Listen Up! makes the case for fundamental change in the basic service model for young people. It calls on commissioners to designate a lead agency and person to co-ordinate the commissioning of services for young people aged 16-25. It also calls for the provision of long-term funding to voluntary sector organisations, and for statutory youth mental health services in general to learn from the voluntary sector’s example of person-centred provision. The report is primarily aimed at those who commission and fund services for children and young people, as well as those working within the voluntary and community sectors and statutory sector who are setting up or developing services for young people with mental health and emotional problems.

We chart U.S. federal spending on investment in total and for children from 1965 to 2017. Five major categories can be considered—some more so than others—to be investment or to have investment components: education and research, work supports, social supports, physical capital, and defense investment. Relative to GDP or domestic spending, we found that total investment and investment in children—under almost any definition—fell over the 1965–2006 period, though with some recent rebounds. More important, projections of current policies show that overall government investment and especially investment in children are threatened to decline in relative and sometimes absolute importance, squeezed out mainly by faster, automatically growing programs that tend to favor consumption. These data raise the question of what relative priority the government should place on investment, and particularly investment in children.

This study explores what can be learnt about education and poverty from children's own perspective when they are empowered as active researchers. It focuses on reading and writing proficiency as a potential route out of poverty and studies two schools in contrasting socio-economic areas.

Although the Food Stamp Program is the largest entitlement program remaining in the social safety net, comparatively little is known about the potential benefits that the program may confer on recipients. In this paper we examine an important dimension of well being, mental health, and the extent to which participation in the Food Stamp Program may attenuate the effect of food insufficiency on levels of emotional distress. Using longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of families in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) we model emotional distress as a function of food insufficiency and other known risk factors for poor mental health. We allow participation in the Food Stamp Program to have a direct impact on mental health, and then test whether food stamp participation mediates the effect of food insufficiency on emotional distress. To conduct our tests we use a first-difference instrumental variables estimator to control for unobserved heterogeneity in emotional distress and possible measurement error in Food Stamp Program participation. We find that food insufficiency has a sizable deleterious effect on the level of emotional distress, as does participation in the Food Stamp Program. However, we also find that participation in the Food Stamp Program among food insufficient households nearly eliminates the deleterious effect of food insufficiency on emotional health, suggesting that the program is well targeted to those in need of food assistance and improved mental health. This research provides the first evidence that the Food Stamp Program has an important positive spill-over effect on mental health through its mediation of household food insufficiency.

Conclusions—Generally, mortality patterns in 2004 were consistent with long-term trends. Life expectancy in 2004 increased again to a new record level. The age-adjusted death rate declined to a record low historical figure.

Citizens and Clients in Public Services,Scottish Policy Innovation Forum,Royal Society of Edinburgh, 11th December 2006

Community-based research provides a useful framework for addressing social problems and exploring alternatives. This paper directs attention toward community-based research as a framework for better understanding inter-subjective views of poverty and exploring alternative intervention programs that are innovative and diverse. As an example of substantive research in this regard, results from two related mixed-method investigations (key-informant interviews, focus groups and telephone surveys) of underemployment, poverty and limited access to health care are synthesized. Discussion of these efforts and description of follow-up projects address the ways in which the CBR framework may contribute to the development of alternative policies and programs for workforce development, poverty alleviation and increased access to health care.

How well is the social work research enterprise meeting the profession’s needs? Are social work researchers pursuing questions that have significance for society and for the profession? This paper asserts that social work research needs to be focused on the most pressing of questions—those that have the potential to inform and improve social work practice. The paper explores the knowledge needs of social work as a profession, asserts the primacy of five research questions, and encourages their pursuit as a means to strengthen the social work knowledge base.

There is widespread agreement that poverty and poor educational outcomes are related but there are competing explanations as to why this should be. This study identifies the thinking behind different approaches and the implications for policy. . . . The review was undertaken by identifying research-relevant literature which explicitly addressed the relationship between poverty and educational outcomes. This literature included research texts, policy papers, evaluations and various other reports. A provisional mapping framework was developed and tested in a seminar with academics across the University of Manchester. As the framework developed a wider group of researchers and policy-makers was invited to an international seminar in order to examine and challenge the framework. The seminars and advisory group provided advice on key literature to help refine the framework. The enhanced mapping framework was used to structure database interrogation, keywords searching and screening criteria and the development of a database categorising framework.

Given the emerging social stratification of post-agrarian small towns, potential effects are apt to be exacerbated for rural poor families such as those residing mobile home parks, a now characteristic rural neighborhood form. While a mobile home park offers affordable access to the American Dream of homeownerships specific factors appear to suggest that social costs are attached to such access. This paper examines the intersection between upscale suburban development and social disadvantage. Drawing on survey and ethnographic field studies findings reveal distinct conditional features of place associated with upscale suburban development that determine the nature of how rural inequality is emerging and what the implications are for working-poor families.

Professor Dennis Bracken, School of Social Work, University of Manitoba. Glasgow School of Social Work Research Seminar Series: 8th March 2007

Since the passage of the welfare reform legislation of 1996, social scientists have studied the impact of reform on poverty, work effort, and well-being among those affected. Most of the research documents the decline in welfare rolls since 1996, the increase in work effort associated with this decline, and the strategies the poor have relied on to make ends meet in the context of a new policy context. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of social networks and social support as key factors in the reliance on work or welfare among rural single mothers.

New data from the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey reveal a deepening crisis of affordability for renters and homeowners in San Diego County, according to an analysis by the Center on Policy Initiatives. The data, embargoed for official release Wednesday, show that only 52% of the county lived in housing that was affordable by federal standards in 2006, compared to 60% in 2000. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) considers housing unaffordable in the total cost — rent plus basic utilities or mortgage, tax and insurance payments —is more than 30% of a household’s income. Compared to the previous year, affordability worsened for homeowners with mortgages in 2006, but improved slightly for renters, so that 53% of both groups now live in unaffordable housing.

- Inhaling cocaine was the predominant route of cocaine administration for much of the 20th century. In the early 1980s, a potent smokeable form of cocaine known as "crack" was developed.
- Trends in admissions to substance abuse treatment for cocaine and cocaine route of administration were examined with annual data from SAMHSA's Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS).
- In 1995, 63% of primary smoked cocaine (crack) were younger than age 35. By 2005, only 32% of primary crack admissions were in this age group.
- The proportion of both inhaled and smoked cocaine (crack) admissions who were employed full time decreased between 1995 and 2005.

