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**Children, Youth & Families
Basic Facts about Low-Income Children
in the United States
According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, after a decade of decline,
the proportion of low-income families is rising again and millions of children
of low-income parents find themselves without the basics, despite a majority of
them living in households with working parents. More than one-third of children
in the United
States
(approximately 27 million children) live in low-income families and 17 percent
(more than 11 million) live in poor families. Young children are
disproportionably affected.
http://www.nccp.org/pub_lic05.html
One American Child or Teen
Killed by Gunfire Nearly Every 3 Hours
The Children’s Defense Fund
highlights that the death toll from gunfire in the United States included 2,867 children and teens in 2002 — nearly
eight deaths a day and 55 a week.
Firearms are the second leading cause of death among 10- to 19-year
olds, second only to motor vehicle accidents. There were 71 victims under 5
years old. From 1979 through 2002, a total of 95,761 children and teens were
killed by firearms in America.
http://www.childrensdefense.org/pressreleases/050131.asp
Memo to the White House: Re-Connecting
Our Youth from a Coalition of Voices from the Field.
According
to the Center for Law and Social Policy, as President Bush prepares for his
second term, he has indicated a strong interest in reforming the nation’s
secondary schools to ensure that every high school student graduates with
proficiencies that will enable them to succeed. This memo, coordinated by The
Campaign for Youth, was sent to President Bush. It offers a set of
recommendations endorsed by over 200 organizations concerned about the future
of struggling students--those who are at risk of dropping out as well as those
who already have.
PDF: http://www.clasp.org/publications/youth_wh_memo.pdf
Marriage
and the TANF Rules: A Discussion Paper
According to the Center for
Law and Social Policy , from the “Marriage Plus”
perspective, two goals should be paramount in designing public benefits
programs from a family structure perspective. First, the state should seek to
develop rules that do not discourage marriage. Second, these rules should not
disadvantage children who live in single-parent families. This paper explores
the issues that arise in pursuing these goals. For purposes of analysis, the
authors consider only the rules for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
block grant.
PDF: http://www.clasp.org/publications/2_parent_tanf_rules.pdf
**Community Development
Public Housing
Reform and Voucher Success: Progress and Challenges
Seven years after passage, an
analysis from the Urban Institute reviews the federal Quality Housing and Work
Responsibility Act and its wide-ranging effort to overhaul America's public housing and rental voucher programs.
http://www.brookings.org/metro/pubs/20050124_solomon.htm
HUD Issues New
Guidelines to Promote Greater Housing access for Families with Disabilities
The U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development issued new guidelines to public housing
authorities (PHAs) that identify ways they can better
assist individuals with disabilities or families who have a disabled member in
their search for accessible housing under the Housing Choice Vouchers program,
formerly known as Section 8. The notice
gives PHAs suggestions and information on how to
administer their Housing Choice Vouchers programs that will help families with
a disabled member find decent, accessible housing, including the following
http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr05-012.cfm
**Economic Security
Low-income Families in the District
of Columbia: Results from the Family Resource Simulator
National Center for Children in Poverty’s newest Family Resource
Simulator and companion report is specific to the District of Columbia and was developed in collaboration with the DC Fiscal
Policy Institute (www.dcfpi.org). Simulator users can track the point at which
increased earnings fail to provide a DC family with additional resources
because they lose eligibility for assistance. The report illustrates whether DC
and federal policies reward or discourage work for two hypothetical District
families.
http://www.nccp.org/pub_frs05h.html
Administration Expected To
Propose New Budget Rule That Could Adversely Affect Social Security, Medicare,
SSI, Veterans' Disability, and Other Programs
According to the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities, the Administration’s forthcoming budget is likely to propose a
new budget rule that would affect Social Security, Medicare, veterans’
disability compensation, the Supplemental Security Income program for the
elderly and disabled poor, health and retirement programs for federal civilian
and military personnel, and ultimately Medicaid and some other
entitlements. The new rule was proposed
in the Administration’s budget last year but was not considered by Congress. It
is expected to be proposed again this year and may receive significant
Congressional consideration this time around.
http://www.cbpp.org/2-1-05bud.htm
Smoking Hurts Wealth as
Well as Health, Study Suggests
A new study from Ohio State University suggests that typical non-smokers' net worth is
roughly 50 percent higher than that of light smokers and about twice the level
of that of heavy smokers. That wealth
gap grows by about $410, or 4 percent, each year that a person continues to
smoke.
http://www.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20050202.105520&time=12%2019%20PST&year=2005&public=1
**Health
Supportive Relationships
more Protective against Major Depression for Women
Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have found that women who feel more loved
and supported by their friends, relatives and children are less at risk for
major depression than men, suggesting important gender differences in the
pathways leading to depression. In the February issue of the American Journal
of Psychiatry, the VCU researchers report that among approximately 1,000 adult,
opposite-sex, fraternal twin pairs, the female twins reported significantly
higher levels of global social support than their twin brothers.
http://www.vcu.edu/uns/Releases/2005/feb/020105.html
Illness and Medical Bills
Cause half of all Bankruptcies
According to a story
published as a Web exclusive by the journal Health Affairs Medical, problems
contributed to about half of all bankruptcies, involving 700,000 households in
2001. Families with children were especially
hard hit-about 700,000 children lived in families that declared bankruptcy in
the aftermath of serious medical problems. Another 600,000 spouses, elderly
parents and other dependents brought the total number of people directly
affected by medical bankruptcies to more than 2 million annually.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-02/hms-iam012605.php
Medicaid and SCHIP
Protected Insurance Coverage for Millions of Low-Income Americans
According to the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities, data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that the ranks of
uninsured Americans have grown substantially since 2000. It is less commonly
known, however, that the number of those uninsured would have been millions
higher had it not been for enrollment growth in Medicaid and its sister
program, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). In
response to the twin challenges of an economic downturn and a sharp drop-off in
private health insurance, Medicaid and SCHIP covered more people and helped
them maintain health insurance coverage.
http://www.cbpp.org/1-31-05health.htm
More Homeless Mentally Ill
than Expected, Interventions Urged
According to new research by
investigators at the UCSD School of Medicine the prevalence of homelessness in
persons with serious mental illness is 15 percent, a higher percentage than
suggested in previous studies. Published
in the February 2005 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, the study
noted that homelessness in this population might potentially be reduced or
prevented with substance abuse treatment and help in obtaining public-funded
health benefits (Medicaid, or MediCal in California).
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-02/uoc--mhm012505.php
Nonprofit Management
Nonprofit Child and Youth
Service Providers Showed Signs of Fiscal Stress before 9/11
According to The Urban Institute, community-based
nonprofits play important and tangible roles in the lives of children in the United States. But many of these groups currently face financial
and administrative challenges that are rooted in the economic downturn, policy
shifts, and the increase in public reticence toward charities that followed the
terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. This brief uses the D.C. metropolitan region as a
case study to assess the fiscal health of nonprofits in 2000, and finds that
many providers were poorly positioned financially to absorb the social and
economic shocks that followed the events of 9/11.
http://www.urban.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&NavMenuID=3&Template=/TaggedContent/ViewPublication.cfm&PublicationID=9154
Stanford Business
School Offers New Executive Program for Philanthropy Leaders
Stanford University's Graduate School of Business will offer a new
executive education course geared exclusively for leaders of grant making
organizations - a program that is the first of its kind at a business school.
The six-day Executive Program in Philanthropy will run July 31 through August 5, 2005. The application deadline is May 15. http://www.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20050201.104630&time=11%2001%20PST&year=2005&public=1
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