for the estimation of causal effects from continuous treatments can be used to learn about the consequences of heterogeneous lengths of enrollment in the evaluation of training programs. We apply these methods to data on Job Corps (JC), America’s largest and most comprehensive job training program for disadvantaged youth. The length of exposure is a significant source of heterogeneity in these data: while the average participation spell in JC is 28 weeks, its standard deviation and interdecile range are 27 and 62 weeks, respectively. We estimate average causal effects of different lengths of exposure to JC using the “generalized propensity score” under the assumption that the length of the individual’s JC spell is randomly assigned, conditional on a rich set of covariates. Finally, using this approach, we document important differences across different spell lengths and across three racial and ethnic groups of participants (blacks, whites and Hispanics) that help nderstand why the benefits these groups receive from JC are so disparate from estimates derived using traditional methods.

The proposals set out in this review will lead to short, medium and long-term improvements in how we protect children from sex offenders. They range from bringing in new laws and strengthening guidance, to providing more information about convicted child sex offenders to the public. We have consulted closely with police, childcare agencies and victims’ organisations and want to see that continue through the national stakeholder advisory group for sexual violence and abuse. It is important that these views are heard as we begin to implement the actions in this report. The Government and authorities have a vital role in managing offenders, but as parents, grandparents and carers, we all have a stake in protecting children and an important role to play.

This paper offers a framework for thinking about the complex array of public programs and private benefits that can help low-income working families chart a course toward steady work, economic security, and healthy development for their children. Making a difference to these families requires paying attention both to their private-sector workplaces and to many different public programs. These workplaces often pay low wages, lack flexibility in scheduling, and provide limited benefits. The public programs—such as housing and child care subsidies, job training, health insurance, and income supports like the earned income tax credit (EITC) and food stamps—typically are not coordinated withone another, and each program operates under its own set of rules and financing and administrative structures. Helping low-income working families also requires paying attention to the adults’ lives as both parents and workers. Because low-income families are less likely than better-off families to have flexibility at work, are more likely to be raising children with physical or emotional health problems, and are more dependent on each week’s paycheck without significant private resources, they face even more wrenching conflicts between family and work than other Americans.

SSA approved about 2.2 million Medicare beneficiaries for the low-income subsidy as of March 2007, despite barriers it faced in identifying the eligible population and soliciting applications; however, measuring the success of SSA’s outreach efforts is difficult because there are no reliable data on the size of the eligible population. In 2005, SSA mailed 18.6 million subsidy applications to Medicare beneficiaries who were potentially eligible for the subsidy. SSA knew that this mailing was an overestimate, but took this approach to ensure that all who were eligible would be contacted. SSA had hoped to more specifically identify the eligible population using IRS tax data, but current law restricts the use of taxpayer data unless an individual has already applied for the subsidy. Further, SSA conducted a campaign of about 76,000 events held nationwide to educate people about the subsidy and how to apply for it. Since the initial campaign ended, however, SSA has not developed specific performance goals and measures to assess the progress of its continuing outreach efforts. SSA’s efforts to solicit applications were hindered by beneficiaries’ confusion about the difference between the subsidy and the Medicare Part D prescription drug plan, and the reluctance of some individuals to share personal financial information, among other factors. While the early subsidy participation rate compares favorably to those of some other low-income programs, the lack of reliable data on the size of the eligible population means that the extent to which SSA has signed up the eligible population for the benefit is unknown.

With service user and carer participation firmly on the agenda, there is a need to find out what difference service user and carer participation is making. Whilst the service user participation movement has achieved much in terms of the principle, it is less clear what changes have resulted in practice. This online resource is based on research to develop measures that can be used to help evaluate the impact of service user and carer participation.

The Department of Health commissioned Stonewall to undertake a project to identify the key barriers to reporting of homophobia against health and social care employees. Stonewall's report, Being the gay one: Experiences of lesbian, gay and bisexual people working in the health and social care sector, published on 15th June 2007, includes a series of recommendations to the Department for overcoming these barriers. There is no place for any form of discrimination in health and social care. The Department recognises the seriousness of the findings of this report and work is underway to meet the recommendations outlined in the report through the Better Employment workstream of the Department’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Advisory Group and through its broader equality and human rights work programme.

We found great commonality in the themes that emerged from our meetings. Following the Virginia Tech tragedy and similar incidents of violence that have occurred in recent years, states and local communities are carefully considering whether they have properly addressed and balanced the fundamental interests of privacy and individual freedom, safety and security, and assisting those with mental health needs in getting appropriate care. Although state and local leaders recognized and underscored that these issues primarily must be resolved at the state and local level, these events make all of us ask whether there is more we can and should be doing. As we note in our report, our recommendations are not a panacea. Rather, along with identifying steps that we can take, the report serves to focus our attention on the issues that must be part of the ongoing national dialogue as we continue to protect the freedoms we enjoy in our society, while appropriately minimizing risks to public safety.

The Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program has been in operation since 1999. Over the years it has provided police, policy makers, criminal justice practitioners and other professionals with systematic empirical data on illegal drug use among people detained and brought to a police station or watchhouse. With the additional funding obtained in 2006, DUMA expanded from seven sites to nine sites throughout Australia - Adelaide City and Elizabeth in South Australia; Bankstown and Parramatta in New South Wales; Brisbane City and Southport in Queensland; East Perth in Western Australia; and the two new sites, Sunshine/Footscray in Victoria and Darwin in the Northern Territory. DUMA significantly adds to the evidence base by providing a reasonable and independent indicator of drug-related crime within a specific area. DUMA allows the identification of changes in drug use to be detected within a relatively short time span, as well as monitoring trends over a longer period. This provides law enforcement with valuable information regarding possible shifts in trends and patterns in drug use and related criminal activity. This report presents both self-report and urinalysis data from participating detainees for the calendar year 2006. It provides an overview of the characteristics of the detainees at each site, including self-reported drug use, prior criminal behaviour and treatment history.

- A total of 13,371 substance abuse treatment facilities responded to the 2005 N-SSATS, and 83 percent of them offered at least one special program or group addressing particular needs of specific client types
- The most commonly offered special program or group was for persons with co-occurring mental and substance abuse disorders (38 percent)
- Eighty-eight percent of the largest facilities in 2005 had at least one special program or group while 72 percent of the smallest facilities had at least one

We provide a comprehensive view of widening income inequality in the United States contrasting conditions since 1980 with those in earlier postwar years. We argue that the income distribution in each period was strongly shaped by a set of economic institutions. The early postwar years were dominated by unions, a negotiating framework set in the Treaty of Detroit, progressive taxes, and a high minimum wage - all parts of a general government effort to broadly distribute the gains from growth. More recent years have been characterized by reversals in all these dimensions in an institutional pattern known as the Washington Consensus. Other explanations for income disparities including skill-biased technical change and international trade are seen as factors operating within this broader institutional story.

