Category Archives: Grey Literature

Two decades ago, a person diagnosed with HIV infection confronted the very real possibility of death within a few years, if not sooner. The transformation of HIV from a terminal condition to a chronic, albeit manageable, ailment is largely the result of increasingly efficacious anti-retroviral therapy (ART). ART’s efficacy has manifested in the “graying” of the HIV epidemic. Indeed, by 2015, 50 percent of persons living with HIV/AIDS in the United States are expected to be ≥ 50 years of …

Interest in the quality of provider-family relationships in early care and education (ECE) settings has sharpened the focus on defining and measuring elements of these relationships across settings for program improvement purposes. In this brief, authors examine the alignment of research-based elements of family-provider partnerships with professional and performance standards from three national ECE organizations as well as selected professional competencies and Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) family partnership indicators from two states. The purpose is to inform the …

The Government’s CANparent trial of universal parenting classes (2012-14) operates in four areas. It seeks to stimulate the development of a commercial market in high quality, stigma-free parenting classes to enhance the skills and confidence of mothers and fathers2 . In three of the areas, Camden, Middlesbrough and High Peak, the use of vouchers is being used to support this aim. Mothers and fathers of 0-5s3 who live in these areas are eligible for a free voucher entitling them to …

We surveyed a representa-ve sample of 2,244 online adults aged 16-75 in Great Britain, including 394 people in Scotland and 106 in Wales.

UK

Summary: Report warning that most local authorities are unaware exactly how many children on their ‘in need’ registers are affected by the benefit cap. Analyses responses from Freedom of Information requests made to 212 local authorities regarding their understanding of how the cap will affect vulnerable children. Finds that an estimated 175,000 children are affected by the benefit cap and 378,000 children are classed as ‘in need’. Suggests that vulnerable families affected by housing benefits cuts face homelessness or forced …

There is much rhetoric concerning the need for collaboration and partnership both from policy makers and those within the sector who see the social enterprise model as being more collaborative than the private sector. However, there is limited understanding of the processes by which trust is built up and maintained in these contexts. The paper examines the relationships between commissioners and providers, users/beneficiaries/customers (vertical relationships) and relationships between providers (horizontal relationships). The paper will go beyond assumptions concerning how organisations …

Corporate Author: Great Britain. Department of Health

Canada Sixteen youth from North and West End Winnipeg were given an important assignment: tell the stories of their neighbourhoods to the rest of Winnipeg for this year’s State of the Inner City Report. The CCPA’s Manitoba office worked with two youth-serving organizations on this photovoice research project. Photovoice is a research approach whereby the subjects of the research become the researchers. The youth received photography training and wrote accompanying narratives to the images. Over seven weekly meetings, the youth …

Subjects: Children and Young People; Families; Poverty Alleviation Welfare Benefits and Financial Inclusion

Strengthening Families, Healthy Marriage & Responsible Fatherhood

UK Centre for Mental Health (London, England) Subjects: Children and young people with mental health problems; Housing and Homelessness

Achieving law reform to prohibit corporal punishment of children marks a turning point in a state’s relationship with its youngest citizens. It signals a recognition of children as human beings, respect for their rights, a commitment to fostering their growth and development in a violence-free environment and a vision of a society based on the premise that conflict can be resolved peacefully. Yet which of us would not claim that we already hold such views? Why is it that prohibiting …

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Between 1994 and 2008, social-assistance usage rates across Canada fell at a remarkable rate, with the fraction of the non-elderly population drawing social assistance dropping by half over the 14-year period. Because social assistance can be considered the final layer of the public social safety net — designed to catch those people in need of support but unable to find it from family, friends or non-government agencies — such a dramatic decline in social-assistance usage deserves attention and explanation. Is …

This study examines the cost and the distributional impact of three income splitting scenarios: pension income splitting; income splitting for families with children under 18, as the Conservatives have pledged; and income splitting for all families. The study finds that the impact of income splitting in all scenarios is very unequal and the lost revenue for Canadian governments would be substantial.

