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information for practice June 2009 archives

June 30, 2009

The fundamental aim of public services is to improve the quality of life of citizens. The main
objective of this study was to investigate the influence of public service organisations (PSOs) on
aspects of quality of life (broadly measured) of citizens at a local level.

D Beltrami

Social activist Faeda Ameri during an interview at the Queen Zein Al Sharaf Institute for Development last week. Ameri is campaigning against alcohol consumption among teenagers in her Jordan Valley village

This report describes activities undertaken in 2008 towards implementation of the New York State child welfare court improvement project grant objectives. Major initiatives that have begun or are in the final planning stages include: support for a reform initiative in the New York City Family Court primarily focused on improving the timeliness of court proceedings in child welfare matters; the development and promulgation of statewide child welfare court data metrics to assess and monitor timeliness of child welfare court case management practices; implementation of a child welfare judicial training program in collaboration with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges; and expansion of "Model Court" best practices to additional courts outside New York City (with an emphasis on the jurisdictions with the largest child welfare caseloads and foster care populations).

J Stevens | LA Times

Luis Pinto takes his boots off at the Salvation Army’s Bell shelter, where he has been taking classes on drug addiction and coping skills since the end of March.

First Nations University (FNU) Indian Social Work students spent 10 days immersed in First Nations culture during the annual culture camp . . . at the Lac La Ronge Indian Band’s (LLRIB) Youth Haven on Bigstone Lake.

In an extract from the book Contemporary Social Evils, Matthew Taylor examines how cultural theory can help us to understand the slide into social pessimism and the credit crunch.

Senior centers are designated as community focal points that not only provide helpful resources to older adults, but serve the entire community with information on aging; support for family caregivers, training professionals and students; and developments of innovative approaches to aging issues. Through their nutrition, fitness and social networking programs, the 700 senior centers in California support successful aging by maintaining older adults’ mental and physical health. In addition, senior centers provide an essential service for our most vulnerable populations in times of emergency and natural disaster. In light of all of the accomplishments senior centers have made in servicing older adults, it was disappointing to uncover such a small number of studies (n = 40) documenting their important service and the quality of research was disheartening.

Z Ardó

Enjoying the summer

To coincide with Gypsy Roma Traveller history month, here we present a gallery of work by photographer and writer Zsuzsanna Ardó which documents her recent time in a Roma community in Harghita County in Transylvania, Romania. Ardó has photographed Roma communities in Hungary, Romania, Italy and the UK, and her exhibition about the Roma in Hungary has been shown at several galleries in India and the UK.

When compared with their higher-income counterparts, on average, parents in low-income Maryland families (that is, those with incomes that are less than twice the official poverty threshold) have less advantageous environments for raising children, and both the parents and their children experience fewer positive outcomes.

When parents separate, grandparents can find themselves cut off from grandchildren with no rights. The law should change

The range of works challenges conventional notions of aging

As hypothesized, the caregiver practice element Parenting/Behavior Management Skills (BPT) predicted the Child Sexual Behavior Inventory (and the Child Behavior Checklist when BPT was combined with caregiver Rules about Sexual Behaviors). In contrast, practice elements that evolved from Adult Sex Offender (ASO) treatments were not significant predictors. BPT and preschool age group provided the best model fit and more strongly predicted outcome than broad treatment type classifications (e.g., Play Therapy or Cognitive Behavior Therapy). Results question current treatments for children with SBP that are based on ASO models of treatment without caregiver involvement.

This analysis uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to assess the effect of ageing and health on the life satisfaction of the oldest old (defined as 75 and older). We observe a U shaped relationship between age and levels of life satisfaction for individuals aged between 16 and approximately 65. Thereafter, life satisfaction declines rapidly and the lowest absolute levels of life satisfaction are recorded for the oldest old. This decline is primarily attributable to low levels of perceived health. Once cohort effects are also controlled for, life satisfaction remains relatively constant across the lifespan.

• Editorial Comment: Your Top 10 List
• Code of Duties or Ideological Club?
• Free speech and special responsibilities of the profession: Response to Adams
• Ethical Decision-Making in Social Work: Exploring Personal and Professional Values
• Highlighting the Role of Cross-Cultural Competence in Ethically Sound Practice
• Workplace Abuse: Roles of the Supervisor and the Supervisee

June 29, 2009

The use of food banks by Canadian families remains at shockingly high levels, with over 700,000 Canadians accessing food banks in March 2008. While this is a lower level than at the peak in 2004, it reflects the fact that food bank use has remained stubbornly high, even in the face of some of the best economic times Canada has witnessed in decades.

Former faculty member at the UCF School of Social Work

AP/File

Under President Nixon and Vice President Ford (shown here during the 1974 State of the Union address), the share of total personal income coming from government soared from 7.6 to 11.9 percent. Now, it stands at 18.0 percent.

This Round-up outlines the challenges and dilemmas that local partners, central government, councillors, staff and communities must resolve if citizens are to have more power and influence over local services and their neighbourhoods.

A review of the literature shows that some of the most vulnerable Americans, low-income seniors, do not participate in benefit programs for which they are eligible. The two major obstacles to enrollment are lack of knowledge about public benefit programs and the complexity of application and enrollment processes. The author identifies several ways of helping low-income elders get the health care they need: simplifying and aligning eligibility rules and enrollment procedures; using a “person-centered,” one-on-one approach to outreach and enrollment; investing in information technology; and providing support for ongoing outreach and enrollment activities.

NIDA scientist Joe Frascella, Ph.D. talks about marijuana.

C Phillips

Ryan Matthews is the 115th person to be exonerated from death row. In 1999, Ryan was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Tommy Vanhoose. In August 2004, seven years after his arrest and after five years on death row, all charges were dropped. DNA evidence presented by Clive Stafford Smith and the Reprieve defence team, conclusively proved that a man called Rondell Love was responsible for the murder.

Pauline, Ryan's mother said: “I had hope, hope was what kept me alive.”

We revisit this debate going over the mortality effects of obesity, using the US Health and Retirement Study. Whilst we find that obesity leads to chronic diseases that reduce length of life, we also find that the obese survive strokes and lung disease more often than the non-obese. A possible explanation is that the obese are under greater medical scrutiny, meaning that lung disease is more quickly diagnosed. This result holds when controlling for smoking and the long-term effects of obesity.

G Turner | Guardian

Single parent Laura Burton and her three-year-old daughter Kaylen at their home in Essex.

Benefit scroungers if they don't have a job, irresponsible if they do - lone parents now face sanctions under proposed back-to-work welfare reforms.

M Hunter

George Kenton who let his nine-year-old son and four-year-old daughter play at a school park unsupervised is furious the government's child welfare agency is now investigating his family.

One in three teens will experience some form of abuse in a dating relationship. Teens who suffer from abusive relationships exhibit increased rates of substance abuse, high-risk sexual behaviors, eating disorders and suicidality. Teen victims are substantially more likely than classmates to bring weapons to school and three times as likely to be involved in a physical fight.

Multiple sclerosis is one of the most common neurological conditions among young adults. An MS specialist nurse explains how to recognise early symptoms and where to get help

• The community psychiatrist in 2008: anachronism, Cinderella or pioneer?
• Direct referrals from social services to community teams for older people with mental illness
• Exploration of in-patient attitudes towards smoking within a large mental health trust
• The quality of internet information on depression for lay people
• Audit of metabolic syndrome in adults prescribed clozapine in community and long-stay in-patient populations
• Comparison of older people with psychosis living in the community and in care homes
• To trust or not to trust? Faith issues in psychopharmacological prescribing
• Five-year follow-up of an evidence-based prescribing intervention
• Psychiatric supervision of student university counsellors: a specialist registrar’s perspective
• A development programme for newly appointed consultants
• Mentalization-based Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Practical Guide

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a term which refers to a large group of lung diseases characterized by obstruction of air flow that interferes with normal breathing. Emphysema and chronic bronchitis are the most important conditions that compose COPD and they frequently coexist.

From left, Rhonda Lipkin of the Public Justice Center, DHR Secretary Brenda Donald, Mitchell Mirviss of Venable and DSS Director Molly McGrath meet after filing the new consent decree.

The median meta-analysis in the review contained k = 19 primary studies with a cumulative N = 9,423 participants. All meta-analyses (11/11) that examined condom use found a statistically significant increase (median effect: OR = 1.34); 9/11 for reducing unprotected sex (median effect: OR = .76); 3/8 for reducing numbers of sexual partners (median effect: OR = .87); 4/6 for reduction of STDs (median effect: OR = .74); and 5/5 for reducing composite sexual risk (median effect: OR = .78).

June 28, 2009

A substantial drop in the abortion rates of teenagers and women aged 20–24 accounts for much of the overall decline from 1989 to 2004. During this period, the abortion rate of women in their 30s changed little, while the rate of women aged 40 or older increased.

M Macleod

Ex-parole officer and social worker turned writer Helen Fitzgerald.

From left to right, Mary Jo Kennedy, Aliya Shain and Jo-Ann Shain.

The incidents took place in 44 states and the District of Columbia and tended to coincide with locations containing significant Jewish populations. The total number of anti-Semitic incidents recorded in 2007 was 1,461. The total number of incidents recorded in 2008 was 1,352 – a decline of approximately 7 percent.

C Phillips

Ryan Matthews is the 115th person to be exonerated from death row. In 1999, Ryan was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Tommy Vanhoose. In August 2004, seven years after his arrest and after five years on death row, all charges were dropped. DNA evidence presented by Clive Stafford Smith and the Reprieve defence team, conclusively proved that a man called Rondell Love was responsible for the murder.

Pauline, Ryan's mother said: “I had hope, hope was what kept me alive.”

Using the 1996, 2001, and 2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this brief examines the likelihood that nonelderly individuals in families with children experience substantial drops in family income and recoveries from such drops. Over 13 percent of families see their incomes fall by half at some point over the course of a year with the lowest- and highest-income families the most likely to experience a substantial income loss. Further, only two in five individuals recover to at least 100 percent of their pre-drop income in the year after the drop.

DPA

Officials in Berlin fear that new attacks between rival biker gangs might lead to the same level of violence that resulted in the 2007 murder of a Hell's Angel at the hands of a Bandido. Here, Hell's Angels members at the 2008 trial.

As pediatric primary health care providers increase appropriate developmental screening and early identification of developmental delays in young children, the weak linkages among providers of services to children and families become increasingly apparent. Young children often fall through the cracks between pediatric primary health care providers and providers of mental health, early intervention, child welfare, and early care and education services.

UNICEF | Degen

Tornike attends courses at the Rustavi Rehabilitation Centre for Children in Conflict with the Law. The centre has led Tornike to gain work experience as a trainee camera operator.

• High-prevalence and high-estimated incidence of HIV infection among new injecting drug users in Estonia: Need for large scale prevention programs
• HIV risks associated with incarceration among injection drug users: implications for prison-based public health strategies
• Assessing and prioritizing the preferences of injecting drug users in needle and syringe exchange service development
• Trends in overweight and obesity among 5–7-year-old White and South Asian children born between 1991 and 1999
• Childhood overweight and obesity: is the gap closing the wrong way?
• Relationship between screen time and metabolic syndrome in adolescents
• Misrepresentation of health risks by mass media

C Ridleyv | BBC/Love Productions

Hardeep Singh Kohli, one of the stars of Famous, Rich and Homeless.

This broadcast is a revision of the training program that was first broadcast in November 1998. It defines domestic violence, provides victim and perpetrator characteristics, and explains why relationships continue.

The authors present a meta-analysis investigating the prevalence of alexithymia in 12 studies encompassing 1,095 individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A large effect size was found associating PTSD with alexithymia. Effect sizes were higher in studies of male combat PTSD samples in comparison with studies of other PTSD samples.

The estimated prevalence of a lifetime diagnosis of TS by parent report was 3.0 per 1,000. A diagnosis of TS was almost three times as likely for boys as girls, twice as likely for persons aged 12--17 years than for those aged 6--11 years, and twice as likely for non-Hispanic white persons than for Hispanic and non-Hispanic black persons.

June 27, 2009

P Ugarte | AFP | Getty

The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM II) program is a data collection program sponsored by the Office of National Drug Control Policy and conducted by Abt Associates Inc. It is a program designed to gather information on drug use and related issues from adult male offenders within 48 hours of arrest. . . . ADAM II continues as a critical source of data for estimating trends in drug use in local areas, understanding the relationship between drugs and crime, and describing drug market activity in the adult male arrestee population.

Senator Rockefeller’s investigation revealed that roughly two-thirds of the health insurance companies in the U.S. have been using a faulty database to determine what the industry calls “usual and customary” reimbursement rates for doctors outside their insurance network. The flawed database is operated by Ingenix, the only commercial source of such data.

2009 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures provides a statistical resource for U.S. data related to Alzheimer’s disease, the most common type of dementia, as well as other dementias. Background and context for interpretation of the data are contained in the Overview. This includes definitions of the types of dementias and a summary of current knowledge about Alzheimer’s disease.

P Sancya | Associated Press

Bernice Brown, arrested after a Medicare fraud investigation, is escorted from Detroit's federal building to a government van. Dozens of such arrests occurred in Miami and Detroit as part of the federal investigation.

Although currently a work-in-progress, when the CIW is fully developed, it will chart and provide unique insights into how Canadians' lives are getting better – or worse – in areas that matter: health, standard of living, quality of the environment, time use, education and skills, community vitality, civic engagement, and arts, culture & recreation.

Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

The H.I.V. testing initiative is carried out under the slogan “The Bronx Knows.”

The study's publication was brought forward following Brandon Muir's death

Both child welfare professionals and the literature identify the importance of the supervisory role in achieving desired service and organizational outcomes. They also stress that historically supervisors have lacked adequate support in executing their myriad responsibilities and serving their several constituent groups. Child welfare supervisors have been pivotal in identifying the need for organizational and practice change as well as evaluating progress toward positive outcomes for children, youth and families.