The research was commissioned to contribute to the on-going work of Communities and Local Government and the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, by investigating "what works" in terms of cohesion policy by investigating policy and practice in six case study areas. The study identifies best practice in relation to:
- How cohesion-related work is organised in a local authority area
- The types of initiatives that are effective in supporting community cohesion.

Congress passed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. The goal was to provide health coverage for uninsured children from modest-income families that earned too much to qualify for Medicaid. However, two things have recently become clear: (1) SCHIP has expanded far beyond its intended goal, even covering hundreds of thousands of adults, and (2) it is encouraging millions of those with private insurance to drop it for the government-subsidized coverage. SCHIP is now up for reauthorization, and many members of Congress are pushing for an even greater expansion of the program. We think there is a better way. By focusing on truly needy children and encouraging families to keep their existing coverage, SCHIP can expand coverage and provide more cost-effective health insurance.

Only half of all children living on the border come from immigrant families--families with at least one parent born abroad. Moreover, 93% of all border kids live in families with at least one working parent, which mirrors the statewide percentage, and the vast majority of children of immigrants living on the border--81%--are U.S. citizens, a rate on par with the rest of California. These are a few of many clarifying data points included in The Unique Challenges to the Well-Being of California's Border Kids.

This timely report provides an insight into quality of life in the EU candidate country, Croatia. It draws the bulk of its findings from the Quality of Life Survey conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Croatia in 2006. This survey used the questionnaire and methodology of the EQLS and was able to provide, for the first time, internationally comparable indicators on quality of life in the Republic of Croatia. The report also draws on other research conducted in Croatia, including data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), which together provide an insight into different quality of life domains in this country. Croatia’s unique historical past – in particular, the fall of Communism, the declaration of independence from Yugoslavia and the Homeland War, all of which ccurred as recently as the previous two decades – makes it an interesting subject for the study of quality of life. This report draws a picture of life in present-day Croatia by looking at key indicators of quality of life, such as: the economic situation of households; housing and the local environment; employment and education; health, healthcare and access to health services; household and family size and structure; work–life balance; subjective well-being; the perceived quality of society; and the quality of life of national minorities living in Croatia.

This paper presents the process and outcomes of research in to service user and carer participation in developing social care services. This research was charged not with evaluating the impact of participation, but with scoping what is know about it and how evaluations are being conducted.

Conclusions
- The Validity Study demonstrated that it is possible to collect urine and hair specimens with a high response rate from persons aged 12 to 25 in a household survey environment.
- The results of tests conducted on hair collected in this study could not be used to compare with self-reports because there were technical and statistical problems related to the hair tests and unresolved issues concerning the interpretation of the analytical results.
- Most youths aged 12 to 17 and young adults aged 18 to 25 reported their recent drug use accurately. However, there were some reporting differences in either direction—with some not reporting use and testing positive, and some reporting use and testing negative.
- Biological drug test results can be used as objective markers of drug use to verify selfreports. Researchers employing drug tests in epidemiological studies must be knowledgeable of the performance characteristics of analytical procedures used for the drug tests (e.g., capabilities of the test methods and validation of procedures used by the testing laboratory), as well as the pharmacology of the drugs tested to enable acceptable study design and correct interpretation of the drug test results in the different biological specimen matrices.

- Combined 2004 and 2005 data indicate that 8.88 percent of youths aged 12 to 17 and 7.65 percent of adults aged 18 or older experienced at least one major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year
- Among 12 to 17 year olds, rates of past year MDE were among the highest in Idaho (10.37 percent) and Nevada (10.28 percent) and among the lowest in Louisiana (7.19 percent) and South Dakota (7.40 percent)
- Rates of past year MDE among adults aged 18 or older were among the highest in Utah (10.14 percent) and Rhode Island (9.88 percent) and among the lowest in Hawaii (6.74 percent) and New Jersey (6.81 percent)

The costs of military service are substantial. Many costs are readily apparent; others are less apparent but no less important. Among the most pervasive and potentially disabling consequences of these costs is the threat to the psychological health of our nation’s fighting forces, their families, and their survivors. Our involvement in the Global War on Terrorism has created unforeseen demands not only on individual military service members and their families, but also on the Department of Defense itself, which must expand its capabilities to support the psychological health of its service members and their families. In particular, the system is being challenged by emergence of two “signature injuries” from the current conflict – posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. These two injuries often coincide, requiring integrated and interdisciplinary treatment methods. New demands have exposed shortfalls in a health care system that in previous decades had been oriented away from a wartime focus. Staffing levels were poorly matched to the high operational tempo even prior to the current conflict, and the system has become even more strained by the increased deployment of active duty providers with mental health expertise. As such, the system of care for psychological health that has evolved over recent decades is insufficient to meet the needs of today’s forces and their beneficiaries, and will not be sufficient to meet their needs in the future.

The current study complements work in relation to the CAF, by focusing on models of joined-up assessment for children with significant and complex health needs and/or disabilities. It provides case-study examples from six local authorities of different ways of adopting a more integrated approach to assessing the needs of such children. This report describes the experiences of these authorities, examines the issues that have been faced, and considers the factors that have helped and hindered their attempts to join up specialist assessments.

Ethnic difference and community relationships are under greater scrutiny following the 2001 disturbances in the North of England and the ‘war on terror’. A high-profi le policy response has been the promotion of social cohesion. The study takes a critical look at the meaning of social cohesion for new and established residents in Moss Side in Manchester and North Tottenham in the London Borough of Haringey. It describes patterns of neighbourhood diversity and residents’ accounts of social interaction, within their own ethnic groups and across others. The report considers whether ethnic difference is a source of neighbourhood tensions, and the meaning of community and belonging. It draws on resident and service provider accounts to show the factors that hinder or promote social cohesion and gives recommendations for policy and practice.

This independent evaluation offers a snapshot of a diverse selection of common assessment framework and lead professional activity in twelve English areas chosen by the DfES to trial these processes ahead of the national roll out after April 2006. The key research question was ‘what helps or hinders practitioners in implementing the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) and Lead Professional (LP) working.’ The study sought to identify and understand the approaches to CAF and LP work, how practitioners and managers are finding these to be functioning, and the context within which they are operating. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, professional perspectives were examined over a seven month period between September 2005 and March 2006.