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Canada

Reducing youth exposure to alcohol advertising on public property is an important goal for policy action. Local governments bear the brunt of alcohol-related public health and safety costs that far exceed revenue generated by alcohol advertising. Exposure to alcohol ads influences youth to start drinking earlier and to drink more, and leads to alcohol-related problems later in life. Alcohol advertising bans can significantly reduce youth exposure to alcohol advertising. Alcohol Justice surveyed alcohol advertising policies of 32 major metropolitan transit …

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This logic model was developed as part of the Descriptive Study of the ELMC Initiative. In September 2010, the Office of Head Start (OHS), in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF), awarded 17-month Early Learning Mentor Coach (ELMC) grants to 131 Head Start (HS) grantees. Contractors conducted a descriptive study of the ELMC initiative, detailing the coaching approaches HS grantees used in their programs. A key task of the ELMC project was …

Steve Griffiths explains why the changes to Incapacity Benefit and the introduction of ESA simply further institutionalise an unjust system, one that has seen more than half a million people wrongly deprived of Incapacity Benefit.

This important report from the Health Services Management Centre at the University of Birmingham was commissioned by Birmingham City Council Adults and Communities to guide the Council’s thinking on the potential for a new adult social care ‘offer’ to local people. This was based on a review of Council websites (to see how other local authorities frame what they do for local people) as well as interviews with a series of leading national stakeholders and good practice examples

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive and up-to-date snapshot of the most important postsecondary education and labor market outcomes in the United States using two nationally representative sources of data: the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS). We find that postsecondary educational attainment has risen modestly among young Americans over the past two decades, with greater gains in bachelor of arts (BA) attainment in the 1990s and in certificate and associate …

The study presented in this report describes the objectives, activities, approaches, strategies, and other aspects of the Early Learning Mentor Coach (ELMC) initiative from the perspectives of HS grantees, coaches, and staff. In October 2010, the funds to support the ELMC initiative were distributed to 130 grantees in 42 states and the District of Columbia for a seventeen month period. Grantees used the funds to hire coaches to provide on-the-job guidance, training, mentoring and technical assistance to HS staff. The …

UK ONS will continue to publish and provide commentary on police recorded crime data pending consultation with users about their needs for such data in the light of the forthcoming inspection of data integrity being carried out by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC). Further information on the interpretation of recorded crime data is provided in the User Guide. This chapter presents findings from the 2012/13 CSEW self-completion module on intimate violence which is asked of adults aged 16 to …

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Results: Results indicate that higher-priced fruits and vegetables are associated with higher standardized measures of children’s BMI. This relationship is driven by fresh (vs. frozen or canned) fruits and vegetables. In the FE models, higher-priced soft drinks are associated with a lower likelihood of being overweight, and surprisingly, higher fast food prices are associated with a greater likelihood of being overweight. Food prices are largely unassociated with children’s food consumption. There is limited evidence that food stamp receipt mitigates the …

Introduction The internet poses new risks to children and presents new challenges for those working to protect them. In these case reviews, children died or were seriously injured in the following ways: suicide following cyber bullying online grooming leading to sexual abuse and exploitation vulnerable parents targeted by abusive adults via dating websites and social networking sites children sexually abused in order to share images of child sexual abuse online.

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Canada

While Saskatchewan’s economy has outperformed the rest of the country for the past few years, many underserved groups have not benefitted from the province’s economic expansion. The adoption of a Living Wage by Saskatchewan municipalities and employers would offer a chance to more equally share the benefits of a booming economy. The income security derived from the Living Wage benefits not only workers, but their families as well, improving health and child development outcomes. Moreover, the Living Wage can be …

Action for Global Health (AfGH) and Countdown 2015 Europe are cross-European networks engaged in the post-2015 debate on global health. Countdown 2015 Europe has a specific focus on SRHR in developing countries, whilst AfGH is cross-sector and promotes UHC as a key instrument to achieve the universal right to health.

This report, published on behalf of the Campaign for a Fair Society, summarises the impact of the UK Government’s cuts programme. It demonstrates how the cuts target people in poverty and disabled people

In this paper we will briefly review recent trends in employment outcomes for disadvantaged youth, focusing specifically on those who have become “disconnected” from school and the labor market, and why these trends have occurred. We then review a range of policy prescriptions that might improve those outcomes. These policies include: 1) Efforts to enhance education and employment outcomes, both among in-school youth who are at risk of dropping out and becoming disconnected as well as out-of-school youth who have …

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From: Electronic Cigarettes

This new policy paper from the University of Birmingham’s Health Services Management Centre argues that the NHS has become too dominated by quantitative and medically orientated notions of what constitutes valid evidence, and suggests there needs to be a shift in focus from services to outcomes