This handbook is designed to help teachers build personal finance education into schemes of work with key stages 3 and 4 learners. It gives practical help in equipping pupils with a solid understanding of money and all that is associated with it.

Mumps is a viral infection and highly contagious. Dr Rupal Shah explains the symptoms and treatment, and the importance of immunisation

We conducted a systematic review of twelve randomized controlled or comparative trials. Studies were identified through systematic searches in major bibliographical databases. Three studies focused on patients suffering from pain, three on headache, and six on other health problems. The effects found for Internet interventions targeting pain were comparable to the effects found for face-to-face treatments, and the same was true for interventions aimed at headache. The other interventions also showed some effects, although effects differed across target conditions.

• Overweight and Obese Prevalence Rates in African American and Hispanic Children: An Analysis of Data from the 2003–2004 National Survey of Children's Health
• What Comprises Clinical Experience in Recognizing Depression?: The Primary Care Clinician's Perspective
• How Long Does It Take to Assess Literacy Skills in Clinical Practice?
• Primary Care for Women with Intellectual Disabilities
• Clinical Depressive Symptoms and Diabetes in a Binational Border Population
• Acute Psychosis After Bupropion Treatment in a Healthy 28-Year-Old Woman

Japan's premier on Thursday sought to regain the political initiative amid a spate of scandals, party rifts and poor opinion polls, as he announced improved social welfare support.

June 26, 2009

South Yorkshire Police | PA

James Howson was sentenced to a minimum of 22 years in jail

This paper then explores different ways to think about and frame the challenges associated with building and linking policy capabilities. It reviews concepts from the literature on policy-making, policy analysis, and information and organizational decision making. To have productive discussions about the state of the linkages between policy analysis and research and decision-making, and to develop workable strategies to improve them, participants must have a better sense of how policy research and analysis as “information” typically relates to policy and decision-making processes in organizations, and of the conditions under which innovative work flourishes.

"It's obvious that there are many thousands of excellent social workers who are performing small miracles day after day, to whom we as a society owe a great debt of gratitude," said Take a Break editor John Dale. "It is time to report these everyday miracles, to recognise the wonderful good which this profession achieves, to redress the balance and express our many thanks."

The clearest documented impact of parental involvement laws is an increase in the number of minors traveling outside their home states to obtain abortion services in states that do not mandate parental involvement or that have less restrictive laws.

Dawn Robertson and Shannon Willis shot these footage of our homeless neighbors in West LA. Edited by Jesse Sandler 2008

This report summarises the harms of illegal drugs including drug-related crime, community perceptions of drug problems, drug nuisance and the various health consequences that arise from drug abuse.

S Rousseau | Empics

Lisa Arthurworrey, Victoria Climbié's social worker.

Image courtesy of University of California - Davis - Health System

A protein called neuroligin that is implicated in some forms of autism is critical to the construction of a working synapse, locking neurons together like "molecular Velcro."

In 2006-2007, 8.1 percent of the U.S. population aged 12 or older had used an illicit drug in the past month; the percentage was similar in 2005-2006 (8.2 percent). Estimates of past month use of illicit drugs ranged from a low of 5.2 percent in Iowa to a high of 12.5 percent in Rhode Island for all persons aged 12 or older.

KN Thakkar

This photo shows example stimuli from the perspective-taking task. Panel A. Back-facing condition; no perspective transformation is required. Panel B. Front-facing condition; requires imagined self-other transformation.

This CalSWEC research report explores the first two aspects of the Phase II research. It: (a) describes a training, how skill development was measured using instruments and a standardized client (SC); and (b) analyzes how an expert and a novice demonstrated different skills levels.

Efforts to improve the social work service for children in Aberdeen have made encouraging progress, inspectors have said.

Almost a quarter of children in London live in families where nobody has a job, far above the UK-wide figure of 15%, new figures show.

This circular provides advice to health and safety regulators who are involved in the regulation of social care activities. The circular explains the priorities that Local Authority Social Service Departments (LASSDs) and social care providers have with regard to supporting adults and older people who need care and support to live with dignity and independence within the community, whilst ensuring risks are identified and managed.

None of the studies reviewed reached the highest level of quality according to pre-agreed criteria. Regardless of level of quality, effectiveness of both pharmacological and psychosocial/psychological interventions was modest at best and often absent. Accordingly, there is little evidence-based advice that can be offered to people with MS to help manage their fatigue.

Female workforce participation rose dramatically during the 20th century. This episode from a radio program shows attitudes about "career girls" in the 1950s.

June 25, 2009

Every year, millions of high school graduates seek ways to finance the costs of a college education. In the process, they sometimes fall prey to scholarship and financial aid scams. To
help students and their families, on November 1, 2000, Congress passed the College Scholarship
Fraud Prevention Act of 2000 (Act), Pub. L. No. 106-420, 114 Stat. 1867.

Every year, millions of high school graduates seek ways to finance the costs of a college education. In the process, they sometimes fall prey to scholarship and financial aid scams. To
help students and their families, on November 1, 2000, Congress passed the College Scholarship
Fraud Prevention Act of 2000 (Act), Pub. L. No. 106-420, 114 Stat. 1867.

McMan Youth Services has purchased this apartment building in the community of Collingwood.

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we consider how parental education relates to four outcomes in the children's generation: education, lifetime earnings, health, and wealth. By focusing on parents' and children's ranks, we characterize relative mobility in terms of distributions of outcomes and can see patterns that even a relatively disaggregated analysis, like a quintile-based transition matrix, can obscure. Our results show relatively high intergenerational mobility except at extremes, where very low-ranked parents are much more likely to have very low-ranked children and very high-ranked parents are much more likely to have very high-ranked children.

In his 24 years as a social worker, Mr Gilbert Fan has witnessed four downturns and their devastating impact on the lives of his patients and their caregivers. The National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS) medical social worker now fears for those in his care. Recessions make it much harder for those with cancer to retain their jobs.

These documents, which are part of a response to a freedom of information request, relate to the policy process in 2006-07 by which the UK Chief Medical Officers decided to have a single message on alcohol and pregnancy, and what that message should be.

iStockphoto

Eating more vegetables, fruits, nuts, pulses and olive oil, and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol, while not consuming a lot of meat or excessive amounts of alcohol is linked to people living longer.

The IRB system is vulnerable to unethical manipulation, which elevates the risk that experimental products are approved for human subject tests without full and appropriate review. GAO investigators created fictitious companies, used counterfeit documents, and invented a fictitious medical device to investigate three key aspects of the IRB system.

It contains the organisation charts of the institutions, bodies and agencies of the European Union. An identical electronic version, updated every week, can be consulted on the site: http://whoiswho.europa.eu

Holy Cross Archives

Michael Harrington in 1947.

This issue focuses on the pivotal role supervisors play in assuring best practices are implementing in child welfare services. It includes articles that address: common tasks of the supervisor; different functions of a supervisor; how supervisors can boost the morale of workers; support for supervisors; the SOAP (Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan) documentation style for supervisors; supervision and the beginning social worker; cultural competency and group supervision; reflective supervision and the supervisor as change agent; managing situations when the worker is not a good fit; and ethical considerations in supervision.

Dayna Garty

E Kaiser | Canwest News Service

Compassion fatigue is one of the specialties of Devon Tayler, an Edmonton social worker and consultant. She has experienced it and has learned to take care of herself by exercising.

Results We identified 7 themes ('Procedural competence', represented in 85 [97%] checklists; 'Preparation', 65 [74%]; 'Safety', 45 [51%]; 'Communication and working with the patient', 32 [36%]; 'Infection control', 28 [32%]; 'Post-procedural care', 24 [27%]; 'Team working', 13 [15%]) and 37 sub-themes, which encapsulated all identified checklists. Of the sub-themes, 2 were identified after the initial coding framework had been finalised.

• Food security, climate change and heath promotion: opening up the streams not just helping out down stream
• Achieving organizational change: findings from case studies of 20 California healthy cities and communities coalitions
• Great expectations and hard times: developing community indicators in a Healthy Communities Initiative in Canada
• Social and emotional training in Swedish classrooms for the promotion of mental health: results from an effectiveness study in Sweden
• ‘If I don't like it then I can choose what I want’: Welsh school children's accounts of preference for and control over food choice
• A tale of two health literacies: public health and clinical approaches to health literacy
• Prevention programs for body image and eating disorders on University campuses: a review of large, controlled interventions
• Health promotion policy in Canada: lessons forgotten, lessons still to learn

Dawn Robertson and Shannon Willis shot these footage of our homeless neighbors in West LA. Edited by Jesse Sandler 2008

June 24, 2009

An Asian Development bank executive has called for greater Asian integration on environmental and infrastructure matters

Health centers funded through grants under the Health Center Program—managed by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—provide comprehensive primary care services for the medically underserved.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 sought to help laid-off workers retain health insurance and to provide state Medicaid programs with fiscal relief. By paying 65 percent of premiums for COBRA coverage, the bill will help many unemployed purchase insurance, but a significant number will be unable to afford their 35 percent premium share. ARRA's $87 billion in fiscal relief will likewise prevent many Medicaid reductions, but because most of the money is not targeted to the states experiencing the greatest economic harm, those states may not get sufficient help to avoid major health care cutbacks.

Governor Jon S. Corzine today thanked U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for the Obama Administration’s commitment of $286 million for New Jersey’s Children’s Health Insurance Program

D Plunkert

Lithium is cheap and unpatented, so drug companies have little interest in it. Instead, they have made a new generation of mood stabilizers, some more tolerable than lithium, but none more effective.

The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990 (CARE Act) makes federal funds available to assist individuals affected by HIV/AIDS. The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) awards CARE Act funding to grantees that include states, territories, and metropolitan areas.

Spirited May 18 rally in Kenosha, WI to stop Chrysler's plans to close its engine plant there, leaving the work to be done in Mexico. Scenes of demonstration at plant gate, interviews with autoworkers, plus speeches by Kenosha UAW Local 72 President Glenn Stark, and Dennis Williams, UAW Region 4 Director. The autoworkers call upon President Obama to intervene to save their jobs. Produced by Labor Beat.

While we have considerable evidence that donors are more generous if they know their assistance benefits a preferred group, we know little about the demand for such information. To start closing this gap, we study transfers of income to real-world poor people in the context of dictator games. Our dictators can purchase signals about why the recipients are poor. We find that a third of the dictators are willing to pay a dollar to learn more about their recipient. Dictators who devote resources to acquiring information are individuals whose giving is particularly responsive to recipient type. They use the information mainly to withhold resources from “undeserving” types, leading to a drastic decline in aggregate transfers.

D Villella | NY Times

Natasha Frechette, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis two years ago, has continued her job at Navigo Research in Brooklyn Park, Minn., with the help of an understanding boss and supportive colleagues.

The Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) was appointed by . . . the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey as Federal Monitor of the class action lawsuit Charlie and Nadine H. v. Corzine. In this role, CSSP is to assess independently New Jersey's compliance with the goals, principles and outcomes of the Modified Settlement Agreement (MSA) aimed at improving longstanding problems in the State's child welfare system.

FAO says that the global economic crisis is contributing heavily towards hunger, with incomes decreasing and unemployment rising, thus limiting access to food for the poor.

First responders are widely recognized as having extremely dangerous and stressful occupations. They often encounter direct danger in situations that are unsafe, violent, and tragic. Many times, they are expected to manage the injuries of others while under the threat of injury themselves. First responders endure high exposure to traumatic events, stressful work demands, and sometimes extended separation from home and loved ones. As a result of exposure to stressful situations, many first responders develop a host of physical health problems such as heart disease, hypertension, back and knee injuries, hearing loss, and other impairments resulting in total or partial disability.

After her husband died, carol, 73, used cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) to help her deal with her emotions and boost her confidence.

Younger grandparents caring for their grandchildren and their own elderly parents are increasingly being caught in a poverty trap, a charity has said.

• Treating Oppositional Defiant Disorder in Primary Care: A Comparison of Three Models
• Predictor and Moderator Effects in the Treatment of Oppositional Defiant Disorder in Pediatric Primary Care
• A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Mother–Infant or Toddler Parenting Program: Demonstrating Effectiveness in Practice
• Body Size Stigmatization: An Examination of Attitudes of African American Preschool-Age Children Attending Head Start
• Parent and Adolescent Distribution of Responsibility for Diabetes Self-care: Links to Health Outcomes
• Mediators of Depressive Symptoms in Children with Type 1 Diabetes and their Mothers
• Factors Related to Changes in Cognitive, Educational and Visual Motor Integration in Children who Undergo Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant
• A Developmental Perspective on Functional Somatic Symptoms
• Psychosocial Adjustment, Health-Related Quality of Life, and Psychosexual Development of Boys with Hypospadias: A Systematic Review

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS. Information gathered from such meta-analyses could be used in the identification of at-risk children and the development of screening tools. However, further widespread and comprehensive reviews of the potential risk factors and their relationships to psychopathology need to be investigated.

June 23, 2009

Like all sexual activity, oral sex carries some risk of HIV transmission when one partner is known to be infected with HIV, when either partner’s HIV status is not known, and/or when one partner is not monogamous or injects drugs.

A Della Bella | AP

Sodium Pentobarbital, a drug which is used for assisted suicides.

This report examines policy options that could slow growth in health spending, improve health outcomes, and provide additional revenues to finance comprehensive reform. It also illustrates how widely estimates of policy options can vary based on underlying assumptions. The rich menu of options presented here, along with impact estimates, should help policy leaders identify the resources required to make health coverage for all and improved health system performance a reality.

N Stone | Chicago Tribune

Victor Engandela, 85, looks through an old photo album in his room at a long-term care facility. Engandela, who came out as a homosexual years ago, said he feels isolated from his fellow seniors at the center.

JAA Casanova

Our brains get a first impression of people's overriding social signals after seeing their faces for only 100 milliseconds (0.1 seconds).