- Adults aged 65 to 69 made up the largest part of the substance abuse treatment population aged 65 or older, increasing from 56 percent of older adults in treatment in 1995 to 59 percent in 2005
- In each year from 1995 to 2005, alcohol was the most frequently reported primary substance of abuse for admissions aged 65 or older
- Between 1995 and 2005, primary opiate admissions increased from 6.6 to 10.5 percent of admissions aged 65 or older

In 2003 the First Minister launched the Child Protection Reform Programme (CPRP) – a three-year initiative with the goal of improving protection of children at risk of neglect and abuse and reducing the number of children who need protection. A process review of the CPRP was carried out by Dundee University’s Centre for Child Care and Protection and Barnardo’s Scotland Research and Development Team, with the aim to investigate:
• how the CPRP was planned and implemented;
• the aims in planning the programme in this particular way; and
• whether or not the process was successful.

- In 2005, female adolescents accounted for about 44,600 of adolescent admissions (31 percent)
- Adolescent female admissions were less likely than adolescent male admissions to report marijuana as their primary substance of abuse (51 vs. 72 percent)
- Adolescent female admissions were more likely than their male counterparts to have a co-occurring psychiatric and substance abuse disorder (23 vs. 18 percent)

Today's "information explosion" may seem like an acutely modern phenomenon, but we are not the first generation nor even the first species to wrestle with the problem of information overload. Long before the advent of computers, human beings were collecting, storing, and organizing information: from Ice Age taxonomies to Sumerian archives, Greek libraries to Dark Age monasteries. Today, we stand at a precipice, as our old systems struggle to cope with what designer Richard Saul Wurman called a "tsunami of data." With some historical perspective, however, we can begin to understand our predicament not just as the result of technological change, but as the latest chapter in an ancient story that we are only beginning to understand.

Are today’s youngest retirees following in the footsteps of their older peers with respect to gradual retirement? Recent evidence from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) suggests that most older Americans with full-time career jobs later in life transitioned to another job prior to complete labor force withdrawal. This paper explores the retirement patterns of a younger cohort of individuals from the HRS known as the “War Babies.” These survey respondents were born between 1942 and 1947 and were 57 to 62 years of age at the time of their fourth bi-annual HRS interview in 2004. We compare the War Babies to an older cohort of HRS respondents and find that, for the most part, the War Babies have followed the gradual-retirement trends of their slightly older predecessors. Traditional one-time, permanent retirements appear to be fading, a sign that the impact of changes in the retirement income landscape since the 1980s continues to unfold.

The Expert Committee recommends that physicians and allied healthcare providers perform, at a minimum, a yearly assessment of weight status in all children, and that this assessment include calculation of height, weight (measured appropriately), and body mass index (BMI) for age and plotting of those measures on standard growth charts.

Guidance manual for the outcomes form for short term services

Outcome form for Short-Term Services

In order to inform the work of this group, the Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU) was asked to provide, within our responsive programme of work for DfES, an overview of relevant research and data in three main areas: the effective deployment of social worker time and tasks, improving cross-professional working, and attitudes to take-up of post-qualifying qualifications. It was decided to structure the review around the following five questions:
• How do social workers spend their time?
• How should they spend their time?
• What sort of social work tasks add most value to service users?
• What promotes cross-professional working from a social work perspective?
• What information is available on the take-up of post-qualifying training by social workers?

In recent years the scholarly community has developed methods to measure “cost burdens,” which are the direct and indirect societal costs of adverse outcomes associated with a particular problem, practice, or illness. Such studies have examined the total cost to households, communities, businesses and government of problems such as alcohol abuse, smoking and obesity. This report is the first analysis of the total cost burden of hunger in the United States-- what it costs the American public to tolerate hunger and food insecurity in our nation. Bipartisan efforts in the 1970s led to policies that resulted in significant reductions in hunger; however, since the 1980s hunger has not only became more severe but, according to an annual measure reported by the federal government, has remained at high levels for at least the past decade. Each year around 35 million Americans live in households that do not get enough to eat.

This research explored the characteristics and experiences of new European immigrants to the UK including their interaction with local long-term residents, and in relation to issues of community cohesion. Despite high levels of education, immigrants were generally in low-skilled jobs, especially in hotels and restaurants, cleaning, and construction. Focusing on three localities in South-East England, the report highlights positive features of this new immigration, and explores how the presence of these new immigrants (from Albania, Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro and Ukraine) affects community cohesion. The study aims to contribute to public debate on ‘community cohesion’. It draws on nearly 400 interviews with new immigrants conducted in late 2005, and a similar number of interviews with long-term residents in Brighton & Hove, Hackney and Harrow. Interviews were conducted in the immigrants’ own language by a team of immigrant researchers.

- The proportion of primary heroin admissions who injected the drug declined from 69 percent in 1995 to 63 percent in 2005, while the proportion of primary heroin admissions who inhaled the drug increased from 27 percent in 1995 to 33 percent in 2005
- The proportion of admissions for which medication-assisted opioid therapy was planned fell from 55 percent of primary heroin injection admissions in 1995 to 31 percent in 2005, but remained stable at around 30 percent of primary heroin inhalation admissions
- From 1995 to 2005, the proportion of primary heroin admissions—whether inhalation or injection admissions—receiving ambulatory treatment decreased, while the proportions admitted to residential/rehabilitation treatment or detoxification increased

1.
The Child Support Agency was established in 1993 to assess, collect and enforce child maintenance payments from non-resident parents. From day one, however, the Child Support Agency has not delivered anywhere near what was expected of it.
2.
The system has never recovered from this poor start and the Child Support Agency continues to be weighed down by the legacy of the past. For the sake of the children concerned, there is a clear need for fundamental reform of both child maintenance policy and its delivery. This has to be achieved by a clean break with the past. This means new arrangements should be put in place that work with parents to deliver the best outcomes for their children. Alongside this there must be a more effective process for assessing, collecting and enforcing maintenance that provides the people working to deliver child maintenance with the tools to do the job. In addition, there needs to be a new organisation that facilitates modern and innovative approaches to delivery.
3.
This White Paper sets out the Government’s radical and far-reaching proposals for the wholesale reform of the child maintenance system so that much more money reaches the children who need it.