Citizens and Clients in Public Services,Scottish Policy Innovation Forum,Royal Society of Edinburgh, 11th December 2006

The substantial decline in the welfare rolls, expansion of collecting child support, and increased labor-force participation among low-income mothers in the late 1990s demonstrated that welfare reform, along with a booming economy, compelled many welfare recipients to restructure their relationships with the state. This working paper draws upon Foucaultian concepts of “governmentality” and “resistance” to explore how power and regulation were deployed in local welfare offices in ways that encouraged these outcomes. It uses interview data from 30 female clients who participated in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program along with ethnographic data collected in some of the TANF offices frequented by study participants. It considers the governance of low-income mothers within (and outside of) these institutions and explores how women who relied on these bureaucracies read and responded to attempts to transform their conduct. Analysis shows that a casework model of surveillance-based support and cultural narratives about impoverished mothers were deployed to justify and enforce the new welfare policy. The working paper also examines the ways that TANF-reliant mothers contested or co-signed regulation through their engagement with the office, including methods that might be considered subversive or even “deviant.” It analyzes “the concealment strategy,” the calculated presentation of information regarding one’s case to a welfare caseworker, and the purposeful omission or alteration of details. The author contemplates whether and how this might be conceptualized as not only a choice driven by economics, but also as a form of resistance to increasing social regulation.

This participatory study explores children's views of social difference, with children guiding the research focus themselves. The children came from contrasting socio-economic backgrounds, 19 from a disadvantaged housing estate and 23 from an independent, fee-paying school. The research aims to raise awareness about social difference from a child's perspective and to inform Government strategies to eradicate poverty and social exclusion.

All Males by Race/Ethnicity- United States, 2004

All Males by Age Group- United States, 2004

Numerous studies have confirmed that race plays an important role in shaping public preferences toward redistribution and punishment. Likewise, studies suggest that punitive policy tools tend to be adopted by states in a pattern that tracks with the racial composition of state populations. Such evidence testifies to the enduring power of race in American politics, yet it has limited value for understanding how disciplinary policies get applied to individuals in implementation settings. To illuminate the relationship between race and the implementation of punitive policy tools, we analyze sanction patterns in the TANF program. Drawing on a model of racial classification and policy choice, we test three hypotheses regarding client race and sanctioning. Our study does not support a simple story in which racial minorities are always more likely to be targeted for discipline. Rather, we find the impact of race to be contingent on local politics and other client characteristics.

By 2040, 400 million Chinese (representing 26 percent of the population) will be more than 60 years old. This figure is larger than the entire population of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom combined.

A direct comparison of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and New Zealand Guidelines Group (NZGG) recommendations for management of individuals with suicidal ideation and/or behavior is provided in the tables, below. The APA guideline contains general and specific recommendations for assessment of the patient, psychiatric management, specific treatment modalities and documentation and risk management issues. In addition, it includes an overview of suicide, its natural history, course and epidemiology; a structured review and synthesis of the evidence underlying the APA recommendations; and a summary of areas for which more research is needed to guide clinical decisions. Only recommendations related to psychiatric management of individuals at risk for suicide are addressed in this synthesis. The NZGG guideline replaces a 1993 guideline developed by the New Zealand Department of Health. Its recommendations are intended for use in emergency department and acute psychiatric service settings and therefore focus primarily on crisis and initial management of patients at risk for suicide. Both guidelines also address risk assessment of individuals with suicidal ideation and/or behavior.

A direct comparison of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and New Zealand Guidelines Group (NZGG) recommendations for risk assessment of individuals with suicidal ideation and/or behavior is provided in the tables, below. . . . Both guidelines address assessment of suicidality in special populations. The APA guideline considers evaluation in inpatient, outpatient, emergency, long-term care facility, and jail and correctional facility settings. APA also addresses assessment issues concerning the needs of certain cultural groups. The NZGG guideline considers the needs of children and adolescents, the elderly, Māori, Pacific peoples, people of Indian descent, Asian populations and refugee groups. Both guidelines also address the management of individuals with suicidal ideation and/or behavior. This topic, however, is beyond the scope of this synthesis.

Despite the health benefits of participation in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), many eligible households do not participate in WIC during pregnancy and others exit WIC after a child turns one year old. This research uses the first two waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) to advance our understanding of these transitions into and out of WIC. Findings suggest that those who exhibit better economic health across a variety of dimensions are more likely to delay entry into the program or exit after a child turns one year of age.

Jane Aldgate, Professor of Social Care, Open University. 'Achieving Results with Children and Families' conference, Westpark Conference Centre, Dundee, 30th May 2007. Jane has researched a wide range of child welfare issues and publications in the field of Child Welfare including 'Children's Needs - Parenting Capacity'.

This working paper examines declining welfare rates from 1996 to 2000 at the state level. The author examines the role that state policies might have had on welfare rates. He examines 18 state policies that might have been implemented. Sandoval’s data suggest that four different regimes for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) emerged after the passage of the 1996 welfare-to-work act. He refers to these regimes as: Social Investment, Social Reform, Social Retrenchment, and Social Disinvestment. His data suggest that states that adopted punitive TANF policies, on average, had welfare recipients that were black or Hispanic, and states that adopted more liberal TANF policies were the states that tended to have a homogeneous white welfare population. His data also show that the states that had the largest decline in welfare rates did not all adopt Social Disinvestment-type policies.

Professor Richard Hugman (University of New South Wales). Glasgow School of Social Work Research Seminar Series: 19th June 2007.

Children growing up in poverty and disadvantage are less likely to do well at school. This feeds into disadvantage in later life and in turn affects their children. To break this cycle, we need to address the attitudes and experiences that lie behind social differences in education. This paper:
- looks at the experiences of children from different backgrounds and their attitudes to education
- summarises the messages from the first eight projects in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's Education and Poverty programme

For better or worse, for-profit social-service providers—in mental health, welfare, and medical care—are driving fundamental change in an industry previously driven largely by humanitarian concerns. For-profit managers claim a bottom line of better services for more people through for-profit/not-for-profit partnerships that employ economies of scale and money-saving new technology. Not-for-profit providers worry about technology, standards, and economics diminishing the hands-on care that keeps clients from failing or falling through bureaucratic cracks.

In this paper I explore how five competing theories of poverty shape anti-poverty strategies. Since most rural community development efforts aim to relieve causes or symptoms of poverty, it makes a difference which theory of poverty is believed to be responsible for the problem being addressed. In this paper five theories of poverty are distilled from the literature. It will be shown that these theories of poverty place its origin from 1) individual deficiencies, 2) cultural belief systems that support subcultures in poverty, 3) political-economic distortions, 4) geographical disparities, or 5) cumulative and circumstantial origins. Then, I show how each theory of poverty finds expression in common policy discussion and community development programs aimed to address the causes of poverty. Building a full understanding of each of these competing theories of poverty shows how they shape different community development approaches. While no one theory explains all instances of poverty, this paper aims to show how community development practices that address the complex and overlapping sources of poverty more effectively reduce poverty compared to programs that address a single theory.

Nearly half of public high school students in New York City (NYC) and nationwide say they have had sex. About 1 in 3 are currently sexually active (had sex in the last 3 months). Encouraging adolescents to delay sex—or, if sexually active, to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs)—requires education, support, and services. Without access to birth control, sexual activity during adolescence poses health, social, and economic risks including pregnancy and STIs. Left untreated, curable but often asymptomatic STIs, such as chlamydia, can cause infertility and other serious health problems.

This report describes four scientific studies that analyzed data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, which for almost a decade has been contributing valuable knowledge about the interplay between crime, violence, children, and neighborhoods. The researchers' innovative, multilevel design produced a longitudinal study that is helping social scientists understand factors that contribute to adolescent violence.