Although information on methadone-associated overdose deaths is limited, available data suggest that methadone’s growing use for pain management has made more of the drug available, thus contributing to the rise in methadone-associated overdose deaths. Methadone prescriptions for pain management grew from about 531,000 in 1998 to about 4.1 million in 2006—nearly eightfold.

The results indicated that, in 2006, an estimated 1,440 persons aged ≥13 years were newly infected with HIV in Puerto Rico, resulting in an estimated incidence rate of 45.0 cases per 100,000 population, twice the rate for the 50 U.S. states and District of Columbia (DC). Males accounted for 65% of new HIV infections in Puerto Rico, and 38% of new HIV infections occurred among persons aged 30--39 years; 39% of new infections were associated with injection-drug use, and 37% with high-risk heterosexual contact.

iStockphoto

A subway train in New York City. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) subways had the highest average noise levels of all mass transit in New York City, with levels high enough to potentially increase the risk of noise induced hearing loss.

iStockphoto | K Lingbeek- Van Kranen

Poor children in Ethiopia.

To identify the health needs of children entering foster care, all 10 states we studied have adopted policies that specify the timing and scope of children’s health assessments, and some states use designated providers to conduct the assessments. All of the states we selected for study required physical examinations, most states we studied required mental health and developmental screens, and several of them required or recommended substance abuse screens for youth shortly after entry into foster care.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is a growing health crisis among women in the United States. In the early
stages of the epidemic, relatively few women and female adolescents were diagnosed with HIV
infection and AIDS. Today, women, especially women of color, represent an increasing proportion of new diagnoses and deaths.

Science

The increase in green fluorescence represents the imaging of local translation at synapses during long-term synaptic plasticity.

Conclusions. The results showed that caffeine abstinence for a whole day could improve sleep quality. Thus, health practitioners were recommended to include caffeine abstinence in the instructions for sleep hygiene.
Relevance to clinical practice. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of caffeine abstinence in improving sleep quality. It provides evidence for the practice of including caffeine abstinence in sleep hygiene advice.

In California, there had been a long history of anti-Asian sentiment and legislation prior to World War 2. The internment of the West Coast Japanese-origin population was in significant part a reflection of that history. (Locking up the Japanese became part of state attorney general Earl Warren's 1942 campaign for the governorship.)

• Cognitive–behavioural therapy and family intervention for relapse prevention and symptom reduction in psychosis: randomised controlled trial
• Influence of 5-HT2C receptor and leptin gene polymorphisms, smoking and drug treatment on metabolic disturbances in patients with schizophrenia
• Morphology of the corpus callosum at different stages of schizophrenia: cross-sectional study in first-episode and chronic illness
• High-dose and combination antipsychotic prescribing in acute adult wards in the UK: the challenges posed by p.r.n. prescribing
• Hospital care and repetition following self-harm: multicentre comparison of self-poisoning and self-injury
• Changes in male suicides in Scottish prisons: 10-year study
• Out-patient psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder: cost-effectiveness of schema-focused therapy v. transference-focused psychotherapy
• Emotional memory in bipolar disorder
• Neuropsychiatric morbidity in focal epilepsy
• Association of cannabis use with prodromal symptoms of psychosis in adolescence
• Gender differences in the association of mixed anxiety and depression with suicide

June 22, 2009

T Dejak | Associated Press

People wait to enter a job fair in Cleveland in May. Psychologist Celeste Owens suggests that people focus on the positive to get through the tough economy.

Local and regional procurement (LRP)—the purchase of food aid by donors in countries affected by disasters and food crises or in a different country within the same region—has increasingly become a key element in the multilateral food aid response over the past decade.

This study used a robust, replicable method to systematically review the domestic and international evidence base around community empowerment. The aim of the review was to make sense of variable and often competing or contrasting evidence in order to identify which mechanisms empower; in what ways, and in what contexts.

Attempts to ban smoking on psychiatric wards are simply driving the habit underground, a survey suggests.

A sign at the Foundation Church food bank. Food banks have become a common feature in the urban landscape.

Representing rural, urban and suburban districts, state award winners came to listen, share best practices and talk candidly about lessons learned that focused on how they transformed their public schools. While their approaches varied, the end result was the same: improved learning, teaching and achievement for students.

Dawn Robertson and Shannon Willis shot these footage of our homeless neighbors in West LA. Edited by Jesse Sandler 2008

This document provides guidance to local authorities on the Prevent Challenge and Innovation Fund (CIF). The CIF, which is available to all local authorities in England, is a fund of £3.2m set up to support the work of local authorities in preventing violent extremism.

Associated Press

PIONEER Frances Perkins with Representative Theodore A. Peyser, left; President Franklin D. Roosevelt; and Senator Robert F. Wagner. Perkins was a 31-year-old social worker, having tea at a friend’s townhouse on Washington Square in 1911 when they were interrupted by screams and sirens. She rounded the corner and witnessed the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire, in which 146 workers, mostly young Italian and Jewish women, were trapped behind locked doors and died. “What Frances Perkins saw that day started her on her career,” a journalist friend later wrote.

The Department has received a variety of questions from counties regarding meeting the caseworker visit requirements. Following is a list of frequently asked questions and responses.

A Seib | LA Times

Antoinette Levenson kisses her son Jaden, 4, after dropping him and his brother Gavyn, 2, off at Canyon Vista Children’s Center in Chatsworth. The state pays about $1,000 a month for their care while she finishes school.

Professor Christopher Dye explains the role genetics may play in teenage pregnancy. He sums up an identical twin study which revealed "a strong underlying genetic basis to teenage pregnancy."

Conclusion This systematic review found insufficient, contradictory and methodologically flawed evidence on the association between television viewing and video game playing and aggression in children and young people with behavioural and emotional difficulties. If public health advice is to be evidence-based, good quality research is needed.

The guide offers an alphabetized list of curricula and resources in three areas: (1) Marriage and Relationship, (2) Fatherhood and Parenting, and (3) Financial Education.

June 21, 2009

V Salemi | AP

Protestors carry the body of a man shot and killed near a rally in Tehran

Holy Cross Archives

Michael Harrington in 1947.

Glasgow City Council reported in 2007 that there were between 350 and 400 allegations from 159 people complaining of emotional, physical or sexual abuse. Two staff were convicted of physical and sexual abuse, and one of physical abuse, as a result of police investigations. A further case of alleged sexual abuse was not proven. It was not the role of the Inquiry to examine individual allegations of abuse, nor to re-run investigations into whether abuse occurred at Kerelaw. However, to fulfil our remit, it was important to understand the range of allegations made and the nature and scale of abuse.

SWNS

Lynda Barnes, who tried to hire a hitman to kill her ex-husband

The 2009 annual report of Medicare’s trustees underscores the need for system-wide reform of health care financing that will slow the growth of health care costs in both Medicare and the private sector and extend health coverage to the uninsured.

Baltimore Sun | G Sweeney

Jeff Schad of Columbia was laid off from a marketing job. While looking for work and doing some freelance writing, he takes care of daughter Violet, 2, and his stepdaughter.

The NHDR uses the same 220 measures used in the NHQR categorized across four dimensions of quality: effectiveness, patient safety, timeliness, and patient centeredness. This year’s report focuses on the state of health care disparities for a group of 45 core measuresii that represent the most important and scientifically credible measures of health care quality for the Nation, as selected by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) InteragencyWork Group.

F Prouser | Reuters/Corbis

Best known for playing scheming strumpet Atia in BBC drama Rome, Polly Walker is equally formidable as a social worker doggedly investigating a religious cult in the Canadian film Savage Messiah

PW Count

Alexis "Lexie" Agyepong-Glover, the slaying victim.

These checklists are designed to guide conversations in your state-- conversations that will ensure thoughtful implementation of these important education provisions and that will involve representatives from these agencies and entities as well as other stakeholders interested in implementing Fostering Connections and improving education outcomes for children in foster care.

In the mid-1990s, demonstrations and work stoppages by nonunion immigrant drywallers in Southern California ultimately led to a labor agreement with construction contractors.

The current study systematically reviews randomized clinical trials of interventions for dually diagnosed adolescents. Results examining both between-group effect sizes and within group changes indicate the efficacy of several treatment modalities in improving specific aspects of treatment needs but highlight family behavior therapy and individual cognitive problem-solving therapy as showing large effect sizes across externalizing, internalizing, and substance-abuse outcomes in dually diagnosed youth. The study further discusses the complexities of systematically evaluating the currently limited state of research on dually diagnosed youth.

A sheriff has demanded an explanation from social workers after it emerged a criminal had completed virtually none of his community service.

This document provides an example of a local children's services summary profile. The new local children's services summary profiles for each local authority area will be available in June and will be used in the new Comprehensive Area Assessment as well as to arrive at the new Ofsted annual rating of council children's services in 2009.

• Antecedents and Sequelae of Sudden Parental Death in Offspring and Surviving Caregivers
• Infant Television and Video Exposure Associated With Limited Parent-Child Verbal Interactions in Low Socioeconomic Status Households
• The Mental Health of US Adolescents Adopted in Infancy
• The Mediating Role of Partner Communication Skills on HIV/STD–Associated Risk Behaviors in Young African American Females With a History of Sexual Violence
• Longitudinal Risk Factors for Persistent Fatigue in Adolescents
• Local Restaurant Smoking Regulations and the Adolescent Smoking Initiation Process: Results of a Multilevel Contextual Analysis Among Massachusetts Youth
• Identifying, Treating, and Referring Traumatized Children: The Role of Pediatric Providers

June 20, 2009

Inaccurate information can do more than confuse a doctor. It can lead to misinterpreted symptoms, overlooked warning signs, flawed diagnoses and treatments -- potentially endangering a patient's health, even life.

Health insecurity is not confined to one part of the population. It is experienced by all Americans: those without insurance as well as those who risk losing coverage; those who are impoverished as well as those with higher incomes who experience catastrophic costs; those who are sick or injured as well as those who are just one sickness or injury away from financial calamity. As health care costs have skyrocketed and the proportion of Americans with stable benefits has eroded, health insecurity has become a shared American experience, felt by those who thought they had it made as well as those just struggling to get by.

A social work major, Grant has a perfect 4.00 grade point average.

The trustees’ report shows some deterioration in the program’s long run outlook, a finding that was widely expected. Nevertheless, the report does not depict a program in crisis. Policymakers should act sooner rather than later to put the program on a sound long-run footing, but today’s beneficiaries and workers approaching retirement need not fear that their Social Security benefits are at risk.

A crime-ridden favela, or slum, in Rio di Janeiro, which the Brazilian government is beginning to "Afghanize" by applying Canadian strategy for the rebuilding of Afghanistan.

H Flores

Angelo Viola, 79. In his impact statement, Huguenot resident Angelo Viola, 79, describes losing his wife of 58 years last October. "It was a devastating time for me, but there was some comfort in knowing that I was safe and secure in my home," Viola wrote, according to the Boston Globe. Two months later he learned he'd lost his life savings to Madoff.

This report presents the results of a survey that explored how and why people engage in formal volunteering, what they think of their experiences and how and why they give money to charity.

D Sillitoe

Derek Leinster ... at 18, he was still unable to tell the time.

What is disproportionality? Previous analyses have shown that black children are overrepresented in the child welfare system in every state. Native American/American Indian and Alaska Native children are all overrepresented in the jurisdictions in which they reside. Hispanic children are overrepresented in more than 10 states, and their representation in the child welfare system is on the rise.

Annette has had chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as ME, for over 25 years. She talks about how the condition affects her life and the things that have helped her to stay happy

Women are more vulnerable to high health care costs than men. Women’s reproductive health requires more regular contact with health care providers, including yearly pap smears, mammograms, and obstetric care. Women are also more likely to report fair or poor health than men (9.5% versus 9.0%). While rates of chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure are similar to men, women are twice as likely to suffer from headaches and are more likely to experience joint, back or neck pain. These chronic conditions often require regular and frequent treatment and follow-up care.

MPs have challenged the government over its UK-wide child poverty targets, saying there is a "get out" clause. Education is seen as a key route out of poverty.

Of 99 papers identified, only 6 fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Interventions which seek to effect attitudinal and behavioural change through interactive methods such as role-play, video games and group work led to a self-reported reduction in both risk from drugs and sexual activity. The evidence for maintenance of risk reduction over one year remains unclear. Interventions do not appear to promote risky sexual activity in previously sexually inactive participants.

June 19, 2009

Love and money, work and play, mood and math scores. They're just a few things related to a night's rest.

Over the last 10 years the role of Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) in Scottish social housing has increased dramatically. This growth has brought new responsibilities and challenges, particularly in housing statutorily homeless households via the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 and the Homelessness (Scotland) Act 2003. When the subject of RSLs and homelessness is raised, it is usually assumed that this is about section 5 of the 2001 Act, which gave housing associations a duty to accept homelessness referrals from local authorities in particular circumstances.

This working paper reviews the evidence on the impact of the last three economic recessions on the PSA 8 (indicator 2) disadvantaged groups (that is, disabled people, ethnic minorities, lone parents, people aged 50 and over, the 15 per cent lowest qualified, and those living in the most deprived local authority wards), as well as ex-offenders and the self-employed. The review was desk-based and used purposive search strategies. The timescale for the review was short, and consequently it does not claim to be comprehensive.

Moviestore Collection

Pascal Duquenne (right) as Georges, and Daniel Auteuil as Harry in the 1996 film Le Huitième Jour (The Eighth Day). Born in 1970 in Belgium, Duquenne has also appeared in such films as Toto le Héros, Lumière and Company and 2006's The Room

Women in the workforce is the subject of this 1930s video. It starts out on a positive note but then warns of the perils facing country girls seeking jobs in New York City during the Great Depression.

This publication sets out the findings from a survey of parents of disabled children that measured parental experience of services. It provides a baseline for the national performance indicator for the public service agreement on child health and well-being.