- Among adults aged 18 to 64 who were currently employed full time, 29.1 percent smoked cigarettes during the past month
- Females aged 18 to 64 who were employed full time were more likely to have missed at least 1 day of work in the past month due to illness or injury than their male counterparts
- Among adults aged 18 to 64 who were employed full time, past month cigarette smokers were more likely to have missed work on 5 or more days in the past month due to illness or injury than those who did not smoke cigarettes in the past month (4.2 vs. 3.0 percent)

Over the last four decades, academic and wider public interest in inequality and poverty has grown substantially. In this paper we address the question: what have been the major new directions in the analysis of inequality and poverty over the last thirty to forty years? We draw attention to developments under seven headings: changes in the extent of inequality and poverty, changes in the policy environment, increased scrutiny of the concepts of ‘poverty’ and inequality’ and the rise of multidimensional approaches, the use of longitudinal perspectives, an increase in availability of and access to data, developments in analytical methods of measurement, and developments in modelling.

This paper was commissioned as part of the 21st Century Review of Social Work. Its remit was to report on research based evidence of the effectiveness of ‘prevention’ and ‘early intervention’ activities by statutory social workers and to provide clear definitions of these terms. Little research based evidence of effectiveness is available. This is understandable because preventive or early intervention by social workers encompasses very diverse activities in relation to a wide range of problems, acute to chronic, from neglect to youth crime and involving children of all ages. In addition the social work service is usually provided alongside intervention by other agencies and professionals.

The government plans to introduce a radical reform of Housing Benefit for private rental tenants so that HB will be paid to claimants rather than to their landlords. This report examines claimants’ understanding, attitudes and experiences of the two different payment methods – payment to the claimant and payment to the landlord.

Through in-depth qualitative interviews with the families and partners of prisoners and an evaluation of services for these families, the study looks at:
- loss of work, income reduction and reliance on welfare benefits;
mental and physical health problems;
- the limitations of statutory and voluntary services.
The authors conclude that a review of criminal justice policy for families is needed, focusing on four key themes: rights and equality; care principles; public accounts reform; and community-based services.

African-American and Hispanic workers are at least as likely as American workers overall to feel confident about their retirement security even though their savings and preparations lag behind, according to findings of the 2007 Minority Retirement Confidence Survey (MRCS). While some differences in preparation can be attributed to differences in income distribution, other findings show that minorities are less prepared even when comparisons are made among workers with similar levels of household income. See five additional MRCS Fact Sheets at the bottom of this page.

The annual AIDS epidemic update reports on the latest developments in the global AIDS epidemic. With maps and regional summaries, the 2006 edition provides the most recent estimates of the epidemic’s scope and human toll, explores new trends in the epidemic’s evolution.

Unfortunately not all cities are fully participating in this renaissance. An examination of the performance of 302 U.S. cities on eight indicators of economic health and residential well-being reveals that 65 are lagging behind their peers. Most of these cities—and their larger regions—are older industrial communities that are still struggling to make a successful transition from an economy based on routine manufacturing to one based on more knowledge oriented activities. Some others are simply dominated by the low-wage employment sectors that today characterize much of the American economy. But the outcomes are largely the same: While many of these cities have strong pockets of real estate appreciation and revitalization, on the whole they remain beset by slow (or no) employment and business growth, low incomes, high unemployment, diminishing tax bases, and concentrated poverty—remnants of five decades of globalization and technological change, and the dramatic shift of the country’s population away from the urban core.

Our health care system is in need of transformation. We must ensure that all Americans have access to affordable, quality health care coverage. Our success will be measured by the improved health of all Americans. The complexity of the issues facing our health care system demands a combination of private market reforms and changes in government programs. We have the opportunity to transform our health care system by combining the best innovation, technology and research the private market offers with the economies of scale and protection the government offers. Rising health care costs are affecting America’s workers, consumers, employers and government; inhibiting job creation; and hurting our ability to compete in global markets. Health care costs are straining the household incomes of many Americans, leaving them without insurance and adequate health care. Congress must address the issue of the uninsured.

This review directly addresses the practical implications of multiprofessional and multiagency working on the front line. It draws messages from a diffuse range of literature spanning organisational theories, research and practice to offer guidance to practitioners, team leaders and educators. While relating the evidence to historical, theoretical and current policy contexts, it retains a primary interest in the day-to-day experience of professionals in social care, education, health and other areas, and in trying to improve the outcomes for vulnerable children and families.

This paper explores the impact of remittances on poverty, education, and health in 11 Latin American countries using nationally representative household surveys and making an explicit attempt to account for one of the inherent costs associated with migration-the potential income that the migrant may have made at home. The main findings of the study are the following: (1) regardless of the counterfactual used remittances appear to lower poverty levels in most recipient countries; (2) yet despite this general tendency, the estimated impacts tend to be modest; and (3) there is significant country heterogeneity in the poverty reduction impact of remittances' flows. Among the aspects that have been identified in the paper that may lead to varying outcomes across countries are the percentage of households reporting remittances income, the share of remittances of recipient households belonging to the lowest quintiles of the income distribution, and the relative importance of remittances flows with respect to GDP. While remittances tend to have positive effects on education and health, this impact is often restricted to specific groups of the population.

This online engagement is designed to receive your contributions to the development of the new framework for setting locally owned priorities across health and social care. It is run by the Department of Health and forms part of our engagement with key stakeholders.

Using longitudinal household data and an econometric model of conditional poverty transitions, this paper contributes to the growing literature on poverty dynamics in Australian households. The results reveal that a range of household head, partner and demographic characteristics in addition to life-changing events have an impact on both the likelihood of remaining poor and slipping into poverty. These findings have important implications for Australian policymakers: tertiary education and employment are key factors in keeping households out of poverty; having a disability increases the probability of becoming poor and remaining in such a situation; households in outer-regional or remote areas are more likely to become poor and continue to live under such hardship; and finally, life-changing events, especially becoming separated, can lead households into persistent poverty. These results are robust to a range of poverty definitions. By drawing on research that utilizes such longitudinal data, policymakers will be much better informed about the drivers of material deprivation in Australia and subsequently how best to design policies that target and support
the most vulnerable households.

To guide its public education and advocacy efforts, Mental Health America regularly conducts a variety of polls and surveys to gauge public perception of mental illness in America, and to examine trends in how our nation addresses mental health care. In the past year, we have found both promising and troubling findings about the state of mental health in the United States.