Data from a recently-completed experimental program for out-of-work welfare recipients in Texas are used to examine the effects of a time-limited financial incentive coupled with post-employment services on recipients’ rates of entering and leaving employment. While there is strong evidence that such programs can increase overall employment, the crucial question of how these increases arise is not well-understood. This paper presents a rigorous analysis of employment entry and exit effects, using a fully-specified dynamic model of employment duration that accounts …

The INQUIRE Toolkit grows out of the growing awareness of the importance of collecting data related to early care and education. The Quality Initiatives Research and Evaluation Consortium (INQUIRE) Data Work Group was convened to address a request from stakeholders for information on building an effective data infrastructure to support activities including monitoring, continuous program improvement, reporting, validation and evaluation in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) and other quality initiatives. The INQUIRE Data Toolkit was designed to provide tools …

In this important paper Kaliya Franklin carefully analyses how it is government policy that has undermined the objectivity of the medical assessments used by the private medical firm Atos. While Atos have been the primarily been blamed for the high numbers of successful appeals against their assessments, Kaliya explains that the real cause of the problem probably lies in the system used by the DWP to manage its contract with Atos. There seems to be no evidence that the norms …

There has been considerable growth in the number of emergency department (ED) visits in the United States over the past two decades, with nearly a quarter of these visits by children.1 Many have expressed concerns about the capability of adult-focused EDs to meet the needs of children, as these EDs may have limited pediatric-focused staff and equipment. 2 Given concerns that the problems faced by children in the current ED system are distinct from those of adults, some national experts …

This report describes the first year of activities of the 14 tribes and tribal organizations who in 2011 received demonstration grants from the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) for Coordination of Tribal TANF and Child Welfare Services to Tribal Families at Risk of Child Abuse or Neglect. The overarching goal of the Study of Coordination of Tribal TANF and Child Welfare Services is to document the way in which the tribal grantees are creating and adapting culturally relevant and appropriate …

This paper systematically reviews the work on the antipoverty effect of SNAP using administrative and survey data. We found the antipoverty effects are even larger than those found in Census Bureau estimates if one adjusts for underreporting. Using re-weighting methods to benchmark the CPS to administrative data, the antipoverty effects are then almost again as large as without them. With underreporting adjustments, and depending on the poverty measure being considered, SNAP reduces poverty by 14 to 16 percent. We conclude …

This study uses data from the 2005 and 2007 Citizenship Survey to map broad differences in levels of volunteering and social capital between ninety different types of place in England, characterised by their regional location and level of deprivation. A measure of social capital in each type of place is constructed using a multivariate multilevel statistical model and the association with rates of volunteering is then examined. The results show a positive association at the area level between the level …

Australia Abstract: This paper analyzes the relationship between individuals’ locus of control and their savings behavior, i.e. wealth accumulation, savings rates, and portfolio choices. Locus of control is a psychological concept that captures individuals’ beliefs about the controllability of life events and is a key component of self-control. We find that households with an internal reference person save more both in terms of levels and as a percentage of their permanent incomes. Although the locus-of-control gap in savings rates is …

1 in 7 Americans received assistance from SNAP in FY2012, which is a rate 141 percent higher than in FY2000, but only 59 percent higher than in FY1980. In this chapter I describe the socioeconomic and policy climate in recent decades that had bearing on SNAP participation, along with a formal empirical analysis of those determinants and detailed simulations of the relative contributions of the economy, policy, and demographics to changes in SNAP participation over time. The results suggest that …

Canada (Vancouver) A year and a half after the release of an exhaustive and damning report on the state of seniors care by the province’s Ombudsperson, the BC government has largely failed to make meaningful improvements.

SPH was commissioned by the Department of Health to evaluate a new Child and Adolescent Harmful Behaviour Service (CAHBS) for young people where there are concerns in relation to sexually harmful behaviours. The evaluation included analysis of the CAHBS activity database and interviews with key stakeholders, including staff making referrals to the service, senior managers and the families and carers of service users.

Here are the facts: One in three local law enforcement agencies in 2010 reported youth gang problems in their jurisdiction.[1] In a 2010 national survey, 45 percent of high school students and 35 percent of middle-schoolers said that there were gangs — or students who considered themselves part of a gang — in their school.[2] Nearly one in 12 youth said they belonged to a gang at some point during their teenage years