Neil Quinn (East Glasgow CHCP/GSSW) and Lee Knifton (NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and GSSW). Glasgow School of Social Work Research Seminar Series: 19th April 2007.

It highlights the latest trends in this key sector of higher education, such as, the introduction of new organisational structures to manage doctoral education, the increasing focus on learning ‘transferable skills’ and the growth in new types of doctoral programmes such as “professional doctorates”. Equally, it underlines the challenges that Europe faces if it is serious about attracting and retaining the best young research talent. Amongst the findings, EUA’s work underlines that stakeholders (universities and public authorities) must do more to widen participation, to improve mechanisms for supervision and assessment, and to promote the international mobility of doctoral candidates. They must also take steps to ensure professional skills development is an integral part of all doctoral training.

• The influence of personal and environmental factors on professionalism in medical education


• Answer changing in multiple choice assessment: Change that answer when in doubt - and spread the word!


• Proximity morality in medical school – medical students forming physician morality "on the job": Grounded theory analysis of a student survey


• Psychological morbidity, sources of stress and coping strategies among undergraduate medical students of Nepal


• Electronic voting to encourage interactive lectures: a randomised trial


• A systematic review of tests of empathy in medicine


• A qualitative study of the learning processes in young physicians treating suicidal patients: from insecurity to personal pattern knowledge and self-confidence


• Problem formulation by medical students: an observation study


• Teaching medical students about children with disabilities in a rural setting in a school


• Competency-based evaluation tools for integrative medicine training in family medicine residency: a pilot study


• Burnout and psychiatric morbidity among medical students entering clinical training: a three year prospective questionnaire and interview-based study


• Role-play for medical students learning about communication: Guidelines for maximising benefits

Brigid Daniel, Professor of Child Care and Protection, University of Dundee. 'Achieving Results with Children and Families' conference, Westpark Conference Centre, Dundee, 30th May 2007. Brigid is the Director of Studies for a large suite of post-qualifying child care and protection training courses.

This publication is a product of the State Statutes Series prepared by Child Welfare Information Gateway. While every attempt has been made to be complete, additional information on these topics may be in other sections of a State’s code as well as in agency regulations, case law, and informal practices and procedures.

Consent refers to the agreement by a parent, or a person or agency acting in place of a parent, to relinquish a child for adoption and release all rights and duties with respect to that child. Consent to
adoption is regulated by State statutes, not by Federal laws, and States differ in the way they regulate consent. In most States, the consent must be in writing and either witnessed and notarized or executed before a judge or other designated official. State legislatures have developed a range of provisions designed to ensure protection for all involved individuals.

Drawing on data from a survey of family households in nonmetropolitan Pennsylvania, this paper examines how rural families combine participation in the formal labor market, government assistance programs, and informal economic activities (for cash, barter, and savings) to make ends meet. Overall, the results show that participation in a varied livelihood strategy is widespread. The results show greater formal labor force participation among higher income families, and greater participation in assistance programs among lower income families. Engagement in the informal economy, however, is shown to differ little by household income. Implications for future research and efforts aimed at poverty alleviation and community development are then discussed.

The authors evaluate the effects of home inputs on children’s cognitive development using the sample of single mothers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Important selection problems arise when trying to assess the impact of maternal time and income on children’s development. To deal with this, they exploit the (plausibly) exogenous variation in employment and child care use by single mothers generated by differences in welfare regulations across states and over time. In particular, the 1996 welfare reform act along with earlier state policy changes adopted under federal waivers, generated substantial increases in work and child care use. Thus, the authors construct a comprehensive set of welfare policy variables at individual and state levels and use them as instruments to estimate child cognitive ability production functions. They use local demand conditions as instruments as well.

While most economic development research views poverty as a sign of need for development or poverty reduction as an outcome of successful development, this study treats poverty as an independent variable alongside contemporary measures of innovation capacity that reflect state potential for economic development, examining the combined impact of poverty and innovation capacity on economic development outcomes. The study examines the effect poverty has on economic development outcomes given levels of innovation capacity, and the effect poverty has on formation of state innovation capacity. The methodology consists of pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis with panel corrected standard errors with lags. The findings show mixed support for the effect of poverty on innovation capacity formation, weak support for the negative direct effects of poverty on economic growth, and strong support confirming important differences between the south and the rest of the nation. Poverty appears to impact economic growth only indirectly through its effect on the components of capacity that lead to economic growth.

The education sector has done much to improve the experiences of disabled people. More disabled students are gaining access to education and training than ever before, receiving improved support, and having better experiences and educational outcomes than in the past. People are working together for change, and much has been achieved. This is evident in the increased participation by disabled students in post-16 education over the last six years. The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) shows a percentage increase from 4.1 per cent to 5.8 per cent (30,970 known disabled students from a total population of 755,095).

Child Trends' LINKS presents our extensive knowledge about programs found to "work" to enhance children's development, in a user-friendly format for policy makers, program designers, and funders. This approach is built on the concept that child development is a cumulative process that begins before birth and continues into young adulthood. LINKS visually shows that varied program approaches can contribute to children's development, that different approaches are appropriate at different ages, and that developmental inputs build on one another over time, as a child grows. LINKS also illustrates that development unfolds over time and benefits from investment at all ages.

Researchers’ and practitioners’ recognition of the importance of community social and cultural relations ( “social capital”) to effective implementation of poverty reduction projects and differences in social capital across communities suggest that such projects should be tailored to the types of social capital present in a given community. Drawing upon a data set collected by the Northwest Area Foundation of twelve Native American communities which includes a wide array of questions regarding social capital, this paper evaluates the different types of social capital in each community and considers the implications of that capital for the types of poverty reduction programs which would be effective in each community. We find differences in social capital across the communities in the study, with resulting differing implications for economic development and poverty reduction projects. Our results support observations that social capital is a community-specific phenomenon and must, therefore, be studied at the local level.

Adoption is a decision that can affect the entire family. Get together with your family to talk about adding a new member and what that would be like. Think about the personal resources you and your family can offer a child. Consider the community resources available to support your decision — relatives, friends, neighbors, places of worship, support groups, school, health providers, and neighborhood centers. Most children available for adoption in New York State are in foster care.

The life of each child who has suffered abuse or neglect is critically affected by both the incident itself and the response of those who intervene. Judges, as community leaders, can be the catalysts that bring the community and professionals together to ensure that the court experience is a successful one for children and youth.

This report presents the first information from the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), an annual survey sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The survey is the primary source of information on the use of illicit drugs, alcohol, and tobacco in the civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States aged 12 years old or older. The survey interviews approximately 67,500 persons each year. Unless otherwise noted, all comparisons in this report described using terms such as "increased," "decreased," or "more than" are statistically significant at the .05 level.

There is abundant research that focuses on the causes and consequences of poverty in rural areas, and on the factors that ameliorate rural poverty. While a comprehensive review of this literature is not possible in this space, we summarize the research on differences in poverty between rural and urban areas, and how factors that ameliorate poverty differ between rural and urban areas. We focus primarily on studies that are national in scale, and that looked specifically at these spatial differences and effects.