Fiscal 2007 has been a year of stable financial conditions for the states. However, fiscal 2008 is expected to be a year of slower revenue growth and somewhat tighter fiscal conditions. While most states expect a steady fiscal 2008 with reasonable revenue growth, a handful of states are already seeing some significant slowing of their revenue. Overall, state finance officers are concerned about the future due to anticipated trends toward at least somewhat slower growth, as well as continued expenditure pressures in areas such as health care (primarily Medicaid), education, corrections, employee pension systems, and infrastructure. This edition of The Fiscal Survey of States reflects actual fiscal 2006, estimated fiscal 2007, and recommended fiscal 2008 figures. Data were collected during spring 2007 from all 50 states and show stable fiscal conditions in most states. For consistency, the data in this report represent the original budget recommendations governors submitted to state legislatures, although some governors made modifications later.

This report explores the experiences beyond the workplace of migrants from East and Central Europe working in low wage jobs. Following an earlier report on these migrants’ experiences at work, this study explores their access to information, advice and English classes, their accommodation, leisure time, social contact with British people and long-term intentions. The relationship between migrants and other residents has come under the spotlight in recent debates on ‘integration’ and ‘social cohesion’ but there has been little evidence on Eastern European migrants and this study helps to fill that gap. Based on a survey of more than 600 migrants working in the UK before and after enlargement of the EU on 1 May 2004, the study provides unique insights into their experiences. Highlighting some of the challenges new migrants face, it makes a strong case for reviewing national policy towards them.

School governors face major challenges in their work to ensure that the school is run effectively in a way that matches the local context. This study, by a team from the University of Manchester, investigates how English governors meet those challenges where they are most acute, in schools serving disadvantaged areas.

A collection of recently published international resources on long-term care policies.

The Condition of Education 2007 summarizes important developments and trends in education using the latest available data. The report presents 48 indicators on the status and condition of education and a special analysis on high school coursetaking. The indicators represent a consensus of professional judgment on the most significant national measures of the condition and progress of education for which accurate data are available. The 2007 print edition includes 48 indicators in five main areas: (1) participation in education; (2) learner outcomes; (3) student effort and educational progress; (4) the contexts of elementary and secondary education; and (5) the contexts of postsecondary education.

As policymakers consider how to address Social Security's financing challenges, efforts of Social Security reform across the world have gained attention. One of the most oft-cited international cases of reform is Chile. Chile initiated sweeping retirement reforms in 1981 that replaced a state-run, pay-as-you-go defined benefit retirement system with a private, mandatory system of individual retirement accounts where benefits are dependent on the account balance. As a pioneer of individual retirement accounts, Chile has become a case study of pension reform around the world. Although Chile's experience is not directly comparable to the situation in the United States because of large differences between the countries, knowledge of the case may be useful for American policymakers. This CRS report focuses on the Chilean individual retirement accounts system. It begins with a description of the U.S. Social Security policy debate, along with a brief comparison of Chile and the United States. Next, the report explains what Chile's individual retirement accounts system is and how it works. The pension reform bill sent to the Chilean Congress for debate in 2007 is also discussed. The report does not address other components of Chile's social security system, such as maternity, work injury, and unemployment. The final section provides an assessment of Chile's now 26-year-old individual retirement accounts system. Pension reforms have contributed to the rapid growth in the Chilean economy over the past two decades and returns on pension fund investments have been greater than expected. Administrative costs, however, have been high and participation rates have been modest at best. There is concern that the system does not cover the entire labor force and provides inadequate benefits to low income workers.

- In 2005, female adolescents accounted for about 44,600 of adolescent admissions (31 percent)
- Adolescent female admissions were less likely than adolescent male admissions to report marijuana as their primary substance of abuse (51 vs. 72 percent)
- Adolescent female admissions were more likely than their male counterparts to have a co-occurring psychiatric and substance abuse disorder (23 vs. 18 percent)

This document responds to growing need at country level for basic operational guidance on provider-initiated HIV testing and counselling in health facilities. It is intended for a wide audience including policy-makers, HIV/AIDS programme planners and coordinators, health-care providers, non-governmental organizations providing HIV/AIDS services and civil society groups. Surveys in sub-Saharan Africa have shown that a median of just 12% of men and 10% of women had been tested for HIV and received the results. Greater knowledge of HIV status is critical to expanding access to HIV treatment, care and support in a timely manner, and offers people living with HIV an opportunity to receive information and tools to prevent HIV transmission to others. Increased access to HIV testing and counselling is essential in working towards universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support as endorsed by G8 leaders in 2005 and the UN General Assembly in 2006.

We welcome the Minister’s evident personal commitment to human rights.
However, we conclude that the FCO’s human rights policy has to rely on more than the strong commitment of one Minister and we recommend that it should be made more explicit to all Ministers that work in support of human rights is to be fully integrated into the Government’s pursuit of the ten strategic foreign policy priorities.

This paper analyses whether Free School Meal (FSM) status is a valid proxy for socio-economic status when conducting schools related research. The authors compare data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) with FSM data. Significant differences are found between the two sets of data, but this cannot be seen as definitive reasoning for questioning FSM as a measure. ALSPAC is not a nationally representative sample and suffers from a lack of ethnic diversity.

The price of college is on nearly everyone’s mind these days. Until now, the share of family income required to pay for a four-year public college has risen significantly only for low- and moderate-income families, but there is a growing sense across the nation that a college education may be moving beyond the financial reach of many middle-income families as well. Governors, state legislatures, and college presidents feel relentless pressure to restrain increases in the price of college, especially for those students who can least afford it.

- Adults aged 65 to 69 made up the largest part of the substance abuse treatment population aged 65 or older, increasing from 56 percent of older adults in treatment in 1995 to 59 percent in 2005
- In each year from 1995 to 2005, alcohol was the most frequently reported primary substance of abuse for admissions aged 65 or older
- Between 1995 and 2005, primary opiate admissions increased from 6.6 to 10.5 percent of admissions aged 65 or older

This paper compares the income tax burden of Canadian working families with two young children (generally under the age of seven) with that of various industrialized countries. Countries selected for this analysis are the members of the G-7 group of industrialized countries, plus Sweden (commonly regarded as an industrialized high-tax country) and Ireland (commonly regarded as an industrialized low-tax country). The tax rates presented here were calculated based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Taxing Wages model.

Traditionally, the United States higher education system has been the envy of the world for its high quality, accessibility to millions of Americans, ability to train generations of skilled workers, and its contribution to creating the vast American middle class. Today, however, higher education is experiencing new pressures. A new generation of students—including many minorities, children of recent immigrants, and middle-aged and older Americans—is seeking access to colleges and universities. This is happening precisely when public funding for higher education seems more strained than ever. At the same time, other countries are ramping up their own higher education systems to compete in the global economy.