E Kaiser | Canwest News Service

Compassion fatigue is one of the specialties of Devon Tayler, an Edmonton social worker and consultant. She has experienced it and has learned to take care of herself by exercising.

This paper, based on years of research and analysis from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, summarizes the problems that low-income individuals face in today's health care system and explores policy opportunities to expand the Medicaid program to cover more of this population as a base for broader health reform efforts.

C HOUSE | LA TIMES

Fitness instructor Doris Dodge-Thews demonstrates a lateral flexion exercise in the pool at 24 Hour Fitness Ocean Ranch Sport Club in Laguna Niguel, California.

National Gallery

A painting created by a young offender at Feltham as part of the National Gallery's Inside Art outreach project.

With over two million youth experiencing at least one night of homelessness each year—and over a hundred thousand more leaving child welfare, juvenile justice, and the child mental health system—America must find increased housing resources for youth living without their parents, or unaccompanied, homeless youth.

Twenty people have been on hunger strike for two days at an immigration centre in Bedfordshire in protest at the standard of medical care.

Conclusions: Immediately following treatment and prior to moderator analyses, effect sizes for all outcomes were in the moderate range (d = 0.45-0.60). Moderator analyses suggest inclusion of home visitors and conducting parent training in both a home and office setting significantly enhanced the effectiveness. In addition, inclusion of a behavioral component and delivering some of the parent training in an individual setting, as opposed to group only, enhanced outcomes significantly.

Poverty has been a major problem in this country during the last several decades. More than 37 million people in the United States live in poverty.

Good data can help generate interest in a problem, point to possible solutions, and track progress. This has proved especially true for west central Minnesota’s RuFES effort because it involves people with many perspectives. Data helped pave the way to common understanding, leading beyond individual perception and anecdotal evidence.

• Cost-Effectiveness of Depression Treatment for Adolescents
• Does Childhood Treatment of ADHD With Stimulant Medication Affect Substance Abuse in Adulthood?
• Psychotherapies and Lasting Change
• Recognizing Each Other and the Effects of Racial Differences
• Cross-Cultural Evaluation of Maternal Competence in a Culturally Diverse Society
• Doubt
• Remission From Depression Comorbid With Chronic Illness and Physical Impairment
• Premorbid IQ in Schizophrenia: A Meta-Analytic Review
• Cost-Effectiveness of Treatments for Adolescent Depression: Results From TADS
• Stimulant Therapy and Risk for Subsequent Substance Use Disorders in Male Adults With ADHD: A Naturalistic Controlled 10-Year Follow-Up Study
• Age of Methylphenidate Treatment Initiation in Children With ADHD and Later Substance Abuse: Prospective Follow-Up Into Adulthood
• A 6-Week Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial of CP-316,311 (a Selective CRH1 Antagonist) in the Treatment of Major Depression
• A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Augmenting Pharmacotherapy in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
• 8-Year Follow-Up of Patients Treated for Borderline Personality Disorder: Mentalization-Based Treatment Versus Treatment as Usual
• The Other-Race Effect in Face Processing Among African American and Caucasian Individuals With Schizophrenia

June 18, 2009

A decade after Abi Grant was sexually assaulted, the police caught her attacker. But her ordeal was far from over

Use our Benefits QuickLINK tool to find the state, federal, and private programs for which you are eligible.

PP Cito | Associated Press

Study after study suggests that alcohol in moderation may promote heart health and even ward off diabetes and dementia. The evidence is so plentiful that some experts consider moderate drinking — about one drink a day for women, about two for men — a central component of a healthy lifestyle. But what if it’s all a big mistake?

Rising health care costs coupled with eroding health care benefits are having a substantial effect on Americans' ability to get needed health care, with women particularly affected. Women experience cost-related access problems and medical bill problems more often than men. In 2007, more than half (52%) of women reported problems accessing needed care because of cost and 45 percent of women accrued medical debt or reported problems with medical bills. Since women use more health care services than men, they are more exposed to the fragmentation and failings of the current health care system—underscoring the need for affordable and high-quality health insurance coverage that is available to all.

N Gamache | CBC

The three victims of the alleged assaults were the only residents of a home run by social workers in Rockland, Ont.

This research examines how the way that mothers talk to their children when they are young might have a lasting effect on children's social skills.

A key part of the Government’s alcohol harm reduction strategy is to monitor changes in drinking habits over time and to identify what factors are potentially contributing to the rising levels of consumption. This study is a systematic review of research relevant to trends in alcohol consumption over the last 20 to 30 years in the UK.

Many gays and lesbians in the US are becoming increasingly disenchanted with President Barack Obama over his perceived lack of action on gay issues. Here, gay rights activists protest outside a Beverly Hills hotel where Obama was attending a party fundraiser

A higher rate of poverty is among several factors contributing to the higher proportion of African American children entering and remaining in foster care. Families living in poverty have greater difficulty accessing housing, mental health, and other services needed to keep families stable and children safely at home. Bias or cultural misunderstandings and distrust between child welfare decision makers and the families they serve are also viewed as contributing to children’s removal from their homes into foster care.

D Pierini

A 23-year-old woman pauses after putting her infant daughter down for a nap at the Crisis Center for South Suburbia in Tinley Park.

C Thomond

Anna Sabba with Connie (normal delivery) and Michele (emergency section).

• Diagnostic Reliability and Sex Offender Civil Commitment Evaluations: A Reply to Wollert (2007)
• Bayesian Computations Protect Sexually Violent Predator Evaluations from the Degrading Effects of Confirmatory Bias and Illusions of Certainty: A Reply to Doren and Levenson (2009)
• Applicability of the New Static-99 Experience Tables in Sexually Violent Predator Risk Assessments

Clinical Associate Professor Ralph Fertig of the USC School of Social Work talks to his class about being a Freedom Rider in the South, sharing a very graphic description of the time he spent in a Selma, Alabama jail.

The framework and guidance set out in this document are for the inspections of outcomes and services for safeguarding children and young people and outcomes and services for looked after children and care leavers that are provided either singly or jointly by local authorities and their partners.

This paper reports a systematic review of 28 evaluations of interventions that aimed to describe the benefits of the use of the life story for nursing-home residents with dementia, particularly with reference to their sense of identity. The 28 studies were published during 1990–2003. The review focuses on the methodology of the evaluations, and on how the studies contributed to our understanding of the value of using a resident's life story in care interactions.

June 17, 2009

S Kenner | Columbia Pictures

PORTRAYING TROUBLES Winona Ryder in the 1999 movie “Girl, Interrupted.”

Access to secure and affordable health insurance is critical for all Americans. In the public debate, children’s coverage has received particular attention and support. But access to health care for parents is a key predictor of access to health care for children. To help inform the national debate on how to improve the health care system, this fact sheet examines current gaps in parents’ access to health coverage, looks at the patchwork of policies that exists across the states, and argues that a national approach is needed.

This interactive side-by-side compares the leading comprehensive reform proposals across a number of key characteristics and plan components. Included in this side-by-side are proposals for moving toward universal coverage that have been put forward by the President and Members of Congress. In an effort to capture the most important proposals, we have included those that have been formally introduced as legislation as well as those that have been offered as principles or in White Paper form. This side-by-side will be regularly updated to reflect changes in the proposals and to incorporate major new proposals as they are announced.

A gang smashed windows at this house in south Belfast

The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA or NRA) was the centerpiece of the early New Deal legislation. It organized industries into quasi-cartels and included codes of conduct regarding marketing, pricing, and labor standards. The codes included minimum wages and a general right to collective bargaining. There was initially much support for the NRA but as this video shows, the support began to fade. In 1935, the Supreme Court declared the Act to be unconstitutional. In the Court's view, NRA overstepped the traditional view that Congress could regulate only interstate commerce (such as railroads that crossed state lines). This view was later overturned by a Supreme Court decision in 1937 upholding the Wagner Act which regulated collective bargaining in more detail than NRA.

This guide has been produced by the SSSC to provide information on sources of funding
and support activities currently available for organisations delivering social services in
Scotland.

F Leonhardt

In this photo, circa 1919, the author's maternal grandparents and their three children smile for the camera.

The U.S. government measures poverty by a narrow income standard that does not include other aspects of economic status, such as material hardship (for example, living in substandard housing) or debt, nor does it consider financial assets (including savings or property). The official poverty measure is a specific dollar amount that varies by family size but is the same across the continental U.S.

The reluctance of men to adopt a healthy lifestyle and visit the doctor may be fuelling a gender gap in cancer cases and deaths, experts say.

Don't drink too much, revellers are urged; don't take drugs, drink plenty of water, wear sun screen when hot and keep your feet dry when wet to avoid trench foot. But this year there is a new warning - to avoid or take care when 'crowd surfing'.

This factsheet provides the most recent national statistical estimates for children and youth in foster care from fiscal year (FY) 2006 and also provides earlier data from FY 2000 to allow for some estimate of trends over time. Data were obtained from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS). AFCARS collects information on all children in foster care for whom State child welfare agencies have responsibility for placement, care, or supervision and on children who are adopted with public child welfare agency involvement.

Conclusions: Preliminary findings suggest medication, alone or with CBT; group therapy with CBT, educational, and transactional analysis components; interpersonal psychotherapy; and CBT produce largest effect sizes in this population among interventions tested.

Philippa has primary lymphoedema, a long-term condition that causes swelling in the legs. She describes how she manages it and doesn't let it stop her doing the things she wants to

This report presents evidence about disability and students of higher education.

M Mitchell

Social Development Ministry chief executive Peter Hughes has confirmed that Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFS) will be the biggest net loser in a proposed restructuring of the ministry announced last month

• Subsequent Risk of Hospitalization for Neuropsychiatric Disorders in Patients With Rheumatic Diseases: A Nationwide Study From Sweden
• Depression Is Associated With Decreased 25-Hydroxyvitamin D and Increased Parathyroid Hormone Levels in Older Adults
• Population-Based Study of First Onset and Chronicity in Major Depressive Disorder
• Breastfeeding and Child Cognitive Development: New Evidence From a Large Randomized Trial
• Cardiac Disease, Depressive Symptoms, and Incident Stroke in an Elderly Population

June 16, 2009

In 2008, for women residents in England and Wales:
- the total number of abortions was 195,296, compared with 198,499 in 2007, a fall of 1.6%
- the age-standardised abortion rate was 18.2 per 1,000 resident women aged 15-44, compared with 18.6 in 2007
- the abortion rate was highest at 36 per 1,000, for women age 19, the same as in 2007

Moving relief maize at an aid distribution center in Somalia

This report summarises the outcomes from the 2008 annual performance assessment (APA) of local authorities’ services for children and young people.

Indian students in Australia have vowed to fight back against a series of callous attacks they have blamed on racists.

He pursued graduate studies at Columbia University, earning a Master's of Social Work in 1947. In 1967, he became one of the first faculty members recruited to the new Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at San Francisco State University, where he devoted his 33-year tenure to making the practice of social work more inclusive of diverse populations.

This guidance has been produced to inform the approach that local authorities and their partners should take to minimise the impact of homelessness on a child in recognition that, while homelessness is a difficult enough experience for adults, there are specific concerns for children. Homelessness can impact on children in a number of ways. Using the framework provided in the guidance to deliver services that are in the best interests of children should prevent homelessness where possible and reduce the impact of being homeless on the child.

For the past 6 years, the NHQR has summarized the state of health care quality. This undertaking is difficult, as no single national health care quality survey collects a standard set of data elements from the same defined population for the same period each year. Rather, data are available from a wide range of sources that focus on different populations and data years.
Despite these limitations, we find that health care quality in America is suboptimal.

L McKenzie

Communities in Schools, a nonprofit organization that assists students and their families in need, may be removed from seven CISD campuses this fall.

In recent years, an increasing number of states and public school districts have elected to provide some form of age-appropriate sex, reproductive health, or family life education to students. Unfortunately, many states’ and school districts’ curricula omit adoption education, including but not limited to the presentation of adoption as a positive outcome of an unplanned pregnancy. This
omission is perplexing given the overwhelmingly favorable attitude the general public holds toward adoption as an outcome of an unplanned pregnancy.

A Fife initative that aims to improve the outcome for vulnerable children and young people has been praised by councillors.

• The Case of Ms. Q: A Demonstration of Integrative Psychotherapy Guided by “Core Clinical Hypotheses”
• A Contribution to Psychotherapy Integration
• Issues in the Development, Practice, Training, and Research of Integrative Therapies
• “A New Therapy for Each Patient”: Integrative Case Formulation and Treatment in the Case of Ms. Q
• Where Does the “Core Clinical Hypotheses” Model Fit Among Models of Integrative Psychotherapy?

Results: No intervention met the criteria of a well established or probably efficacious treatment, as all studies had substantial methodological limitations. Conclusion: These interventions require further testing with well designed, methodologically sound experiments to determine efficacy. Researchers who pursue this controversial topic, however, may experience considerable opposition in obtaining funding and/or forums for dissemination of their findings.

"Kate Brown" looking at a photograph of her children, whom she is to see for less time now she is dying

Adult social care is changing, to put the people who use services at the heart of their own care and support. This requires a different approach from the social care workforce. This At a glance summary presents some ideas about how to successfully change social care services

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was much concern about "the Labor Problem." The fear was that industrial and other workers and unions would foment violent social unrest and promote anarchy. This brief silent video clip illustrates the fear. It uses the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World or "Wobblies") as the villain/threat. (The IWW went into eclipse and did not play much of a role after the 1920s. Its descendents are engaged today in trying to organize some Starbucks facilities.)

June 15, 2009

The U.S. is the only developed country that does not guarantee health coverage for all its citizens, with 46 million uninsured and another 25 million underinsured. Today, the cost of caring for the uninsured is largely borne by those with insurance; providers charge higher prices to patients with private coverage to make up for uncompensated care, and these costs are passed on to consumers in the form of increased premiums. A high-performing health system would guarantee all Americans affordable, quality coverage regardless of age, health status, or medical history. This document outlines policy options for providing affordable health care coverage for all Americans.