This bibliography has been assembled by Kathleen Miller and Jane Mosley of the RUPRI Rural Poverty Research Center (RPRC) as a document in progress. The bibliography includes publications that meet three criteria: (1) the publication is from a peer-reviewed journal or is a research report emanating from a significant research project; (2) the publication focuses on poverty or its causes and correlates or on policies designed primarily to reduce poverty or its effects; and (3) the publication focuses on rural America or on differentials between rural and urban areas in the United States. RPRC will update this bibliography periodically and maintain an updated version on the RPRC.
website:

This paper reviews the literature on whether regression-discontinuity studies reproduce
the results of randomized experiments conducted on the same topic. After briefly reviewing the regression-discontinuity design and its history, we explicate the general conditions necessary for a strong test of correspondence in results when an experiment is used to validate any non-experimental method. In Economics, within-study comparisons of this kind are associated with LaLonde (1986), and we elaborate on how to do such studies better than twenty years ago. We identify three cases where regression discontinuity and experimental results with overlapping samples were explicitly contrasted. By criteria of both effect sizes and statistical significance patterns, we then show that each study produced similar results across the experiment and regression discontinuity study. This correspondence is what theory predicts. But to achieve it in the complex social settings in which these within-study comparisons were carried out suggests that regression discontinuity results may be generally robust.

Building community capacity is a central concern of both policymakers and community residents. Both want to understand why some communities are more successful in achieving positive social, economic and environmental outcomes, and how to increase the capacity of communities to achieve these outcomes. This is particularly true in communities that face the most difficult economic challenges: central cities of large metropolitan areas and remote rural communities. Most attempts to define, assess and build community capacity, however, have been undertaken in urban neighborhoods. While there is much to learn from these studies of urban places, there are distinctive characteristics and dynamics of rural communities that introduce unique challenges to the assessment and building of community capacity.

The Government has developed a booklet for parents: "Why your child’s weight matters", which includes information on the National Child Measurement Programme, why maintaining a healthy weight is important, and the steps that parents can take to help their family develop a healthy lifestyle.

Across the nation, child welfare judges are taking on a new role—participating in collaborations designed to strengthen the child welfare system, such as multi-disciplinary taskforces or court improvement projects. Experience has shown that the “exercising of a proper judicial leadership role within the community to provide for better services for children and their families,” promotes change and improvement in the child welfare system. In July 2006, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Law Judges (NCJFCJ) adopted a resolution regarding judicial leadership in juvenile and family courts. This resolution “encourages judges to be leaders and to take action” – recognizing a judge’s unique role in motivating change. Because judges see cases from all perspectives, they can often provide a clear vision of how the child welfare system needs to be improved.

This study was carried out by the National Centre for Social Research and King’s College London and commissioned and co-funded by Comic Relief and the Department of Health. It presents findings of in-depth interviews with a selection of older people who have experienced abuse and mistreatment.

State Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems (ECCS) grants are designed to provide state Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Agencies and their partner organizations with small amounts of funding as an incentive for strengthening systems of care for young children and their families. States are encouraged to plan, develop, and ultimately implement collaborations and partnerships that support families and communities in the development of children who are healthy and ready to learn at school entry. But, to make a difference, integrated service strategies must work at the local level, on the ground where families live and providers practice. Therefore supporting local systems is a key strategy for ECCS grantees.

Citizens and Clients in Public Services,Scottish Policy Innovation Forum,Royal Society of Edinburgh, 11th December 2006

Differences in the local economies and poverty rates of rural areas suggest that there would be rural-urban differences in the use of public programs such as child care subsidies and food stamps that are designed to support working low-income families. This study analyzes employment and program participation dynamics for rural and urban families in the Oregon child care subsidy program. Demographic characteristics, employment stability, and participation in work support programs were fairly similar for families across county types. Despite higher county poverty rates and higher overall unemployment rates, families in noncore counties had slightly fewer months of child care subsidy use, food stamps and TANF compared to those in metropolitan and micropolitan counties.

In 180 hours of original programming, there were 2246 instances of objectionable violent, profane and sexual content, for an average of 12.48 instances per television hour, or one instance every 4.8 minutes.

Since the average hour of prime-time broadcast television contains about 43 minutes of non- commercial programming, one instance of objectionable content occurs every 3.5 minutes of non-commercial airtime, on average.

Only 10.6% of the 208 episodes were free of any violent and sexual content and foul language.

CW was the cleanest network overall with 9.44 instances of objectionable content per hour.

Fox was the worst network overall with 20.78 instances of objectionable content per hour.

Dorothy Roberts examines an understudied aspect of the gross overrepresentation of black children in the U.S. child welfare system, in which a black child is four times more likely than a white child to be in foster care. She argues that such statistics conceal a disturbing racial geography, in which child protection cases are concentrated in communities of color in the nation’s cities. To investigate the sociopolitical impact of such overrepresentation on black communities, she conducted a small case study in the black Chicago neighborhood of Woodlawn, where there are high rates of foster-care placement. Analyzing in-depth interviews with 27 black women, Roberts uncovered many ways in which the intense agency involvement in Woodlawn negatively affected both family and community relationships. Yet surprisingly most of the women did not believe that the agency was overly involved in their neighborhood, and in fact, called for greater state involvement. Roberts surmises that the residents of such neighborhoods are forced to rely on more punitive state institutions to meet their needs because of the growing dearth of social programs in these neighborhoods, caused by the government’s shift to market solutions for poverty. She concludes that the racial geography of state child protection also illustrates the critical role that institutional racism plays in the neoliberal state’s new forms of punitive governance.

Adoption is a process for making a child a permanent member of a family other than the child’s birth family. This legal process falls under the jurisdiction of a court of law in the State where the adoption occurs. In each State, different courts are designated to hear specific types of cases. That designation is what is meant by the term “jurisdiction.” For example, criminal cases will be tried in a State criminal court. Adoption is a civil procedure, and at the State level, certain civil courts are given jurisdiction over adoption cases. A person who seeks to adopt a child must file his or her petition for adoption with the appropriate court.

This report summarizes the results of a survey conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive via its QuickQuery online omnibus on behalf of the National Council For Adoption between February 23-27, 2007 among 2,021 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

Some say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but showing someone your work firsthand can be worth many more. One of the most effective ways to Be a Voice for Babies is to invite policymakers to experience your work with infants and toddlers for themselves. A site visit gives policymakers the opportunity to connect the decisions they make to the faces of infants, toddlers, and families in their community, and is a great strategy that can create a lasting impression. Use the guidance below to plan and implement a site visit with your local, state and federal policymakers.

Much of the research that has followed welfare reform and new policies such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) has focused on identifying the variations in how different states have put the new policy into practice. Less is known, however, about how this new policy affects the ability of recipients to earn a living through work. This paper uses rich panel data from Illinois and examines what explains labor force participation and performance among current and recent TANF recipients. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal methods are used in the analyses. Results indicate that human capital factors such as education, job skills, and health are important determinants of labor market participation and performance. In addition, long-term welfare recipients are equally likely to participate and perform well in the labor market as shorter term welfare recipients. Finally, the government housing subsidy appears to positively affect labor force participation and performance.