Researchers have been exploring the possibility of a correlation between male circumcision and lowered risk of HIV infection almost since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.1 Results from a randomised controlled trial in South Africa in 2005 indicate that male circumcision protects men against the acquisition of HIV through heterosexual intercourse,2 confirming the findings from 20 years of observational studies.3 Circumcised men in the South African trial were 60% (95% CI 32% to 76%) less likely to acquire HIV than their uncircumcised counterparts. A mathematical modelling study, based on the South African trial, estimates that the practice of male circumcision could avert two million new HIV infections and 300 000 HIV-related deaths over the next 10 years in sub-Saharan Africa.4 More recently, two randomised controlled trials in Kisumu, Kenya and Rakai, Uganda showed, respectively, 53% and 48% reductions in HIV acquisition among circumcised men than uncircumcised men in the trial.5 These results strongly suggest that male circumcision could play an important role in the struggle against the continued rise in new HIV infections. However, as observers noted at the 2006 XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada, excitement about the potential epidemiological impact has overshadowed the debate over the difficult translation of research on male circumcision, into policy and practice.6 Similar calls for caution have been raised before and elsewhere.

Identifying entering inmates’ mental health needs when they first enter an institution is critical to providing necessary services and enhancing safety in corrections settings. The purpose of the two projects discussed in this report was to create and validate mental health screening instruments corrections staff can use during intake.

This report marks the fourth annual release of Adoption in Massachusetts: Private and Public Agency Placements and Practices by the Center for Adoption Research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Findings are based on the responses received from a survey sent to all licensed private adoption agencies and the Department of Social Services (DSS) regarding adoption placement practices for 2004. All 50 private adoption agencies1 in Massachusetts that facilitated adoptions during 2004 responded to the survey, a 100 percent response rate for the second year in a row. The goal of this research is to continue to develop a consolidated, statewide information source of common practices, services and fees, and to document the different types and total numbers of adoptions completed in Massachusetts.

The National Youth Agency undertake a six-month research project to explore the skills, knowledge and attitudinal development that young people derive from volunteering. The project was envisaged as a first stage in identifying the range of skills gained through volunteering that can be translated and potentially accredited to provide evidence for employability.

This study examined the work and family lives of those who provide care for ‘vulnerable’ children and young people. This workforce has received recent public policy attention following a number of childcare scandals. In addition, the Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme has made workforce reform a key area of action, and the Children’s Workforce Strategy sets out to ‘build a world-class workforce for children and young people’. However, this attention is occurring at a time in which educational levels are rising, while the level of training required for many childcare occupations remains low. It is also occurring at a time of high employment, with the result that childcare work has to compete with better paid employment opportunities especially for women, creating recruitment and retention problems in the childcare workforce.

Mental illness is the leading cause of indirect costs associated with lost work time, but employees still shun treatment, and managers are ill prepared to deal with the problem, HR-benefits directors report. Those are among the views shared by 515 respondents in a new survey, "Innerworkings: A Look at Mental Health in Today's Workplace," conducted by Employee Benefit News with help from The Partnership for Workplace Mental Health and funding from the Managed Markets division of Astra-Zeneca. "Innerworkings" also reveals that while more organizations are providing programs to help employees with mental health problems, stigma and lack of awareness prevent these benefits from being fully utilized.

What accounts for the differences in retention and graduation rates among large public colleges and universities that serve high numbers of low-income students? To answer this question, the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education conducted a study to examine the institutional characteristics, practices, and policies that might account for such differences. This study, funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education, continues previous research conducted by the Pell Institute that analyzed retention policies and practices at smaller public and private four-year institutions with high percentages of low-income students. In the first study, we identified 20 four-year institutions with large proportions of Pell Grant recipients – 10 with higher than average graduation rates and 10 with lower than average graduation rates. Despite design limitations, the first study yielded important findings about what colleges and universities can do to improve student persistence.

Recent research on children in out-of-home care has highlighted their demographic characteristics, their physical and mental health status, and case outcomes, yet the body of literature examining children’s perspectives on care is relatively limited. This review provides an overview of almost two dozen studies examining children’s experiences of care. Findings from studies involving interviews with current and former foster youth are reviewed in relation to four child welfare goals: (1) protecting children from harm; (2) fostering children’s well-being; (3) supporting children’s families; and (4) promoting permanence. Implications for improved child welfare practice are offered.

This study investigated ways of improving the measurement of the output of Children’s Social Services in the National Accounts. It was commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills following an independent review in 2005 led by Sir Tony Atkinson, which recommended changes to the way that government output is measured. Measuring the output of Children’s Social Services requires a different approach from that used for private sector goods and services because there are no market prices to indicate the value of interventions. The Atkinson review recommended that what ideally should be measured is the incremental impact that interventions have on client outcomes and welfare. The study’s aim was therefore highly challenging: to recommend a methodology for producing a robust annual output measure that fully reflects the change in welfare to individuals and society from Children’s Social Services’ provision.

In the past four decades, growing numbers of gays have come out of the closet and into the mainstream of American life. As a consequence, 4-in-10 Americans now report that some of their close friends or family members are gays or lesbians, according to a recent national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

- Among adults aged 18 to 64 who were currently employed full time, 29.1 percent smoked cigarettes during the past month
- Females aged 18 to 64 who were employed full time were more likely to have missed at least 1 day of work in the past month due to illness or injury than their male counterparts
- Among adults aged 18 to 64 who were employed full time, past month cigarette smokers were more likely to have missed work on 5 or more days in the past month due to illness or injury than those who did not smoke cigarettes in the past month (4.2 vs. 3.0 percent)

Each year, the major U.S. cigarette and smokeless tobacco companies must submit reports to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that outline the total amounts they have spent to market the products they sell and the amounts they have spent in different marketing categories (such as magazine and newspaper ads, internet advertising, coupons, promotional expenditures at retail outlets, direct mail, and the like). The 2005 total includes $13.1 billion in cigarette marketing and $250.8 million in smokeless tobacco marketing. In 1998, the tobacco companies spent $6.9 billion on marketing ($6.7 billion for cigarettes and $145.5 million for smokeless tobacco). With only a few exceptions, the states are still failing to invest even the minimum amounts recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to prevent and reduce tobacco use and related health harms and costs – and a number of states have been cutting back their tobacco prevention spending.

