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**Children, Youth &
Families
Early-intervention
Prevents Child Abuse and Crime, Promotes Health
According
to the Department of Health and Human Services, more children under the age of
five die from child abuse and neglect than from any other single cause of death
for infants and young children. A
money-saving, early intervention program from the Nurse-Family Partnership reduces child abuse and neglect by 79
percent. For more than 25 years, the
Nurse-Family Partnership has trained nurses to make home visits with
low-income, first-time mothers from early pregnancy through the child's second
birthday. Experts call this time a rare "teachable moment," a window
during pregnancy when the desire to be a good mother -- and raise a healthy,
happy child -- creates motivation to overcome incredible obstacles including
poverty, instability or abuse, with the help of well-trained nurses.
http://www.rwjf.org/news/releaseDetail.jsp?id=1077658751543
Deficits
Associated with Prenatal Alcohol Exposure can be Seen as Early as Infancy
A new study, published in the
March issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, examines
different components of attention through use of heart-rate data collected from
six-month-old infants whose mothers drank during pregnancy. The findings
indicate that slower processing speeds and arousal-regulation problems exist as
early as infancy. Alcohol-exposed babies
respond more slowly to their environment, and take longer to calm down.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-03/ace-daw030804.php
Government
Spending on Children
A study from the Brookings
Institution of five economically distressed cities—Baltimore, Detroit, Oakland,
Philadelphia, and Richmond—from 1997 to 2000 reveals that a strong national
economy provides no guarantee that expenditures on behalf of children will
increase.
http://www.brookings.org/urban/publications/20040318_brecher.htm
Low-Income Families'
Access to Child Care Shrinks as States Cut Assistance Programs
The Children's Defense Fund
(CDF) released a report showing that states, facing budget crises and shrinking
federal funds, continued to cut child care subsidies in 2003 for low-income
working families. The report found an increase of 10 percent in additional
children being placed on waiting lists for child care assistance from 2002 to
2003.
PDF: http://www.childrensdefense.org/childcare/statebudgetcuts.pdf
New
Research Suggests that When Children Ask 'What Is This?' They May Seek an
Object's Function
A new study, to be published
in the June issue of Psychological Science finds that while normally, adults
assume that when children ask, "What is this?" in reference to an
object, they are seeking merely a name, in fact there’s a possibility that
children posing such a question might actually be seeking the object's
function, not simply its name.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-03/aps-nrs031704.php
**Community and
Economic Development
The Local Impact of
Proposed Cuts In Federal Housing Assistance
The Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities reports that hundreds of thousands of low-income, elderly,
and disabled families across the country could lose much or all of their
federal housing assistance under cuts the Administration has proposed in the
nation’s main low-income housing assistance program. Each of the more than 2,500 state and local
housing agencies that run the program would be forced to scale back assistance
by about 30 percent by 2009, if the cuts are approved and are distributed
proportionately among these agencies.
http://www.cbpp.org/3-17-04hous-pr.htm
HUD’s Reliance on
Rent Trends for High-End Apartments to Criticize the Housing Voucher Program is
Mistaken
According the Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities, an article cited by HUD examined rents for
expensive apartments with costly amenities, but rents for units accessible to
low-income families with vouchers tend to follow different trends.
http://www.cbpp.org/3-16-04hous2.htm
Baltimore
Prisoners' Experiences Returning Home
A research brief from the
Urban Institute provides empirical evidence on the actual experiences of
prisoners returning home to Baltimore,
based on a series of interviews with these prisoners before and after their
release. It presents key findings on a range of reentry challenges faced by
returning prisoners and describes factors that relate to postrelease
success or failure, such as employment, substance use, individuals'
expectations and attitudes, health challenges, criminal histories, and the
family and community context awaiting them.