In this study, Dr. Joseph J. Sabia of the University of Georgia uses data from a pooled cross-section of unmarried mothers from the March 1990 to March 2005 Current Population Survey (CPS) to examine the effect of minimum wage increases on single mothers’ employment, hours worked, weeks worked, wages, wage income, welfare receipt, and poverty. As expected, the author finds that more highly educated single mothers—those with some post-high school education—are not affected by minimum wage increases because their skills command a wage premium higher than state or federal minimum wage levels. However, less-educated single mothers, who are more likely to earn lower wages than their higher-skilled counterparts, are adversely affected by mandated wage policies. While minimum wage increases do raise the wage rates of employed less-educated single mothers, the evidence consistently shows that there are adverse employment and hours effects that undermine these wage gains. For single mothers without a high school diploma, a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage is associated with a 6.0 percent reduction in employment, an 8.5 percent reduction in steady work (1,040 annual hours), and a 14.5 percent reduction in full-time work (1,820 annual hours).

This paper reviews the history of the regression discontinuity design in psychology, statistics, and economics. The design was invented by Donald T. Campbell in 1958. He and a group of Northwestern University colleagues in both psychology and statistics worked on the design and its analysis until the early 1980s, with Campbell's student William Trochin then carrying on the work. Trochim explored variants of the design in terms of their validity, implementability and analysis. But by 1995, no psychologists could be found working to improve the design, only to popularize its use--at which they had only modest success at best. In statistics, the design has never had a high profile, perhaps because it is deemed unexciting to be able to model selection when the selection process is completely known, perhaps because the design leads to causal inferences whose generalization is limited to the cutoff point, and perhaps because its interpretation depends on functional forms that cannot be directly observed. The first formal proof of unbiased causal inference resulting from the design came from unpublished papers in economics--by Goldberger in 1972. However, economists were then pursuing a broader causal agenda and interest in regression-discontinuity lapsed. It was not used in economic applications until the mid-1990s. However, it has widely caught on since them among younger labor economists and econometricians in both the United States and Europe. Has life now arrived for this 50-year-old design, invented in 1958 and rarely used until the beginning of this century?

California has the largest child welfare system in the nation with nearly 80,000 children in the state’s foster care system. In 2001, the state passed ground-breaking legislation that established the Child Welfare Services Outcomes and Accountability System to improve the outcomes faced by children and families touched by the child welfare system. Implemented in January 2004, California’s system is an enhanced version of the federal oversight system mandated by Congress and used to monitor states’ performance. Over the last three years, California has made significant progress in improving outcomes for children. The most recent data available from the UC Berkeley Child Welfare Performance Indicators Project – the statewide entity that tracks all California child welfare data – shows that counties are improving on most measures, with significant improvement in some measures and more modest improvements in others.

Census.ac.uk, home of the ESRC Census Programme, provides a one stop gateway to data and support services which allow users and researchers in UK Higher and Further Education to access the 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001 UK censuses. It also provides access to other important census related resources.

The promotion of marriage and two-parent families became an explicit public policy goal with the passage of the 1996 welfare reform bill. Marriage has the putative effect of reducing welfare dependency among single mothers, but only if they marry men with earnings sufficient to lift them and their children out of poverty. Newly released data from the 2002 cycle of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), along with data from the 1995 cycle, allow us to compare pre- and post-PRWORA differences in (1) cumulative marriage rates among unwed mothers; and (2) patterns of marital choice, i.e., differences in characteristics of the men these mothers marry, such as their education and employment status. Overall, our results show that unwed childbearing is associated with lower marriage rates and marital quality. Although difference-in-difference models show that welfare reform was not strongly associated with changes in marriage among nonmarital birth mothers, marriage rates did not decrease significantly among the most disadvantaged mothers during the post-1996 period. Compared with other women, nonmarital birth mothers also were less likely to marry "economically attractive" men in the post-welfare reform period. The success of marriage promotion initiatives may depend heavily on whether women themselves are “marriageable” and whether potential spouses have the ability to support a stable family life.

The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program was enacted in 1975 as a federal-state-local partnership to help strengthen families by securing financial support from noncustodial parents. Families receiving cash welfare from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant must assign (turn over rights to) child support received from noncustodial parents to the state to reimburse it and the federal government for their welfare costs. States decide whether to pay any of the child support collected for TANF families to the family. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA, P.L. 109-171) provides incentives for states to allow more of the child support collected on behalf of TANF families to go to the family without a reduction in welfare benefits. Under DRA, beginning in October 2008, the federal government will share in the cost of passing through up to $100 per month for a family with one child, and up to $200 per month for a family of two or more children, of collected child support to TANF families. This report illustrates the potential impact of the DRA policy on families and governments in six states (CA, IL, ME, MD, OK, and WV) chosen because of their diversity in both TANF and pre-DRA child support pass-through policies. It shows the direct effects of “what if” the states fully adopted the DRA policy. . . . This report provides a limited discussion of DRA’s effect on former TANF families. The report addresses only the “direct” effects of adopting the DRA child support pass-through and disregard. Adoption of DRA child support policies might have other, indirect, behavioral effects.

The primary focus of this review is on research evidence addressing the barriers that parents face in engaging with mainstream support services, and the ways that services have successfully responded to overcoming those barriers. The review takes a broad view of ‘mainstream’ services, and includes health, education, social services, youth justice and leisure services. It focuses mainly on preventive services: in other words the ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ levels of the ‘Hardiker’ Grid (Hardiker, 1992; Hardiker et al., 1995). These refer to services which are either universal or aimed at high-risk families or communities, but not to ‘tertiary’ services such as child protection, looked-after children and parents or children in institutions (for example, hospitals, prisons, young offender institutions and children’s homes). However, not all the relevant research makes this distinction, and there are some important studies concerning tertiary services that have been included.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF, formerly the Department for Education and Skills) commissioned BMRB to undertake eight surveys to collect information about childcare and early years provision and its workforce. These eight surveys are reported in detail in separate, sector specific reports. This overview report seeks to draw together the findings of the surveys by looking at similarities and differences across the sectors, as well as pulling the data together to give details of the whole childcare workforce.

There are now over 5.1 million heterosexual couples cohabiting in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2006), which is a tenfold increase from 1970 when only 500,000 couples were cohabiting. According to the renowned demographer Larry Bumpass, the current rate of cohabitation before marriage is nearly 70%. This means that for 70% of young people, their first couple experience is cohabitation rather than marriage. About half of cohabitating couples either marry or break up after 2 years of cohabitation (Kennedy and Bumpass, 2007). Of the cohabiting couples that have recently married, 58% lived with their partner before marriage and 14% of those had also lived with someone else other than the person they married (Kennedy and Bumpass, 2007).

This guidance booklet has been produced by the Home Office’s Anti-Social Behaviour and Alcohol Unit, in response to demand from practitioners for an accessible guide to current practice in this field. It has been drawn up with the help and advice of a range of partner agencies, including the police and local authorities. It reflects what is actually being done with ABCs/ABAs, by agencies that have found this intervention an effective part of the toolkit for tackling anti-social behaviour. It is important to remember that this intervention is not aimed solely at under 18s.