ABSTRACT The ultimate goal of the committee is to end the tobacco problem, that is to reduce smoking so substantially that it is no longer a significant public health problem for our nation. While that objective is not likely to be achieved soon, the report aims to set the nation irreversibly on a course for doing so. After reviewing the ethical grounding of tobacco control, the committee sets forth a Blueprint as a two-pronged strategy. The first prong envisions strengthening and fully implementing traditional tobacco control measures known to be effective. The second prong envisions changing the regulatory landscape to permit policy innovations that take into account the unique history and characteristics of tobacco use, such as strong federal regulation of tobacco products and their marketing and distribution. Aggressive policy initiatives will be necessary to end the tobacco problem Any slackening of the public health response may reverse decades of progress in reducing tobacco-related disease and death.

Relatives might be hesitant to adopt for several reasons: they do not want to sever ties with the biological parent family member; they are hopeful that the biological parent will seek treatment and eventually return home; or they are opposed to terminating parental rights from a cultural or religious standpoint1. Also, older children might not want to be adopted but still agree that living away from their parents is in their best interest. Nevertheless, the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 emphasizes permanency for every child and mandates that an agency file for termination of parental rights if a child lives in foster care for fifteen months out of a twenty-two month period. While ASFA recognizes legal guardianship as a permanency option, it provides no specific and ongoing federal financial assistance to families that choose it as one. . . . In part as a response, thirty-five states and the District of Columbia have established subsidized guardianship programs to encourage grandparents and other relatives to step in and provide permanent homes for children when their parents are unable to do so.

Good practice guidance, including a summary of relevant legislation and policy, on how adult and children's services should work together to improve support to parents with a learning disability and their children.

Food Stamp Reathorization. During NCSL 2007 Spring Forum in Washington DC, Larry Goolsby, APHSA gave a presentation on the food stamp reauthorization process, it's context and prospects. See it here.

The federal Directory is one effective resource that can be used by agencies and organizations involved in the safe recovery of missing children. The Directory contains current information and links to other agencies that can help in finding a solution. It describes the role of each Task Force agency in the location and recovery of missing and exploited children, the types of services and support that are available, the procedures for accessing these services, and instructions for obtaining additional information. To make the information more accessible, the next section, Where To Get Help, categorizes the types of assistance offered by each agency.

The Report Card publicly recognizes the exceptional leadership of state legislators nationwide for their efforts to confront international trafficking of women and girls into the United States. Since 2002, more than half of the states have enacted some form of antitrafficking legislation — and we hope that legislators and advocates in these states will use the analysis of their state’s efforts to improve and expand upon their existing laws and policies. While the states that had not yet enacted such laws as of December 31, 2006 received a grade of “F,” we hope that the Report Card’s recommendations will inspire their renewed efforts during the remainder of 2007 and in their 2008 legislative sessions.

This report is the first analysis of the total cost burden of hunger in the United States-- what it costs the American public to tolerate hunger and food insecurity in our nation. Bipartisan efforts in the 1970s led to policies that resulted in significant reductions in hunger; however, since the 1980s hunger has not only became more severe but, according to an annual measure reported by the federal government, has remained at high levels for at least the past decade. Each year around 35 million Americans live in households that do not get enough to eat. The personal cost of hunger to a child, or to families who cannot afford to feed their children, might be difficult for many to imagine. This personal cost has been analyzed and discussed in numerous academic and lay publications. But what, we might ask, is the economic cost to the nation when we permit so many of our fellow citizens to go hungry? What are the costs of the charity that is required to help families get through another day? What are the costs of impaired educational outcomes that scientific research has linked to children not getting enough to eat? And what is the bill for the mental and physical illnesses that are linked to inadequate nutrition? This analysis calculates the cost burden of hunger in the United States at a minimum of $90 billion annually. This means that on average each person living in the U.S. pays $300 annually for the hunger bill. On a household basis this cost is $800 a year or $8,000 over a decade. And because the $90 billion cost figure is based on a cautious methodology, we anticipate that the actual cost of hunger and food insecurity to the nation is higher.

The UK Government plans to introduce a radical reform of Housing Benefit for private tenants. Known as the Local Housing Allowance (LHA), the new scheme has been piloted over a two year period prior to a planned national roll-out. Subject to parliamentary approval of the Welfare Reform Bill, the LHA will be implemented across the UK for claimants in privately rented housing in 2008. The radical feature of the LHA is that, unlike the present Housing Benefit (HB) scheme, entitlement is no longer based on the tenant’s rent. Instead, within each local market area, there is a flat-rate allowance for all privately rented claimants, which varies only by household size and composition. Yet most of the controversy has focused, not on the flat-rate allowance, but on the associated proposal to pay it to claimants rather than to their landlords.

The New Deal for Disabled People is the major employment programme available to people claiming incapacity benefit and other disability-related benefits in the United Kingdom, and an important part of the Government’s welfare-to-work strategy. This report conveys findings on the impact of the programme on employment and receipt and amount of benefits for individuals who registered for the programme between 1 July 2001 and 30 June 2004.

This research was commissioned to extend previous research on variations in the take-up of means tested benefits and to see whether it would be possible to make adjustments to take account of any differences in take-up observed. The research attempted to identify the characteristics of eligible non-recipients of Pension Credit, income-based Job Seekers Allowance and tax credit for families with children and to adjust for both case and cash take-up.

The Survey underscores the need to fully recognize and better harness the productive and social contributions to societies that older persons can make but are, in many instances, prevented from making. It also emphasizes what is among the most pressing of challenges: that arising from the prospect of a shrinking labour force that must support an increasingly larger older population. Moreover, changes in intergenerational relationships may affect the provision of care and income security for older persons, particularly in developing countries where family transfers often play a major role. Thus, societies must also cater for the particular needs of older populations in terms of the requisite health care, assistance in case of disabilities and appropriate living conditions.

The nation has made tremendous progress in reducing tobacco use during the past 40 years. Despite extensive knowledge about successful interventions, however, approximately one-quarter of American adults still smoke. Tobacco-related illnesses and death place a huge burden on our society. Ending the Tobacco Problem generates a blueprint for the nation in the struggle to reduce tobacco use. The report reviews effective prevention and treatment interventions, and considers a set of new tobacco control policies for adoption by federal and state governments. Carefully constructed with two distinct parts, the book first provides background information on the history and nature of tobacco use, developing the context for the policy blueprint proposed in the second half of the report. The report documents the extraordinary growth of tobacco use during the first half of the 20th century as well as its subsequent reversal in the mid-1960s (in the wake of findings from the Surgeon General). It also reviews the addictive properties of nicotine, delving into the factors that make it so difficult for people to quit and examines recent trends in tobacco use. In addition, an overview of the development of governmental and nongovernmental tobacco control efforts is provided

While the total number of children in foster care nationally has been decreasing, the number of youth who leave foster care because of their age—a situation referred to as “aging out”—has been increasing. In 2005, more than 24,000 youth left foster care at the age of 18* without a family of their own— a 41 percent increase since 1998. On average, those who age out of foster care will have spent nearly 5 years in the system at the time they “emancipate” (the technical term) without ever having been placed with a safe, permanent family of their own. In total, more than 165,000 youth aged out of the system between 1998 and 2005. (State-by-state data in Appendix A.)