M Boster | LA Times

Iraq vet Scott Lowe will graduate from USC with an accounting degree later this year and was hoping to seek an MBA at the university under the new Post-9/11 GI Bill. But the amount the bill pays is tied to tuition at public institutions, and California’s public colleges have long called “fees” what other states term "tuition."

Bloomberg News

A CVS subsidiary offered to send 120,000 letters to doctors promoting Zyprexa - at a charge of $5 per letter.

Looks at why resilience has become the buzz word in social care; it gathers tools and tips for promoting resilience from over 100 services across Barnardo’s; it summarises what makes for good practice in a project that aims to promote resilience – using Barnardo’s Arch Project as an example; and it addresses the sticky issue of how we can measure outcomes.

The brief finds that about one in four of uninsured people in this age range are in poor or fair health, and most have low incomes. It examines the barriers to securing affordable coverage in the current marketplace for uninsured people ages 55 to 65, as well as the potential for a Medicare buy-in to improve the group’s health insurance coverage rate.

Pranic Healing classes through the Golden Light Pranic Healing Center are approved by . . . and the National Association of Social Workers for continuing education credits.

In the mid-1930s Great Depression, the Los Angeles Police Dept. - in the so-called "Bum Blockade - went to various California border crossing points to prevent the "Okies" from reaching the city.

Health care reform has emerged as an issue in the 111th Congress, driven by growing concern about widely discussed problems. Three predominant concerns involve coverage, cost and spending, and quality. Commonly cited figures indicate that more than 45 million people have no insurance, which can limit their access to care and their ability to pay for the care they receive. Costs are rising for nearly everyone, and the country now spends over $2.2 trillion, more than 16% of gross domestic product (GDP), on health care services and products, far more than other industrialized countries.

D Pierini / Chicago Tribune

Illinois social worker Beccah Beushausen’s blog had a vast, loyal following, largely from fellow antiabortion advocates who offered prayers, gifts and other support.

Felicity and Peter Collier. She qualified as a social worker, and worked in Slough with children and families and then as a probation officer and family court welfare officer in Buckinghamshire and Assistant Chief Probation Officer in Oxfordshire.

The purpose of the resource is to raise awareness of this important aspect of community care and to help non-specialists find out more about promoting positive change in this complex field.

The film "Meet John Doe" appears to be based on California pensionite movements such as the Townsend Plan and Ham & Eggs. These involved formation of clubs around the state (and nation in the case of Townsend) to support the movement. Ham & Eggs involved a plan to pay every state resident over age 50 Thirty Dollars Every Thursday. (The plan appeared on the ballot in 1938 and 1939.) There is a vague reference in the film to this notion. Moreover, the suicide theme in the film was based on an actual incident seized on by Ham & Eggs supporters. For more info on California pensionites, see Mitchell, "Pensions, Politics, and the Elderly" (M.E. Sharpe, 2000).

The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic review of domestic and international studies that examine the relationship between economic resources, race and ethnicity, and woman abuse. Findings of these studies are connected to their implications for exchange, feminist and asset-building theories. Lamentably, few studies include race or ethnicity. While the use of divergent measures for economic resources and woman abuse result in mixed findings, one consistent finding is that economic assets are negatively related to woman abuse.

The Government has used the experience of the last 10 years to shape its approach to the health inequalities agenda and develop practical, evidence-based programmes and policies. We are committed to continue this work.

• Pathways to substance-related disorder: a structural model approach exploring the influence of temperament, character, and childhood adversity in a national cohort of prisoners
• Comorbidity of alcohol and substance dependence with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
• Complaints about sleep in trauma patients in an emergency department in respect to alcohol use
• Improving alcohol and tobacco history taking by junior medical officers
• The latent structure of alcohol use disorders: A taxometric analysis of structured interview data obtained from male federal prison inmates
• Gender differences in the efficacy of brief interventions with a stepped care approach in general practice patients with alcohol-related disorders
• Neurobiology and treatment in alcoholism—recent findings regarding lesch's typology of alcohol dependence
• Improvement of knowledge, attitude, and behavior about oral health in a population of alcohol addicted persons
• Hazardous alcohol drinking in the former soviet union: a cross-sectional study of eight countries
• Prevalence and the factors associated with binge drinking, alcohol abuse, and alcohol dependence: a population-based study of chinese adults in Hong Kong
• Association between smoking and the risk of heavy drinking among young women: a prospective study
• Alcohol consumption, abstaining, health utility, and quality of life – a general population survey in Finland

R Stolarik | NY Times

Advocates say the cuts would affect families in after-school programs like the one at the United Talmudical Academy in Brooklyn.

June 14, 2009

Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland | The Bridgeman Art Library

An analysist concluded that Robert Burns experienced extremes of mood

The period covered by the Investigation Committee Inquiry, ‘the relevant period’, is from 1936 to the present. However, the complaints come mostly from a period during which large scale institutionalisation was the norm, which was, in effect, the period between the Cussen Report (1936) and the Kennedy report (1970).

Gay couples pose for photographers a day before their planned wedding in Tel Aviv, Israel. The yearly Gay Pride march in Tel Aviv is scheduled for Friday. The march will end with what is being called Israel's first public, gay wedding ceremony.

This report reviews evidence on the experiences of minority groups in the justice system. It covers access to justice for black and minority groups, gypsies and travellers, refugees and asylum seekers, and minority groups identified by their sexuality.

M Saman | NY Times

Children stepped no dried coca leaves spread over the surface of a football field in the village of Kimbiri Alto

The average annual percentage of any alcohol use among pregnant women was 12.2% (range: 10.2%--16.2%), of binge drinking among pregnant women was 1.9% (range: 0.7%--2.9%), of any alcohol use among nonpregnant women was 53.7% (range: 51.6%--56.3%), and of binge drinking among nonpregnant women was 12.1% (range: 10.8%--13.7%).

Some photographs courtesy AFP and Getty

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Harare, Robert Ndlovu, has told the BBC that there are now at least a million orphans in Zimbabwe - with many facing sexual and physical abuse from their extended families.

According to data provided to NPC Research by the Nurseries, over 600 families participated in the Nursery programs during fiscal year 2005-2006. Relief Nurseries provide core services to high-risk families, and outreach services based on community needs. Core services include therapeutic early childhood services, home visits, parent education classes, respite care, and alcohol and drug recovery support. This report describes the program's history and implementation, and provides an overview of the evaluation.

Barry D. Lebowitz Ph.D., UCSD Department of Medicine, discusses the nature and clinical course of depression. Depression is a disease that is not a natural result of aging. In older people, depression is common, serious, and under appreciated as a source of disability and suffering.

Motivational interviewing (MI), an evidence-based counseling approach, has received much recognition from a wide variety of health care professionals. Because of the rising interest in MI, there is increasing demand for training in this counseling approach. The MI training community has answered this call and as a result placed much emphasis on studying the MI training process. The purpose of this article is to provide a systematic review of the published research on MI training.

• In Focus: Health Care Leaders Seek to Create Healing Environments for Patients, Staff, and the Broader Community
• Case Study: Lowering Health Care Costs Through Energy Efficiency

R Crossley

Deborah Cameron, the Isle of Wight Council’s new interim assistant director of children and young people.

The District of Columbia had the highest percentage of women of any state or state equivalent at 52.7 percent, followed by Maryland (51.6 percent), Rhode Island (51.6 percent), Alabama (51.6 percent) and Mississippi (51.5 percent).

June 13, 2009

Although many low-income parents with small children have basic social needs—including employment, education, and child care—pediatric care providers do not routinely screen parents for them at well-child visits, according to this study of low-income parents and resident providers at a Baltimore pediatric clinic. Providers agree, however, that it is important to screen for and address such needs.

M Melcon | LA Times

Charles C. Lynch.

In 2007, an estimated 16.5 million persons aged 18 or older (7.5 percent of the adult population) experienced at least one major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year, and almost two thirds of those (64.5 percent) had received treatment for depression in the past year. Among adults who received treatment for depression in the past year, 68.8 percent saw or talked to a medical doctor or other health professional about depression and used prescription medication for depression; 24.0 percent saw or talked to a medical doctor or other health professional, but did not use a prescription medication; and 7.1 percent took prescription medication, but did not see or talk with a medical doctor or other professional.

S DUNN | HARTFORD COURANT

Karisma Nieves of Meriden, a Research Assistant at UConn's Center for Health Intervention and Prevention, uses a head-mounted display and trackball to operate a virtual reality simulator in the CHIP Virtual Reality lab.

Sarasota Herald-Tribune | ES LITHERLAND

Jason Waters, who has battled cocaine addiction for three years, is one of the 15 new residents of the facility that treats chronically homeless people with mental illness and substance abuse problems.

- About one-third of adults complied with most-six or more out of nine-of the recommendations. Persons 60 years and older were more likely to have high compliance than those 20-59 years old.
- Persons with higher income were more likely to have high compliance than persons in the lower income categories.

States can play an important role in improving care coordination and case management and strengthening linkages between primary care providers and other child and family service providers to promote and support the healthy development of young children. States can use primary care practice-based strategies, service provider linkage strategies, and systems change and cross-system strategies.

A Mamaroneck High School student displays the stickers being affixed to cases of alcohol.

JJ Steele

The Baltimore Department of Social Service's Molly Mcgrath (right) and the Maryland Department of Human Resources' Brenda Donald (second from right) present an award to the Foster family (their last name is "Foster").

In Britain today, both the public and politicians agree that families matter. Four out of five people say that ‘my family are more important to me than my friends’, and families currently ride high on the policy agendas of both the Labour and the Conservative Parties. One thing that unites everyone in Britain is the need for parents to take more responsibility for their children: 64% of us strongly agree this matters.

• Increasing Psychological Flexibility to Influence Cultural Evolution
• An Experimental Analysis of Cultural Materialism: The Effects of Various Modes of Production on Resource Sharing

S Nishantha

Probation and Child Care Services Commissioner Sarath Abeygunawardena.

- The magnitude of fetal mortality is considerable: About 1 million fetal deaths occur at any gestational age in the United States each year, including almost 26,000 at 20 weeks of gestation or more.
- Even when limited to fetal deaths of 20 weeks of gestation or more, nearly as many fetal deaths as infant deaths occur in the United States each year.

We conducted a systematic review of studies published between 1980 and 2006 on independently standing psychoeducation programs for families with children suffering from mood disorders. Results revealed eight treatment and preventive psychoeducation studies for families of affectively ill children or children at risk for depression. Findings indicate that psychoeducation models typically adopt a workshop approach incorporating didactic teachings and interactive discussion sessions, with or without specific skills training.

June 12, 2009

R Robinson

Michele Kay-Sharman has to inject herself with a plasma-based product twice a week.

When economic conditions deteriorate, greater attention is paid to persons who are without work and seeking jobs—the unemployed. At such times, there is also greater interest in a group of persons who do not meet the official definition of unemployment but who have shown interest in labor force participation.

The study has found no evidence that the global drug problem was reduced during the UNGASS period from 1998 to 2007. For some nations the problem declined but for others it worsened and for some of those it worsened sharply and substantially. The drug problem generally lessened in rich countries and worsened in a few large developing or transitional countries.

Ashley Cousins blames himself for being involved in the crash

John Perry investigates two quite different ways of thinking of ourselves; one, that we express with the first person, that is a special way of considering ourselves; the other, for which we use our name, that allows us to think of ourselves more or less as others do. He explores these two different ways of thinking, and talking, about ourselves, and draws some conclusions about the structure of thought and language.

Synthesizes reports and data from law enforcement and public health officials to evaluate the threat posed by the distribution, diversion, and abuse of controlled prescription drugs in the United States. Non-medical use of prescription drugs (pain relievers, stimulants, tranquilizers, and sedatives) is most prevalent among young adults—individuals aged 18 to 25. From 2003-2007, approximately six percent of this age group reported non-medical prescription drug use in the past month.

M Burford | Dallas Morning News

Jeff Long, 49, one of the 21 men removed from Atalissa bunkhouse in Atalissa, Iowa, now lives in a group care home in Fort Worth, Texas, and works at a Tarrant County sheltered workshop for mentally disabled men and women.

Despite the evidence that poor and low-income children benefit enormously when they attain a college education, they are nonetheless less likely to enroll in either two- or four-year colleges, and less likely to complete a degree once they have enrolled. Although the difference in degree completion can be attributed, in part, to lower levels of academic preparation, even those poor and low-income children with the same level of preparation are significantly less likely to attend and complete college than are their higher-income peers. A body of evidence suggests this is partly because the costs of college attendance put greater pressure on the limited resources of poor families, and partly because these students lack information about colleges and student aid as well as social and scholarly supports while attending college.

C Furlong | Getty Images

Youths outside a house in the Padiham area of Burnley, where the BNP won its first seat on an English county council and already has four district councillors

In this report, the New York State Citizen Review Panels put the spotlight on funding for child welfare, how that funding is used at the local district level to provide key preventive and wrap-around services to help families and to save dollars. We feature home visiting as a proven practice that prevents child abuse and neglect and we have provided a photo essay to illustrate the hard work supervisors and caseworkers do each day.

RC Reed | Hickory Daily Record

Steven Parker, a Hickory High School senior, was recognized nationally when he was named an Outstanding Young Leaders of 2009.

Highland Council is to consider a proposal to create a new service to address youth crime in the region.