The major themes of much recent research on child poverty, as well as policy, have included measurement, child outcomes and the ways in which the ‘cycle of poverty’ can be broken (Ermisch et al., 2001; Yaqub, 2002). The role of parents in the relationship between poverty and outcomes for children is less well understood. Parents living in poverty are much more likely than more affl uent parents to be facing a range of issues other than material deprivation which may affect their parenting. These include low levels of education and few qualifi cations, lack of access to jobs and services, isolation, mental and physical ill health and domestic violence. These factors may act independently of each other but are also likely to interact, so that disaggregating their effect on parenting – and on outcomes for children – is extremely challenging. We also know relatively less about the different ways that parents in poverty cope, as opposed to the negative aspects of parenting under stress that place children at risk of poor outcomes. In particular, our understanding is still limited as to whether and how far ‘good’ parenting mediates the effects of poverty on children. Yet, in spite of the strong body of research linking poverty to poor outcomes, there is equally good evidence to show that most parents living in poverty are remarkably resilient and possess strong coping skills in the face of the adversity in their lives. While most of the literature on parenting relates to child outcomes, there is a growing recognition that parenting and parents themselves are worthy of consideration in their own right (DfES, 2007).

One in six people in the UK experiences mental health problems at some stage of their lives. Many receive services of a high standard that meet their individual needs, but a significant number do not. Despite more inclusive social attitudes, people with mental health problems continue to face exclusion from areas of life that many of us take for granted – from jobs, security, family support, community involvement and from the choices and decisions about their care and treatment. The cost and burden to individuals, their families and the community are immense, and disadvantage can often cross from one generation to the next.1 This report is welcomed by both Commissions as a way of highlighting the importance of effective community mental health services in breaking the cycle of social exclusion. These services cover health, social care and the third sector, and are crucial in maintaining people within their communities, in employment and training, and ultimately, out of hospital.

Two-thirds of children living in low-income families in Detroit have parents who work. The majority of these children—about 70,000—have parents who work full-time, year-round. 1 In Detroit, as elsewhere in Michigan and throughout the United States, a full-time job at low wages is not enough to make ends meet. Work supports—such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and child care subsidies—can help. But as this snapshot shows, families often lose eligibility before they are economically self-sufficient. In some cases, just a small increase in earnings can trigger a substantial loss in benefits, leaving the family worse off than it was before.

Much ‘wisdom’ has been published about parenting and its impact on children, but only recently has this taken much account of children’s own views. Asking children what they think recognises that they are well able to speak for themselves and have unrivalled insights into their own feelings and needs. In terms of parenting and its outcomes, there can be little doubt that children are experts. The focus of this review is accordingly on research with children rather than research about children. Based on an examination of the literature and other documentation, consultations with experts in the fi eld and two focus groups with young people, it explores children’s accounts of parenting where ‘added value’ is gained from including young perspectives. It draws out some of the main conclusions from this evidence, identifi es unexplored or underdeveloped research questions, and makes observations on research with young people.

This gives the findings of an evaluation of a scheme to involve people who use care services in inspecting and checking care home and domiciliary care services. The findings will be used to improve the scheme, which will continue for the rest of the inspection year and in 2008-09. The reports are also available in easy-to-read and audio versions.

Interventions to promote positive early childhood development are widespread and are based on the belief that early benefits in child cognitive and emotional development will carry on into later life. This review of the existing research and policy evidence set out to collect and evaluate existing evidence relating to the effectiveness of parenting interventions.

It is increasingly acknowledged that the ‘rethinking of families’, needed to keep pace with changing demographic trends (Barrett, 2004), should include parenting and ethnicity. This is partly because there have been demographic shifts in the British population (as there have been in the US population) so that it is more ethnically diverse in ways that challenge taken-for-granted assumptions. Moreover, policymakers, practitioners and academics have long viewed ‘race’ as an important factor affecting the parenting that children receive (e.g. Department of Education and Science, 1985). In Britain, black and Asian parents have been subjected to particular scrutiny because there have been consistent (but different) concerns about their parenting, educational and behavioural outcomes. At the same time, differences of ‘race’ have been treated simplistically (Lawrence, 1982) and it is increasingly evident that, while the categories black and Asian continue to be important, they are far too blunt to provide insights useful to policymakers and practitioners (Modood et al., 1997). Such ‘fictive unities’ (Werbner, 1990) often hide linguistic, ethnic and religious differences. In addition, there has been a tendency to make assumptions about parenting in minority ethnic groups on the basis of few studies consisting of very little, or inadequate, data (Kotchick and Forehand, 2002). Researchers who are themselves from minority ethnic groups often produce different interpretations from those by researchers from majority ethnic groups (McLoyd et al., 2000). Such differences result partly from the diverse experiences that researchers bring to the area. However, theory in this area can be poorly delineated and current understandings of ethnicity are sometimes not represented within the area of parenting and ethnicity.

Population aging will become an increasingly important demographic dynamic affecting families and societies throughout the world in the coming decades. In 2006, 64 percent of the worldwide population aged 60 and older resided in developing countries, and this proportion is projected to increase to nearly 73 percent by 2030.1 Yet, the limited understanding of the demographics of aging in most developing countries stands in stark contrast to the comparatively well-documented course and implications of aging in developed countries. Sub-Saharan Africa is no exception to this characterization and, in fact, may be the region with the least well understood aging trends. A combination of factors limits our
understanding of the situation of older people in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Performance assessment handbook for adult social care services covers the performance year 1 April 2006 to 31 March 2007. You can use the handbook now to understand how we decide your star rating, which we will publish in November 2007. New for this year we will be assessing how well councils meet a range of outcomes for people who use services. The handbook describes the evidence we will use and the way we will score how well councils are achieving these outcomes.

In this report, we summarise current thinking about the nature of contemporary fatherhood. This is no easy task because more than 700 papers on men’s family roles, which come from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds with less cross-referencing than is desirable, are published in academic journals each year. Our aim is to identify the dimensions of fathering that need to be considered when understanding the roles played by men in today’s families, which, by implication, show fatherhood to be a diverse and complex concept. We also explore some of the methodological issues and challenges that researchers face when they attempt to explore these complexities. A number of methodological shifts have taken place during the past ten years and it is important to reflect on their potential and on their limitations. Finally, we summarise recent and current British research on ‘diversity’ that can profi tably help to shape new directions for research. We also identify more general gaps in research for future reference.

This guidance provides, for the first time at a national level, a set of quality principles to guide commissioners and those wishing to provide medium secure mental health secure services.

In the last few years, the everyday word ‘resilience’ has captured the attention and imagination of an increasing number of academics and professionals. Resilience has positive connotations and entails understanding and seeking out good outcomes for individuals or families in circumstances where problems were to be expected. Compared with the traditional study of child development, which has tended to portray ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ patterns, a resilience approach offers a more differentiated account. In professional practice, resilience means looking for strengths and opportunities to build on, rather than (or alongside) problems, deficits or psychopathology to be remedied or treated. This review considers parents’ actual and potential contributions to children’s resilience and to parental resilience, which is sometimes subsumed within ‘family resilience’. However, since most publications are concerned with resilience in relation to children and young people, the specifi c role of parents often has to be inferred.