In recent years, the number of AIDS diagnoses among Asians and Pacific Islanders has increased steadily. Although Asians and Pacific Islanders account for approximately 1% of the total number of HIV/AIDS cases in the 33 states with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting, the Asian and Pacific Islander population in the United States is growing.

State legislators are in a unique position to tackle hunger and nutrition issues from various angles. They can provide incentives for schools to institute school meal programs, create legislation that would appropriate more funds toward a WIC farmers market nutrition program, or establish an award to recognize those individuals and organizations that are champions in the fight against hunger in their community. Furthermore, with their access to local and state organizations, legislators can bring together varied interests from the nonprofit, private and foundation sectors to inspire meaningful change and innovative solutions to best serve low-income communities. In short, state policymakers have the chance to serve as catalysts in the battle to end hunger in the United States, starting with their communities and their states.

The Government wants all children to have the best start in life and the ongoing support that they and their families need to fulfil their potential. Disabled children are less likely to achieve as much in a range of areas as their non-disabled peers. Improving their outcomes, allowing them to benefit from equality of opportunity, and increasing their involvement and inclusion in society will help them to achieve more as individuals. It will also reduce social inequality, and allow communities to benefit from the contribution that disabled children and their families can make, harnessing their talent and fostering tolerance and understanding of diversity. The Government has done much to improve outcomes for disabled children and their families. They should be benefiting more than others from the Government’s Every Child Matters programme coordinated package of support, given that they often need access to a wide range of services. However, the Government recognises the need to do more. Building on progress to date, and underpinned by £340 million of investment over the CSR period, the Government will take action in three priority areas to improve outcomes for disabled children

This report presents statistics based on a representative snapshot of the circumstances of all families with dependent children in 2005. The report is split into two parts that look at the distinct features of both the family unit and children’s lives.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to study its medical procedures and criteria for determining disability and to make recommendations for improving the timeliness and accuracy of its disability decisions. SSA asked the IOM to help in two broad areas, broken down into 10 specific tasks (see Appendix B).

American social policy is largely the product of two types of federal programs, one type that operates directly through the federal budget, and another type that operates more indirectly through the tax code. This AARP Public Policy Institute Issue Paper compares the former (entitlement benefits) with the latter (tax benefits).
- Spending entitlement programs are the subject of much of the debate about the current and future cost of government programs and their implications for America’s fiscal and economic future. More than $1.5 trillion of federal budget dollars were spent in 2006 for this first type of federal benefit programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
- Tax entitlement programs (commonly referred to as “tax expenditures” in the language of tax policy) also represent a direct benefit to the individual taxpayer but are far less visible as a budgetary expense than the large spending programs. Nearly $1 trillion in tax benefits went to individuals through this second type of program, including such tax benefits as the mortgage interest deduction and the tax exclusion for employer-provided health insurance.

The UNODC Annual Report for 2007 (covering activities in 2006) provides an overview of the organization's activities worldwide. It shows the range of activities undertaken in the field and at headquarters to make the world safer from illicit drugs and international organized crime. In 2006, UNODC's announcement of a record opium harvest in Afghanistan grabbed the world headlines and reinforced the Office's reputation for providing the gold standard for drug cultivation data. But UNODC also raised the alarm about growing cocaine use in Europe in 2006, paid special attention to the crime of trafficking in persons and worked to generate momentum against another global problem within its mandate: corruption.

The child tax credit (CTC) is a $1,000 partially refundable federal income tax credit for each qualifying child under age 17. In 2007, tax filers may claim a refundable credit (over and above any tax liability) equal to 15 percent of the excess of earnings over $11,750, up to the $1,000 maximum per child. The earnings threshold means that families with very low incomes get no benefit from the credit, and others will receive only a partial credit. This brief analysis shows that many families with young children tend have lower incomes and are thus left out. In 2007, 30 percent of qualifying children under age 2 in working families had family incomes too low to benefit from the full credit, compared with 27 percent of children overall and 24 percent of children 10 and older.

NDDP is the major national employment programme available to people claiming incapacity-related benefits, and it is an important part of the Government’s welfare to work strategy. NDDP is a voluntary programme that provides a national network of Job Brokers to help people with health conditions and disabilities move into sustained employment. This synthesis report highlights key findings from a large-scale, comprehensive and multi-method evaluation of NDDP. It covers the programme over the period July 2001 to November 2006 and is based on all of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published evaluation reports on NDDP as well as analysis of administrative data using the DWP NDDP database. The findings also include a wealth of information pertaining to more general issues around employment of disabled people, beyond the NDDP programme itself, and are therefore of substantial interest to future policy development in this area.

- In 2005, female adolescents accounted for about 44,600 of adolescent admissions (31 percent)
- Adolescent female admissions were less likely than adolescent male admissions to report marijuana as their primary substance of abuse (51 vs. 72 percent)
- Adolescent female admissions were more likely than their male counterparts to have a co-occurring psychiatric and substance abuse disorder (23 vs. 18 percent)

Last year, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) announced their intent to file a suit against both the Kellogg Company and Viacom, the corporate owner of Nickelodeon. The announcement charged the companies with “directly harming kids’ health” because “the overwhelming majority of food products they market to children are high in sugar, saturated and trans fat, or salt, or almost devoid of nutrients.” The groups said they would “ask a Massachusetts court to enjoin the companies from marketing junk foods to audiences where 15 percent or more of the audience is under age eight, and to cease marketing junk foods through websites, toy giveaways, contests, and other techniques aimed at that age group.”

Currently, if a Food Stamp recipient is laid off, his or her 401(k) is likely to be converted to an IRA, thus disqualifying him or her from receiving Food Stamp benefits. Excluding all qualified retirement accounts from the Food Stamp asset test would allow well over 7 million Food Stamp recipient households in 46 states plus the District of Columbia to immediately start building retirement nest eggs. Countless more families in all 50 states plus DC would be able to save for retirement, knowing