• Theoretical Interpretation of Deception: Application to malingering
• Can Preschoolers Resist the Lures of Known and Unknown Perpetrators?: A Preliminary Examination of the Efficacy of a Behavioral Abduction Prevention Program
• Beyond Crime and Punishment: Reconceptualizing the school disciplinary ladder through a PBS model
• School-Wide Systems of Positive Behavior Support: A Framework for Reducing School Crime and Violence
• Promising Directions for the Treatment of Complex Childhood Trauma: The Intergenerational Trauma Treatment Model
• Case Formulation with Sex Offenders: An Illustration of Individualized Risk Assessment

The methodology involved an analysis of findings from 27 published studies of the relationship between leadership and student outcomes. The first meta-analysis, including 22 of the 27 studies, involved a comparison of the effects of transformational and instructional leadership on student outcomes. The second meta-analysis involved a comparison of the effects of five inductively derived sets of leadership practices on student outcomes. Twelve of the studies contributed to this second analysis.

National Indicator 86 is derived from Ofsted inspection judgements data for state funded secondary schools, using the judgement "The behaviour of learners - school level". The National Indicator is based on each eligible school's most recent judgement and therefore differs from Ofsted's published annual data, which include inspections within a given academic year.

Series of videos by the National Urban Indian Family Coalition addressing urban Indian America. This video features Mary Trimble Norris, Executive Director of the American Indian Child Resource Center, discussing Indian Child Welfare.

June 11, 2009

This report from the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System offers recommendations for a comprehensive set of insurance, payment, and system reforms that could guarantee affordable coverage for all by 2012, improve health outcomes, and slow health spending growth by $3 trillion by 2020—if enacted now to start in 2010.

F Clay

Paul Blackburn says he still has nightmares.

A review of the literature shows that some of the most vulnerable Americans, low-income seniors, do not participate in benefit programs for which they are eligible. The two major obstacles to enrollment are lack of knowledge about public benefit programs and the complexity of application and enrollment processes. The author identifies several ways of helping low-income elders get the health care they need: simplifying and aligning eligibility rules and enrollment procedures; using a "person-centered," one-on-one approach to outreach and enrollment; investing in information technology; and providing support for ongoing outreach and enrollment activities.

GSSWSR's Sandy Schram

GSSWSR Ph.D. candidate Linda Houser

Titled Deciding to Discipline: Race, Choice, and Punishment at the Frontlines of Welfare Reform, the article investigates racial disparities in the penalties (or sanctions) applied to individuals who fail to comply with welfare program rules.

C Barnea | Medical Corps

The Californian delegation in discussion with Mental Health Department officers.

Reviews the conceptual understandings underlying integrated care for seniors, examines models of cost-effective care, identifies their features and then ascertains to what extent Canadian provinces are implementing these features.

These tables give information about the characteristics of households receiving general needs social lettings in 2007-08. This presents estimates across the whole social housing sector, covering both housing associations and local authorities.

M Rourke/Associated Press

John Eckert holds hands with wife Dorothy, who has Alzheimer's disease, at their home in Norristown, Pa. The incidence of Alzheimer's will greatly increase in the coming years, experts say.

Child maltreatment, which includes both child abuse and neglect, is a serious problem in the United States. Just over 900,000 children were victims of abuse or neglect in 2006 . . . according to the most recent annual statistical report on child maltreatment from the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF). The ACYF report also notes that children under the age of one are at the highest risk of maltreatment, and that neglect is by far the most common type of maltreatment experienced by children.

Jonathan Spencer is the first in his family to go to college.

- People who have adopted are more likely to be men, to be over 30, to be ever married, to have given birth or fathered a child, and to have ever used infertility services than people who have not adopted.
- Adoptive mothers are older than non-adoptive mothers. Eighty-one percent of adoptive mothers are 35-44 years of age compared with 52% of non-adoptive mothers.

I Dutina

Next month, the American Academy of Pediatrics will publish the new version of an official policy statement on the pediatrician’s role in preventing youth violence. For the first time, it will have a section on bullying — including a recommendation that schools adopt a prevention model developed by Dan Olweus, a research professor of psychology at the University of Bergen, Norway.

This review examined the effectiveness of group psychotherapy for older (55+) adults. Results from 44 studies with pre-post designs and 27 controlled studies indicated that group psychotherapy benefits older adults, with average rs of .42 and .24 for pre-post and controlled designs, respectively. The type of therapy provided and the age of the clients were associated with pretreatment to posttreatment improvement. Clients in cognitive-behavioral group therapy improved more than those receiving reminiscence therapy.

While the social construction of femininity has been widely examined, the dominant role of masculinity has until recently remained largely invisible. Tough Guise is the first educational video geared toward college and high school students to systematically examine the relationship between pop-cultural imagery and the social construction of masculine identities in the U.S. at the dawn of the 21st century.

• Indirect bullying: Predictors of teacher intervention, and outcome of a pilot educational presentation about impact on adolescent mental health
• Partitioning the variance in scores on classroom environment instruments
• Positive Psychology at the movies: Using films to build virtues and character strengths
• Reckless behaviour and ssexual practices of emerging adult women

June 10, 2009

This Commission Staff Working Document provides an analysis of indicators on the social situation and social policies in Europe. These indicators have been developed and agreed in the framework the OMC to enable monitoring of progress towards the common objectives and to facilitate comparisons of best practices.

William Utermohlen’s self-portraits reveal his descent into dememtia over the span of nearly four decades. Left, a self-portrait from 1967.

Illustration: N Lopez | Anatomical Images: B Christie

Are patients swimming in a sea of health information? Or are they drowning in it?

This desk-based research reviews the evidence on the impact of the recessions of the early 1970s, 1980s and 1990s on the PSA 8 (indicator 2) disadvantaged groups (that is, disabled people, ethnic minorities, lone parents, people aged 50 and over, the 15 per cent lowest qualified, and those living in the most deprived local authority wards), ex-offenders and the self-employed. The review draws upon a variety of contemporary sources to identify key trends and findings and proposes some policy recommendations.

Session 3 - Decision Making in Aging. Framing Talk * Brian Knutson, Stanford - Decision making in aging: Emerging insights from affective neuroscience and neuroeconomics Exciting Findings * Natalie Denburg, Iowa - Neural basis of decision making in aging * Mara Mather, USC - Age and sex differences in the effects of stress on decision making * JoNell Strough, West Virginia - No time to waste: Understanding why older adults are less subject to the sunk-cost fallacy * George Loewenstein, Carnegie Mellon - Wanting and liking for sex by gender and age

CBC

Dr. Fiona O'Shea says she was told countless stories of how patients in the province are dying in anguish.

Rising health care costs coupled with eroding health care benefits are having a substantial effect on Americans' ability to get needed health care, with women particularly affected. Women experience cost-related access problems and medical bill problems more often than men. In 2007, more than half (52%) of women reported problems accessing needed care because of cost and 45 percent of women accrued medical debt or reported problems with medical bills.

Poverty measurement with data whose reference period is one year masks family exposure to poverty that only lasts for part of the year. We use quarterly expenditure data and decomposable severity of poverty indexes to quantify consumption-based intra-annual poverty, determine its causes and its response to federal food assistance. Results show that twice as many households are poor for at least one quarter then would be classified as poor with annual consumption data.

JE Robinson

Lindsay Oberman of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center used transcranial magnetic stimulation on John Elder Robison, who has Asperger syndrome.

This study involved a secondary analysis of existing research data to provide information on the extent to which social workers report spending their time on direct activities with children, young people and their families, and on indirectly related activities such as liaising with other professionals or recording information.

John Hemming MP is concerned about adoption law in England. Mr Hemming called for reform of the law saying the legal system handed "all the aces" to social workers.

• Using electronic surveying to assess psychological distress within the UK student population: a multi-site pilot investigation
• Overview of Design Approaches in The Cool Teens CD and Other Computer Programs for Adolescent Anxiety
• Examination of Barriers to Treatment and User Preferences With Computer-based Therapy Using The Cool Teens CD for Adolescent Anxiety
• The Climate Sadness program: an open trial of Internet-based treatment for depression
• A Pilot Trial of ‘Panic Online’ as a Self-Guided Treatment for Panic Disorder
• The Climate Panic program: an open trial of Internet-based treatment for panic disorder
• Development and Perceived Utility and Impact of an Internet Intervention for Insomnia
• Social Anxiety and the Internet: Positive and Negative Effects
• The players’ perspective of Reach Out Central: A therapeutic interactive online game
• Blogging About Trauma: Linguistic Measures of Apparent Recovery
• Can BDI-II and MADRS-S be Transferred to Online Use Without Affecting its Psychometric Properties?

A new report which coincides with Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day reveals that 8.2 percent (2 million) youths aged 12 to 17 experienced at least one major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year. Only about two-fifths (38.9 percent) of these adolescents received treatment during this period according to the report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

There is growing research interest in the association between parental control and child anxiety. Parental control may enhance child anxiety and parents may exert control in anticipation of their child's anxiety-related distress. Moreover, high levels of anxiety in parents could influence the development of parental control. Whereas past reviews have solely examined the relation between child anxiety and parental control, this meta-analysis focuses on the associations between both child and parent anxiety and parental control.

A compelling documentary focusing on the sexual dilemmas young gils face in trying to make choices in a hypersexual society.

Festival-goers at RockNess 2009 have been warned not to take risks with drugs.

June 9, 2009

S Elefant

Hong Kong officials are the latest to come out with a charges that Red Bull drinks tested positive for traces of cocaine.

As of January 2009, 24 states require that women must receive counseling with certain
state-specified information and then wait, usually for 24 hours, before an abortion can be
performed.

The HEI focuses on five main policy criteria: patient non-discrimination, visitation, decision making, cultural competency training and employment policies and benefits. In the Healthcare Equality Index 2009 10 facilities reported LGBT-inclusive policies and practices for every one of the 10 HEI rated criteria.

R Maxwell for Newsweek

Clockwise from top left: Jayna Pangelinan, Desteney Harding, Nathan Berryhill, Schuyler Danielle Farmer, Courtney Harding and Jemonie Williams, Ryan Garrett and Randi Morgan.

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is the most important resource for creating affordable housing in the United States today. The LIHTC database, created by HUD and available to the public since 1997, contains information on nearly 29,225 projects and over 1,670,000 housing units placed in service between 1987 and 2006.

P PAYNE

A warrior gene could make teenagers more likely to join gangs

CBC

Police arrested 14 people and seized 80 kilograms of cocaine over the course of a year-long investigation.

Employers initiated 3,489 mass layoff events in the first quarter of 2009 that resulted in the separation of 558,909 workers from their jobs for at least 31 days, according to preliminary figures released by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This document sets out the Government's response to Lord Laming’s recommendations on child protection. It outlines how all of central Government will work together with local government and front-line services including teachers, teaching assistants, school governors, staff in children’s centres and early years settings, child care workers and other partners working with children to drive forward reform of child protection services across England.

Of the 53,300 individuals convicted at least once in 2007/08 for a crime or relevant offence, 65 per cent had at least one such previous conviction in the previous ten years, while 12 per cent had over ten such previous convictions.

• Bereavement help-seeking following an 'expected' death: a cross-sectional randomised face-to-face population survey
• General practitioners' use and experiences of palliative care services: a survey in south east England
• A randomized, double-blind comparison of OROS® hydromorphone and controlled-release morphine for the control of chronic cancer pain
• Prevalence of distressing symptoms in hospitalised patients on medical wards: A cross-sectional study
• Caregivers' active role in palliative home care – to encourage or to dissuade? A qualitative descriptive study
• An evaluation of Canada's Compassionate Care Benefit from a family caregiver's perspective at end of life
• How useful are systematic reviews for informing palliative care practice? Survey of 25 Cochrane systematic reviews
• Family meetings in palliative care: Multidisciplinary clinical practice guidelines

He said many of them came from large and extremely poor families and their parents had pressurised them to enter congregations because of the social status and life-long security they offered.

When Emily van Sonnenberg was in a wheelchair five years ago after surviving a fatal car crash, she was told she would never walk again. Then a friend gave her a book by Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, which she says changed her life. She adopted Seligman's methods of positive thinking and miraculously was able to walk again.

In terms of reciprocity between self-efficacy and health, evidence from longitudinal studies suggested that self-efficacy determines health-related outcomes, but changes in diagnosis do not predict changes in self-efficacy. Although a lack of experimental studies limits the conclusions, the results indicated that self-efficacy is a powerful predictor of posttraumatic recovery among collective trauma survivors.

June 8, 2009

Medicare is a federal health insurance program for people age 65 and older

C House | LA Times

Welfare-to-work participant Janet Hernandez toils at the nonprofit Pacific Asian Consortium in Los Angeles, which is poised to receive federal stimulus funds. California’s budget crisis threatens the possible federal benefits for L.A. County.

Findings suggested that changes in self-efficacy were not uniform within Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and that the magnitude of benefit associated with increased self-efficacy on outcome was not homogenous across studies. Whether this finding was the result of a measurement artifact, such as different self-efficacy measures, the nature of the samples, or the follow-up interval is not clear. Additional work is necessary to identify the nature of this mediating effect, and to uncover the extent that this effect varies by the kind and severity of substance abuse.

Baltimore Sun | KK Lam

Israel Cason, shown at an anti-violence rally, is a former heroin addict who founded I Can't We Can 13 years ago. The drug treatment program has struggled financially for years, and the city is cutting off its funding because of concerns about its operations.

A report summarising international research evidence on the experiences of adults with mental health problems in the justice system. The review was based on systematic review methods and involved screening 7,890 research abstracts, and fully reviewing 41 studies.

In the controversial book The Welfare State We're In, James Bartholomew argues that the welfare state in Britain has resulted in a generation of badly educated and dependent citizens, leading to lives of deprivation for thousands and undermining the original intent behind its creation in the 1940s. Has the welfare state really led to more harm than good? What does this imply for the ever-expanding welfare state in the United States?

EPI economist Monique Morrissey, along with Emily Garr, look at whether postponing retirement is a viable “fix” for Social Security, since Americans are already working longer into old age. Raising Social Security’s early and normal retirement age would be especially hard on lower-income and minority workers, given large and growing disparities in life expectancy.

Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders

This artwork, by Chen Gershuni, was published in Glimpse, a literary magazine for people with an autism spectrum disorder. It shows how a great attention to detail may underlie art, music, math, and other special talents found in people with such a disorder.