The various ways that parents shape their children’s development have been a regular source of theorising by scientists, philosophers and, centre stage, by parents themselves. Within the scientifi c perspective, much of the empirical work linking parental behaviour to developmental outcomes in children has been produced by those working in psychology, sociology and criminology. But other disciplines have contributed both theories and methods including historians, anthropologists and biological sciences. For example, fi ndings from ethology have demonstrated the biological basis and evolutionary signifi cance of the child’s attachment to the parent, while research in physiology, endocrinology and genetics has influenced considerably our understanding of parenting and its effects on offspring. However, there are also more pressing and practical motivations driving current interest in this topic. Chief among these is growing concern about the sizeable and perhaps growing proportion of children with substantial educational, social and health problems, coupled with a belief that modifying the family environment may be a potent means of improving children’s lives and life chances.

This is the eighth set of Social Services Performance Assessment Framework (PAF) indicators. From April 2004 the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) assumed responsibility for the development of the Performance Assessment Framework Indicators, and for this annual publication. These functions had previously been the responsibility of the Department of Health (DH) and latterly also of the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). CSCI is an independent body, and is the single inspectorate for social care in England. It has primary responsibility for promoting improvement, and has created an integrated approach to the inspection and assessment of services across all sectors.

The Latin American community in Canada is growing considerably faster than the overall population. Between 1996 and 2001, for example, the number of people reporting Latin American origins rose by 32%, while the overall population grew by only 4%. The group of Canadians with Latin American origin includes people from a number of countries in that part of the world. In 2001, for example, 15% came from Mexico, while 14% were Chilean, 11% came from El Salvador, 7% were Peruvian and 6% were from Colombia. The majority of Canadians of Latin American origin report they only have one ethnic origin. In 2001, 61% of all those who reported an ancestry that originated in Latin America said they had only one ethnic origin, while 39% said they also had other ethnic origins. This was similar to the number of the overall Canadian population that reported multiple ethnic origins, 40%.

Smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death in New York City. In 2005, smoking accounted for an estimated 4,800 deaths among men and 3,300 deaths among women (excluding deaths due to second- hand smoke exposure). Following the launch of intensive tobacco control efforts, including higher taxes on cigarettes (2002), the Smoke Free Air Act (2002), and expanded cessation services such as free nicotine patch giveaways (annually since 2003), impressive declines in adult smoking have occurred. There are 240,000 fewer smokers in New York City today than there were 4 years ago.

This research provides an overview of the characteristics of the markets for disabled children’s services and identifies the barriers to their development and their suitability for individual budgets.

The Mental Health Bill amends the Mental Health Act 1983. It also introduces "Bournewood" safeguards through amending the Mental Capacity Act 2005. The Bill was introduced into Parliament on 16 November 2006. The Bill was introduced into the House of Commons on 7 March 2007 and has been amended to reflect changes made to the Bill during its passage through the House of Lords.

This report analyzes 15 of the lowest paying occupations in the United States and finds that unionized workers earn about 16% more than their non-unionized counterparts. Unionized workers in the same industries are also 25 percentage points more likely to have health insurance or a pension plan.

CEOs of large U.S. companies last year made as much money from just one day on the job as average workers made over the entire year. These top executives averaged $10.8 million in total compensation, over 364 times the pay of the average American worker, a calculation based on data from an Associated Press survey of 386 Fortune 500 companies. The private equity boom has pushed the pay ceiling for American business leaders considerably further into the economic stratosphere. The top 20 private equity and hedge fund managers, Forbes magazine estimates, pocketed an average $657.5 million, or 22,255 times the pay of an average U.S. worker.

America’s urban neighborhoods generally fared better in the 1990s than they had over the preceding decade, but patterns of improvement and decline were complex and in many ways defied conventional wisdom. Traditional categorizations (e.g., highpoverty versus low-poverty, weak markets versus strong markets) are much too simple to provide sound guides for policy. Local officials everywhere need to learn how to vary their strategies in response to different neighborhood circumstances and trajectories likely to exist in their cities. In this analysis, we divide census tracts in the 100 largest metropolitan areas into three groups based on how their poverty rates changed over a decade: improved (poverty rate decreased by 5 percentage points or more), worsened (rate increased by 5 points or more), and remained stable (rate changed by less than 5 points in either direction).

We identified 228 public speaking events to promote the Social Security reform initiative, of which there were 40 presidential events, 7 vice presidential events, and 122 events with officials from EOP, SSA, or Treasury. As agreed with your office, we primarily focused on these 169 events (almost 75 percent of the 228 public speaking events) and are reporting cost information we obtained for these events. We also identified many other promotion initiatives, including radio addresses and interviews and the establishment of a Treasury Web site. The direct and incremental costs for the 169 events and other initiatives were a reported $2,588,367 for staging, travel, and other direct costs.

This report reviewed international vacation and holiday laws and found that the United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers any paid vacation or holidays. As a result, 1 in 4 U.S. workers do not receive any paid vacation or paid holidays. The lack of paid vacation and paid holidays in the U.S. is particularly acute for lower-wage and part-time workers, and for employees of small businesses. This report also includes a comparative appendix with information on paid leave and holiday laws in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

The Department for Work and Pensions commissioned a survey among Child Support Agency clients. The survey assessed clients’ likely future behaviour under the new choices available in the forthcoming redesigned child maintenance system.

This Guide is about supervised visitation programs. It was written specifically for mothers who are afraid of their children’s father or were abused by him. Every supervised visitation program is different. You have a right to ask questions and to understand how the staff will supervise visits with your children.

Indigenous women have always been actively involved in the struggles for the rights of indigenous peoples at the local, national and international levels. In recognition of this role, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues1 devoted its third session (2004) to a discourse on the unique contributions made by indigenous women within their families, communities and nations. While lauding their contributions, the Forum did express concern at the multiple forms of discrimination that indigenous women faced, based on their gender, race, ethnicity and low socioeconomic status. This, the Forum noted, had led to a complex web of problems that must be tackled. For example, globalization has presented new challenges and problems for indigenous women in many parts of the world. Indigenous women’s roles are often eroded as their livelihood built on accessibility to natural resources disappears, ecosystems are depleted and others are transformed into cash economies. This has produced profound changes not only at the local level and within social and decisionmaking structures but within their families as well. It is important, however, to recognize that indigenous women, like women everywhere else, are not a homogeneous group. They in fact represent a wide variety of cultures with different needs and concerns. Their particular concerns should therefore be central to the design of any policy or programme.

Enacted as title XXI of the Social Security Act in 1997, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) provides health insurance coverage for uninsured children living in families with income that is modest but too high for them to be eligible for Medicaid. This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) paper—prepared at the request of the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee—summarizes the key features of SCHIP, provides information on historical trends in enrollment and federal spending, summarizes the evidence on the effects of the program on children’s insurance coverage, and discusses key issues that are likely to arise as the Congress considers reauthorization of the program this year. In keeping with CBO’s mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, this paper makes no recommendations.