In the context of mental health our ability to master fear is a key part of resilience and being prey to irrational fears is one of the roots of as well as a result of mental illness. If fear levels in the general population are high more people will experience mental illness and particularly the most common mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression and anxiety disorders. Excessive fear poses an enormous burden on our society directly through anxiety related illness, which can be physical as well as mental, and indirectly through inappropriate behaviours such as excessive supervision of children or failure to invest.

AP | R Pedroncelli

Carolina Fuentes and her daughter Katherine, 5, wait for an appointment at the Sacramento county welfare office in Sacramento, Calif., Monday, June 1, 2009. Facing a $24.3 billion state budget deficit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzengger has proposed ending welfare for poor mothers and their children, wiping out health insurance for 1 million children and disbanding care for people with Alzheimer's disease or other disabilities. Fuentes, 22, a newly-single mother , doesn't qualify for benefits having crossed the U.S.-Mexico border as a teenage, applied for cash assistance, food stamps and health coverage of her daughter.

- Childbearing by unmarried women has resumed a steep climb since 2002.
- Births to unmarried women totaled 1,714,643 in 2007, 26% more than in 2002. Nearly 4 in 10 U.S. births were to unmarried women in 2007.
- Birth rates have risen considerably for unmarried women in their twenties and over, while declining or changing little for unmarried teenagers.

Orphaned: Alan Johnson as a child with sister Linda on holiday in Walton-on-the-Naze near Clacton, Essex

• Using Modeling and Vicarious Reinforcement to Increase Client Adherence
• Behavioral Economics of Substance Use: Delay to Reward and Dimensions of Impulsivity
• Choking Phobia in School-aged Children
• Using Graphic and Verbal Feedback with Self-talk and Self-monitoring to Improve High-School Swim Performance
• A Unique Physical Education Curriculum – Supporting Classroom Management
• Naturalistic Observations in Sport and Physical Activity Settings

This report presents statistics on higher education initial participation rates amongst English-domiciled first-time higher education entrants to UK higher education institutions and English, Welsh and Scottish further education colleges who remain in higher education for at least six months.

Conclusion: This systematic review found insufficient, contradictory and methodologically flawed evidence on the association between television viewing and video game playing and aggression in children and young people with behavioural and emotional difficulties. If public health advice is to be evidence-based, good quality research is needed.

Sally Satel, M.D.: Free will is the ability to make a decision about whether to engage in a complex behavior.

June 7, 2009

The success of female students is a global trend

Deposit guarantee schemes (DGSs) have been helping homeless people in Scotland access private rented accommodation since 1992. Many people who are homeless simply need a decent, permanent home with limited support, but lack the funds required to pay landlords a deposit and rent in advance. DGSs offer landlords guarantees and other incentives to accept people who are homeless or vulnerably housed, thus removing a real hurdle for many people who need a roof over their head but are unable to afford the initial outlay.

Agathon Rwasa

Dawn Robertson and Shannon Willis shot these footage of our homeless neighbors in West LA. Edited by Jesse Sandler 2008

The reasons for the reported difference between the two surveys in relation to Households Below Average Income (HBAI) statistics are investigated in detail in this report, which also provides background information that has influenced the decisions on handling of the transition in HBAI.

R Ramey

Eric Marria, volunteer coordinator with Food Gatherers.

T Shopsin

“The Secret Lives of Boys”

A review of safeguarding arrangements in independent schools, non-maintained special schools and boarding schools in England.

About 250 Iraqi school children received supplies.

As an Investigation or Initial Assessment worker, your essential responsibility is to judge child safety. Your job is to determine whether impending danger exists when a case is assigned to you. When you encounter a family, your growing understanding of the family is what results in you being able to confidently justify the existence of any one or more of impending danger threats

The present study marks the first exhaustive meta-analytic investigation of the risk principle and its effects on correctional treatment program effectiveness. The results reveal moderate support for its utility, although the magnitude of the findings are affected by the reporting practices used in the primary studies. Finally, the evidence supporting the risk principle is much stronger for female offenders and young offenders and within programs that are deemed appropriate according to the principles of need and responsivity.

CBS

Eli Lilly & Co. is seeking permission to market its drug Zyprexa to adolescents with schizophrenia and bipolar mania, also called manic depressive disorder.

• The Mental Capacity Act: some implications for black and minority ethnic elders
• Falls risk-prediction tools for hospital inpatients. Time to put them to bed?
• Dysphagia treatment post stroke: a systematic review of randomised controlled trials
• Incidence, preventability and consequences of adverse events in older people: results of a retrospective case-note review
• Fall risk-assessment tools compared with clinical judgment: an evaluation in a rehabilitation ward
• Epidemiology of balance and dizziness in a national population: findings from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing
• Rate of accidental falls in institutionalised older people with and without cognitive impairment halved as a result of a staff-oriented intervention

In the early 20th century, cigar manufacturing workers paid to have a "reader" (El Lector) read to them while they worked from newspapers or literature. This clip explains the practice. Eventually, radios replaced readers as sources of information and entertainment. Economists use the phrase "compensating wage differential" to describe lower pay in exchange for better conditions. Since the workers paid directly for the reader, their take-home pay was effectively reduced by the cost of the reader.

Assembly Bill 629 of the 2007 Nevada Legislature mandated that a performance audit of Nevada’s child welfare agencies be conducted. This legislation was passed in response to documented concerns regarding the appropriate provision of services by the agencies, including inconsistent data and multiple safety issues.

June 6, 2009

AP | R Pedroncelli

Toni Lopez, who suffers from chronic back pain stemming from scoliosis, is seen at her home in Sacramento, Calif. Remember the "shovel-ready" projects lined up for all that stimulus money? It turns out social spending, more than construction, is hitting pay dirt in the huge federal effort to turn the economy around. All along, the public face of the stimulus package has been the worker in a hard hat, getting back on the job to rebuild the nation's infrastructure.

The Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 (‘the Act’) was introduced to protect individuals with incapacity and to provide support for their families and carers in managing and safeguarding the individuals’ welfare and finances. The Act was one of the earliest pieces of legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament.

M Belanger | NY Times

Charles Morin, a psychology professor at Laval University in Quebec, in a study chamber of his sleep clinic.

No one written off takes forward the welfare to work approach by increasing the obligation to work alongside the provision of more services to support the “return to work” process. Organisations from the public, private and voluntary sectors can tender for these services through a commissioning process, similar to that introduced by the DWP for employability services under the flexible New Deal. The Green Paper also suggests that providers could have the “Right to Bid” to deliver specific innovative initiatives for employability.

A homeless person asks for change.

C McAvoy

REACHING OUT TO YOUTH. Amar Sangha (right, with co-presenter Ashley Wolfe) wants to bring his Dosti workshops to Surrey schools this fall, where the South Asian population is as much as 25 percent.

This study examines the living standards of children from households who report low incomes, with a particular focus on whether their parents are employed, self-employed, or out of work. The risk factors for being in income poverty, living standards hardship, or both, are analysed. Longitudinal data is also used to look at the effect of work status, and spells in and out of work, on income poverty and living standards.

M Argles

Fiona Farrell with her son Brett, who is autistic.

The main purpose of the survey is to obtain information that is helpful to all areas of the Braam Settlement related to caregivers’ work with foster children and associated outcomes and action steps. . . . The SESRC completed 1234 interviews over the 16-week calling period. The cooperation rate for the telephone interview was 80%. The overall response rate was 60%; yielding a sample error of ± 2.8%.

Jo was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis four years ago. She explains how it affects her body, her ability to move around and her family life, and where to find support.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention's HIV/AIDS Prevention Research Synthesis Team conducts such research synthesis activities to help improve HIV behavioral prevention efforts. The team's recent systematic review of the literature during 2000 to 2004 identified HIV behavioral interventions with the best scientific evidence of efficacy, called best-evidence behavioral interventions. Challenges still exist, however, for determiningwhich of these interventions should be disseminated and implemented.

The analysis reveals that the five states with the highest per capita gun death rates were Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi, and Nevada. Each of these states had a per capita gun death rate far exceeding the national per capita gun death rate of 10.32 per 100,000 for 2006. Each state has lax gun laws and higher gun ownership rates. By contrast, states with strong gun laws and low rates of gun ownership had far lower rates of firearm-related death. Ranking last in the nation for gun death was Hawaii, followed by Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York.

The court heard the boy and his victim knew each other

June 5, 2009

C Molden | The Times

Lisa Crowley with her mother, Jean, who she cares for at the same time as working full-time.

The Abstract of Statistics is an annual publication produced by Information Directorate of the Department for Work and Pensions. The purpose of the publication is to provide a reference source for people interested in the main aspects of Benefits, Contributions and Indices of Prices and Earnings.

ulsu.files.wordpress.com

A 35 percent jump in Oregon's homeless population is a startling statistic, from a state report that shows most of those without homes are families and the number of homeless school-aged children has almost doubled, to nearly 16,000.

To improve health and safety outcomes - better identification and management of risks to employees and service users - to reduce injury and ill health incidence in care homes.

"Getting Your Foot in the Door; Breaking into Nonprofit Work"

This is the twentieth edition of the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) series. This report presents information on potential living standards as determined by disposable income in 2007/08, changes in income patterns over time and income mobility.

Release

The Nice People Take Drugs ad campaign for drugs policy reform.

This factsheet provides the most recent national statistical estimates for children and youth in foster care from fiscal year (FY) 2006 and also provides earlier data from FY 2000 to allow for some estimate of trends over time. Data were obtained from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS). AFCARS collects information on all children in foster care for whom State child welfare agencies have responsibility for placement, care, or supervision and on children who are adopted with public child welfare agency involvement.

CBC

RCMP Cpl. Darren Anderson, centre, is flanked by Child and Family Services spokesperson Cheryl Oxford and Gus Rozycki, executive director of Bosco Homes, at a news conference in Strathcona County

Child welfare is the most important social concern for Finns, according to a survey released on Tuesday by Tripod Research, a Finnish company.

Staffing levels, as measured by the average number of caseworkers statewide, increased from 3,139 employees in fiscal year 2004 to 4,104 employees in fiscal year 2007, a 31 percent increase. Caseloads for CPS caseworkers who perform investigations significantly decreased from a daily average of 42.8 cases per investigator in fiscal year 2005 to a daily average of 25.3 cases per investigator in fiscal year 2007.

In 1971, President Nixon proposed a national health insurance plan built on heavily employer private coverage. Senator Ted Kennedy proposed what would today be called a single-payer plan. In 1974, the debate had morphed into Nixon vs. Kennedy-Mills vs. Organized labor. Despite the prediction in the second clip shown, the result was stalemate rather than passage in 1974 or 1975.

We conducted a systematic review and meta–analysis to locate, characterize, and summarize effects of behavioral HIV prevention interventions for men who have sex with men (MSM). We found 54 interventions with 16,224 participants that were evaluated in 40 randomized trials and controlled observational studies with independent comparison groups. . . . Behavioral interventions reduce self–reported unprotected sex among MSM.

• Editorial: On ethics and research
• A review of engagement of Indigenous Australians within mental health and substance abuse services
• Solving suicidal problems online: Who turns to the Internet for help?
• Beyond normal grief: A critical reflection on immediate post-death experiences of survivors of suicide
• Research priorities in suicide prevention: A qualitative study of stakeholders' views
• 'Who cares?' An exploratory study of carer needs in adult mental health
• The experience of being a peer outreach volunteer: benefits and challenges
• Development and preliminary evaluation of an employment resource for mental health service consumers, families and carers, and clinicians
• A survey of occupational therapists providing services under the Better Access to Mental Health initiative
• Farm Advisors' reflections on Mental Health First Aid training
• An assessment of family care for people living with schizophrenia in Delta State of Nigeria

Bags of rubbish were found lying about the house

Children’s safety and welfare are key concerns in all countries, with continual efforts being made to improve child welfare and child protection services. Learning is central to these endeavours as the means whereby current problems can be identified in order that future solutions can be sought. But is the current repertoire of learning approaches adequate for the task?

June 4, 2009

- Medium term forecast
- Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit expenditure in by local authority district:
Explanatory notes and tables showing expenditure from 1996/97
- Long term projections

Angus has launched a domestic abuse alarm scheme to protect vulnerable people in the community. The project is designed for those who may be risk of physical harm or abuse from spouses, partners or ex-partners.

K Arvai | Reuters

Members of Jobbik, a far-right Hungarian party which has been using Auschwitz slogans in its attempt to pick up votes.

Poverty has blighted Scotland for generations – and continues to hold too many of our people back from achieving their potential. It is unacceptable that, in Scotland, the wealth of a child’s family should determine their chance of enjoying the kind of positive future that should be their right. It is also unacceptable that, because of a lack of income, older people can be deprived of the right to live in dignity – or that families can be dragged into a cycle of deprivation.

The three-year medical trial will put Canada on the leading edge of international addictions research 'for a population that is in desperate need for alternate health options'

This statistical paper is based upon results from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the period 1991 to 2006. It analyses the movements around the income distribution by individuals between 1991 and 2006 and examines the extent to which individuals persistently experience low income, on both before housing costs (BHC) and after housing costs (AHC) bases. The report also contains tables showing the likelihood for individuals, of making a transition either into or out of low income, and identifies events and characteristics which are associated with the transitions.

Increasing numbers of couples live together and have children without being married. Those who argue for greater protection for financially vulnerable cohabitants invoke evidence that suggests that modern cohabitations are often just like marriages and should be treated as such by law.

R Coler

"You are responsible for almost nothing, you work much less and you spend the whole day with your friends."

This First Look report uses data from the 2007-08 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) to examine a range of issues dealing with school crime and safety, such as the frequency of school crime and violence, disciplinary actions, and school practices related to the prevention and reduction of crime. SSOCS is the primary source of school-level data on crime and safety for NCES.

Miller Photography

School social worker Deborah Valenzuela visits with student Julie Macholz at Waverly Avenue Elementary School in the Sachem school district, Long Island.

There are a number of challenges facing those who set out to conduct systematic reviews of intervention effects in the social sciences. These challenges include formulation of a review problem, gathering data about relevant studies and outcomes, analyzing that data, and interpreting the results. The first challenge, formulating a workable review problem, includes three subchallenges: delimiting interventions, specifying the intervention targets including problems and populations, and choosing outcome measures.

M Eich | NY Times

A GROWING PROBLEM A group session at Maryhaven rehabilitation center in Ohio. The percentage of patients reporting opiates, principally heroin, as their preferred drug grew to 68 percent last year from 38 percent in 2002.

• Evaluation of Berhane Hewan: A Program to Delay Child Marriage in Rural Ethiopia
• Inadequate Use of Prenatal Services Among Brazilian Women: The Role of Maternal Characteristics
• The Influence of Early Sexual Debut and Sexual Violence On Adolescent Pregnancy: A Matched Case-Control Study In Jamaica
• The Relationship of Family Size and Composition To Fertility Desires, Contraceptive Adoption and Method Choice in South Asia
• A Response to Critics of Family Planning Programs

Journalist E. Benjamin Skinner discusses his book A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery. He explains that contrary to popular belief, slavery is still thriving, and describes his experiences coming face to face with slaves and slave traders.

Most treatment providers, researchers, and policymakers now recognize that effective therapeutic services for substance-using pregnant women and mothers need to encompass parenting and relationship issues. Nevertheless, the role of male partners and fathers in the lives of these families remains largely overlooked (Twomey, 2007), and the literature on substance-using parents focuses primarily on mothers.

June 3, 2009

Over the next 3 years a total of 25,000 lone parents in Scotland will be affected by agreed changes in Welfare Benefits. The rationale for the changes is to tackle child poverty through engaging more lone parents in employment. However, we are concerned as to whether the infrastructure in Scotland that will be needed to support lone parents into employment is going to be adequate for the task.

D Neely | Getty

” ‘Death’ and ‘dying’ are words that can echo in a room long after they are said,” writes Dr. Pauline Chen.

Results of a new study provide more evidence that depressive symptoms are an early feature of Parkinson's disease, preceding the characteristic movement problems seen Parkinson's such as tremor and rigid muscles.

- There were a record 216,792 drug seizures by police and HM Revenue and Customs in England and Wales in 2007/081, an increase of 17 per cent on 2006/07, when 186,028 seizures were made.
- The number of drug seizures made has doubled between 2004 and 2007/08. Much of this increase is thought to be associated with the introduction of cannabis warnings (see box one on page five). Seizures of cannabis, in its various forms, have increased from 77,482 in 2004 to 164,888 in 2007/08.

Author Alain de Botton discusses the taboo of sexual relations between coworkers. He draws comparisons between the Catholic Church's stance on sex to the polices found at many places of work. "What the large corporation has to deny is the idea that sex might be more fun than work," says Botton.

Warga | News

John Mattingly's job as city's child welfare commissioner is full of difficult decisions.

M Ralston | Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

In Los Angeles on May 22, health care workers and patients protested the proposed state budget cuts.

This report aims to develop the evidence base on ethnicity and child poverty. The child poverty rates observed for most ethnic minority groups are higher than the national average, and the report asks whether this is due to increased levels of poverty risk factors amongst families from these groups or whether it requires further explanation.

Half of students are hopeful; these students possess numerous ideas and abundant energy for the future. The other half of students are stuck or discouraged, lacking the ideas and energy they need to navigate problems and reach goals. Hope varies little across grade levels.

SPIEGEL ONLINE

The strategy of the Taliban is shockingly simple. They post letters on the schools in the middle of the night, threatening violence to the girls who attend them.

G MONTENEGRO | GGM/HUM/NEWSCOM

A boy sells chewing gum In a street in Mexico City.

• Special Issue: Reaching Out to Families and Overcoming Stigma
• Stigma in Mental Health Care
• Reintegrating Family Therapy Training in Psychiatric Residency Programs: Making the Case
• A Model for Reintegrating Couples and Family Therapy Training in Psychiatric Residency Programs
• The Stigma of Families with Mental Illness
• Family Physicians’ Interventions with Young People in Distress and Their Parents: Managing Confidentiality and Levels of Engagement
• Does Mental Illness Stigma Contribute to Adolescent Standardized Patients’ Discomfort With Simulations of Mental Illness and Adverse Psychosocial Experiences?
• Caregivers as Money Managers for Adults with Severe Mental Illness: How Treatment Providers Can Help
• Family-Oriented Patient Care through the Residency Training Cycle
• How are the Experiences and Needs of Families of Individuals with Mental Illness Reflected in Medical Education Guidelines?
• Overcoming Stigma: Involving Families in Medical Student and Psychiatric Residency Education
• The After-Death Call to Family Members: Academic Perspectives
• Suicide and Stigma: A Review of the Literature and Personal Reflections

Issues related to professional practice standards and research ethics were not well reported. When reported, adherence to practice standards included preintervention training, use of intervention protocols, supervision, and mechanisms for risk management. Research ethics most commonly reported were informed consent, REB/IRB approval, and protection of privacy.

While in recent years there has been some attention paid to the educational performance of children in care, most studies have been limited to snapshots of specific geographic regions. Education data about youth in out-of-home care can substantiate the need for new laws and policies, support targeted funding, increase accountability among state and local agencies, and educate stakeholders regarding the unique needs of this highly vulnerable population.

One of our greatest living social scientists.

June 2, 2009

The 2003 NAAL assessed the English literacy skills of a nationally representative sample of 18,500 U.S. adults (age 16 and older) residing in private households. NAAL is the first national assessment of adult literacy since the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS).

Times | W Martin

TOP ACHIEVER: Anna Ene of Pakuranga is one of Manukau Institute of Technology's 920 recent graduates. It was an emotional moment when she stood donned her black cloak and cap to receive her bachelor of applied social work at a recent graduation ceremony.

This summary presents high level findings from multi-staged qualitative and quantitative research commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). This research, which was carried out in conjunction with the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority (PADA), set out to explore individuals’ attitudes towards planning and saving for later life and included an audience segmentation of people of working age.

J ROBERTSON

Officials claim Miss Pullen lacks the intelligence to cope with the complex medical needs of the child, who was born prematurely P

M Fenton

Chris Atkins, Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom coordinator for the Chattanooga Veterans Center, is helping to launch a new outreach program aimed at recent veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This report summarises the Final Evaluation Report of the Working for Families Fund (WFF) programme from 2004-08. It was carried out by the Employment Research Institute, Napier University, Edinburgh, for the Scottish Government over this period. Over the four years the budget for WFF was £50 million, a total of 25,508 clients were registered, 53% of all clients (13,594) achieved ‗hard‘ outcomes, such as employment, and a further 13% (3,283) achieved other significant outcomes.

The Scottish Executive is developing its national fostering and kinship care strategy. As part of the research for this work it became apparent that an understanding of the benefit system as it applies to kinship care was required. This report aims to describe this, as well as considering related issues that kinship carers may face when attempting to access their benefit entitlement.

Contributed photo

Leonard Gibbs, shown in his office in the Social Work Department at UW-Eau Claire, researched evidence-based practice, which includes guidelines for patients to get the best care from helping professionals and for those professionals to give the best care. Gibbs died of prostate cancer last June at age 64, but his professional contributions to society live on.

PR

'Tabloid feeding frenzy' ... Solace director-general David Clark's blogpost lambasts 'the disgusting spectacle of politicians pillorying the social work profession'.

In June 2006, the New York State Legislature enacted the Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative, which authorizes the implementation of two innovative approaches to help low-income noncustodial parents (nearly all of whom are fathers) to work and pay their child support in full.

Rubina Ali stands outside her shanty

• Scoring and classifying examinees using measurement decision theory
• A Critical Review of Research on Formative Assessments: The Limited Scientific Evidence of the Impact of Formative Assessments in Education
• From Gain Score t to ANCOVA F (and vice versa)
• A comparison of two approaches to correction of restriction of range in correlation analysis
• Using recursive regression to explore nonlinear relationships and interactions: A tutorial applied to a multicultural education study
• Evaluating the collaborative strategic reading intervention: An overview of randomized controlled trial options
• How to Treat Omitted Responses in Rasch Model-Based Equating

Mike Lurie, Director of Media Relations at UMBC talks with Dr. Carlo DiClemente, Professor of Psychology about two of his books: "Changing for Good" and "Addiction and Change."

A Medi+Vend sexual health kiosk

The workplace, where adults spend about one-third of their lives, would seem an ideal place from which to promote health and respond to crisis. This paper employs a systematic statistical review of experimental and quasi-experimental research on workplace-based crisis intervention programs. Nine studies were identified that met inclusion criteria for further analysis. Results suggest that the workplace can be a useful platform from which to provide crisis intervention programs.

With over two million youth experiencing at least one night of homelessness each year—and over a hundred thousand more leaving child welfare, juvenile justice, and the child mental health system—America must find increased housing resources for youth living without their parents, or unaccompanied, homeless youth. The consequences of youth homelessness take their toll in both human and economic dimensions.

June 1, 2009

AP | A Rahi)

A textile worker works at a textile factory in Perundurai about 90 kilometers (56 miles) east of Coimbatore, India. For years, textile jobs helped tens of millions of Indians clamber onto the bottom rungs of the nation's fast-expanding middle class. Now, the global economic meltdown is pushing them and many others back into poverty.

This report reviews developments in health inequalities over the last 10 years across government - from the publication of the Acheson report on health inequalities in November 1998 to the announcement of the post-2010 strategic review of health inequalities in November 2008.

E Murray | Star-Ledger

Drug Court graduate Marian Smith of West Orange with Drug Court Judge Ramona A. Santiago as she receives her certificate today at the Essex County Veterans Courthouse in Newark.

The report considers a range of written and oral evidence from both individuals and organisations. This includes evidence from experienced practitioners as well as from those who are primarily concerned with the theoretical aspects of assessment.

Michael Rabinoff, a psychiatrist and assistant researcher in psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, discusses the importance of the World Health Organization's World No Tobacco Day. In contribution to the day's efforts, Rabinoff, who has performed research on tobacco addiction, will be giving away free copies of his e-book "Toward a Tobacco Free World."

BArch, N 1648 Bild-KD05571 | M Beier

Stroll through Berlin-Lichtenberg: "Frau Z. and Aunt Ursel with the baby carriage (with Nils inside) on the Rosenfelder Ring," writes Manfred of this snapshot from June 1970.

If an aging workforce presents a concern for employers, then how do varying age expectations shape the timing and duration of work within the life span? And how much of a person’s life should be spent working? This issue brief documents the extent to which attitudes toward age and work vary among societies and reveals how gender role expectations further shape these variations.

LGBTQ youth are overrepresented in the homeless youth population, but studies also indicate that this population experiences greater physical and sexual exploitation while homeless than their heterosexual peers. Unfortunately, most U.S. communities lack adequate programs and resources to prevent and end homelessness for LGBTQ youth. Once homeless, LGBTQ youth experience instability, abuse, and exploitation during a critical development stage. Without residential stability, nurtur ance, and opportunities for positive youth development, LGBTQ homeless youth are susceptible to further challenges as adults.

F Miller

Fr Michael Mernagh (the priest who made a protest "walk of atonement" from Cobh to Dublin), holds a copy of the report outside the Conrad Hotel in Dublin last week.

This report examines more than 100 programs through which the federal government spends money on children and calculates the amount spent on children under three. These first time expenditure estimates provide a place to start in gauging the priority the nation places on investing in very young children and in comparing expenditure patterns to researchers’ findings about investments that work.

AP | J Way

Social worker Ana Leon, center, counseling Daniel Corso, far left, Darius Ried, second from the left and Ana Castro, far right and Isabel Flores, second from the right, about their problems with moving to a new school, at Wilton Manors Elementary School. Most of the students stated " not knowing anyone and not having any friends" was one of the hardest thing. Ana Leon says that kids are moving a lot more than before. Either they're moving in with relatives, or their families are moving out of state to find work. She helps counsel these kids, both the ones who are leaving and the new arrivals.

We are all looking for ways to reduce our stress. Would you believe repeating a word or phrase could do the trick? Join Jill Bormann, PhD, as she explains mantram repetition and her research showing this is an effective portable stress buster that can be easily used to calm the body and mind. Mantram is the Sanskrit term for a short, sacred word or phrase that is repeated silently in the mind resulting in stress reduction.

When applied to two controversial social policies (treatment of sexual offenders ; rape prevention programs for college women), cumulative meta-analyses suggested patterns that were not identified by the authors of the individual studies nor by narrative reviews of these content areas.

• A Note From NIDA's Director
• Treating Criminal Offenders: Where Things Stand
• Interventions to Promote Successful Re-Entry Among Drug-Abusing Parolees
• Nutrition Issues in Chronic Drug Users Living With HIV Infection
• Drug Abuse Treatment Beyond Prison Walls
• Recovery-Oriented Care for Drug-Abusing Offenders
• Cocaine May Increase Risk for Cognitive Problems in HIV

The analyses indicate that nearly two-thirds of workers who change jobs (and 27 percent of all older workers) switch occupations. Late-life occupational change is more common among men because women are less likely to continue working if they leave an employer in their fifties. Among those who do change jobs, however, women and men are equally likely to recareer. Defined benefit pension coverage significantly reduces the likelihood that older workers change jobs. When other factors are controlled for, retirees who take new jobs are nearly twice as likely to move into new occupations as reemployed workers who had been laid off.

AP | VJ Petti III

David Hart posing outside the Springs Rescue Mission, a charity whose programs include substance-abuse counseling for drug-addicted homeless men. Hart, 49, said he had been abusing drugs since he was 14, but hopes treatment he started in January at the rescue mission will help him break the addiction.

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