Effective enforcement will be a key factor in ensuring the forthcoming Licensing Act helps tackle Scotland's alcohol problems, according to Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. "Alcohol misuse is causing too much harm to Scottish people and communities. It's destroying health, fuelling antisocial behaviour and causing crime - that's why we need to take action to make our communities safer today and make our nation healthier in the future."

This guide is primarily aimed at housing association staff who are responsible for running impact assessments and integrating involvement into management strategies. It should also be useful to residents who play a part in how involvement is delivered.

New Census data show that in 2006, both the number and the percentage of Americans who are uninsured hit their highest levels since 1999, the first year for which comparable data are available, with 2.2 million more Americans — and 600,000 more children — joining the ranks of the uninsured in 2006. Today’s figures also show that while the overall poverty rate declined slightly (from 12.6 percent to 12.3 percent) between 2005 and 2006, the decline was largely concentrated among the elderly. The poverty rates for children and for working age adults remained statistically unchanged as compared to 2005, and well above their levels in 2001, when the last recession hit bottom.

Contrary to a common assumption, human trafficking is not just a problem in other countries. Cases of human trafficking have been reported in all 50 states, Washington D.C. , and some U.S. territories. Victims of human trafficking can be children or adults, U.S. citizens or foreign nationals, male or female. According to U.S. government estimates, thousands of men, women, and children are trafficked to the United States for the purposes of sexual and labor exploitation. An unknown number of U.S. citizens and legal residents are trafficked within the country primarily for sexual servitude and, to a lesser extent, forced labor.

Quitting smoking is not easy, but thousands of New Yorkers succeed at it every year. Who’s trying to kick the habit, and who’s succeeding? In a new report titled Who’s Still Smoking, the Health Department sheds light on both questions. The report, based on a large survey of New York City adults, shows that two thirds of the city’s smokers – almost 800,000 adults – tried to quit in the past year, but only 17% of those succeeded. Data from the survey identify emotional distress and binge drinking as possible obstacles to quitting, and finds that less than a fifth of New York City smokers are using nicotine replacement therapy – even though it doubles the chances of success.

Conclusions
Generally, mortality patterns in 2004 were consistent with long term trends. Life expectancy in 2004 increased again to a new record level. The age-adjusted death rate declined to a record
low historical figure. Although not statistically significant, the decrease in the infant mortality rate is typical of recent trends; except for 2002, the infant mortality rate has either decreased or remained level each successive year from 1958 to 2004.

The United States’ current system of low-income housing assistance is biased against homeownership. This paper documents the bias and suggests reforms to eliminate it. The new policies would allow more low-income families to become homeowners by providing similar subsidies for renters and owners under the two largest programs for low-income housing, Section 8 and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. The reforms would not require additional spending, would improve the cost-effectiveness of the system of low-income housing assistance, and would avoid the two biggest mistakes in past attempts to subsidize homeownership: subsidizing the construction of new units and requiring intended beneficiaries to buy from selected sellers.

The World Drug Report presents the most comprehensive statistical view of today's illicit drug situation. This year's edition reports signs of long-term containment of the global problem. However, the overall trend masks contrasting regional situations, which the report examines in detail. For instance, while an impressive multi-year reduction in opium poppy cultivation continued in South-East Asia, Afghanistan recorded a large increase in 2006. More interceptions of cocaine and heroin shipments across the world have played an important part in stabilizing the market. However, as we witness successes in some areas, challenges appear in others. Although drug abuse levels are stabilizing globally, countries along major and new trafficking routes, such as those now going through Africa, may face increasing levels of drug consumption. The World Drug Report 2007 also discusses a possible method to better assess and monitor the role played by organized crime in transnational drug trafficking.

Despite a recent flurry of reports on health insurance coverage for children, virtually none of them have examined the unique situation of rural families where one-fifth of all of our nation’s poor children live. Data presented in this report show that the experience of children in small towns and rural areas often differs from the experience of their big-city counterparts. The nationwide shift to public-sector health insurance coverage for children is even more pronounced for rural America where more than one-third of all children rely on SCHIP and Medicaid for health care. Enrollment in and Medicaid is 6 percentage points higher for rural children than for urban children. Given the deteriorating job situation in many parts of rural America, the availability of public-sector health insurance for the families of low-income workers is even more important in rural areas than in other parts of the country.

Partner violence burdens the health care system and the physical and mental health of individuals and family members, and it is considered a major public health problem in the United States.' Although partner violence often begins during adolescence, no prior study has evaluated the effectiveness of a partner violence prevention program for adolescents.

The goal of this research is to quantify the association between food insecurity and smoking among low-income families. This analysis is a retrospective study using data from the 2001 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a longitudinal study of a representative sample of U.S. men, women, and children and the family units in which they reside. Family income is linked with U.S. poverty thresholds to identify 2,099 families living near or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Food insecurity (that is, having insufficient funds to purchase enough food to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle) is calculated from the eighteen core items in the food security module of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The results indicate that smoking prevalence is higher among low-income families who are food insecure compared to low-income families who are food secure (43.6 percent versus 31.9 percent). Multivariate analysis reveals that smoking is associated with an increase in food insecurity of approximately 6 percentage points. Given our finding that families near the federal poverty level spend a large share of their income on cigarettes, perhaps it would be prudent for food assistance and tobacco control programs to work together to help low-income people quit smoking.

- Based on combined data from SAMHSA's annual National Surveys on Drug Use and Health in 2004 and 2005, rates of alcohol and illicit drug use by industry category were assessed among adult workers aged 18 to 64 currently employed full time.
- An annual average of 8.2% full time workers aged 18 to 64 used illicit drugs in the past month and 8.8% used alcohol heavily in the past month.
- The highest rates of past month illicit drug use were found in the accommodations and food services industry (16.9%) and the construction industry (13.7%).
- The highest rates of past month heavy alcohol use were found in the construction industry (15.9%), arts, entertainment, and recreation industry (13.6%), and the mining industry (13.7%).

This primer on health care costs examines the rapid growth in the nation’s health care costs since 1970, when the average growth in health spending exceeded the growth of the economy as a whole by an average of 2.5 percentage points. It also examines the impact of health care costs on families, with insurance premiums rising 87% between 2000 and 2006, more than four times the growth in wages. The primer describes the types and sources of health care spending and the demographic factors associated with higher or lower levels of spending. It also discusses other factors that influence health care spending growth, including the use of new medical technology, population changes, and changes in disease prevalence.

In 2005, more than 61,000 Minnesota residents were sexually assaulted. Four of every five people assaulted were female. On average, each person victimized was assaulted 1.26 times during the year. More than 77,000 sexual assaults occurred. While there were 7,200 reports to police of “unwanted sexual intercourse,” 2,617 met the law enforcement definition of rape. This means that two-thirds of rapes routinely are not included in state and national rape statistics. Sexual assault in Minnesota cost almost $8 billion in 2005, or $1,540 per resident. The largest cost was due to the pain, suffering, and quality of life losses of victims and their families