http://www.urban.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&NavMenuID=3&Template=/TaggedContent/ViewPublication.cfm&PublicationID=8782
**Disabilities
Disability
Researchers Identify Barriers to Independent Living
According to a new study by
researchers at the Disability Statistics Center at the University of California, San
Francisco, about
3.3 million adults living in the community need assistance from another person
in two or more activities of daily living essential for their survival, and
nearly a million of those individuals need more help than they currently
receive.
http://www.geron.org/press/unmetneed.htm
**Economic Security
Relationship
Between Tax Entry Thresholds and Poverty
The Urban Institute analyzes
the tax entry threshold, which is the amount of income a family can earn prior
to owing federal income taxes. The poverty threshold is considered to be the
minimum dollar amount needed for individuals, couples, or families to purchase
food and meet other basic needs. The poverty level increases with family size.
How the two relate provides one way to measure how the tax system treats
low-income families. If the tax entry threshold falls below the poverty
threshold, policy makers might be concerned that low-income families are being
asked to pay too much tax.
http://www.urban.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&NavMenuID=3&Template=/TaggedContent/ViewPublication.cfm&PublicationID=8785
National Hispanic Training
Grant; $1.5 M to Help Hispanic Youth in Fla. Transcend Employment Barriers
The Department of Labor
announced a $1.485 million National Hispanic Worker Initiative training grant
to the Cuban American National Council. This grant is the second one of its
kind under a new nationwide Bush Administration initiative; the new grant will
fund career services to at-risk Hispanic youth at community centers in Orlando
and Miami. National
Hispanic Worker Initiative is designed to focus the resources of the $15
billion public workforce system on the unique economic and cultural challenges
faced by Hispanic workers.
http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ETA2004452.htm
**Education
'No Child Left Behind'
Guidelines Respond to Rural School Struggles to Hire Highly Qualified Teachers
According to the Rural School and Community Trust, new "No Child Left
Behind" guidelines announced today by the U.S. Department of Education are
a positive step in responding to the concerns of America's rural schools and districts and the eight million
rural children they serve. However, the
group expressed concern that the guidelines may represent another unfunded
mandate for rural schools, and that they do not address the fundamental issue
of rural teacher pay, which is significantly lower than that of non-rural
teachers.
http://www.ruraledu.org/newsroom/NCLB_Highly_Qualified_Teachers.htm
**Health
Childhood
Obesity Leads to Adult Diabetes
A Texas A&M University health researcher says parents -- especially minority
parents -- now need to be concerned about Type 2 or adult-onset diabetes. Childhood obesity and diabetes is a very new
area. We did not have this problem a few years ago. Consequently, patients,
health providers and family members are at a loss as to how to deal with the
situation. One example of the
problem is the case of an obese five-year-old diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, a
disease that previously had a typical age of onset in the early 40s.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-03/tau-col031204.php
Health
Care Access for Poor Children Improves, but Gap in Care for Uninsured Grows
A new national report by the University of South Florida finds that health care for children covered by
government programs like Medicaid and the State Child Health Insurance Program
(SCHIP) appears to be improving, but the gap in care is widening between these
publicly insured children and poor children without insurance.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-03/uosf-nsh031104.php
HHS Unveils FDA Strategy
to Help Reduce Obesity
The Department of Health and
Human Services released a new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) report
outlining another element in HHS' comprehensive strategy for combating the
epidemic of obesity that threatens the health of millions of Americans. The report by FDA's Obesity Working Group
includes recommendations to strengthen food labeling, to educate consumers
about maintaining a healthy diet and weight and to encourage restaurants to
provide calorie and nutrition information. It also recommends increasing
enforcement to ensure food labels accurately portray serving size, revising and
reissuing guidance on developing obesity drugs and strengthening coordinated
scientific research to reduce obesity and to develop foods that are healthier
and low in calories.
http://www.fda.gov/oc/initiatives/obesity/
Video
Games, not TV, Linked to Obesity in Kids
New research from the
University of Texas at Austin finds that despite conventional wisdom, simply
watching television is not related to a child's weight, but playing video games
may be.
http://www.cfah.org/hbns/news/video03-17-04.cfm
OIG Studies on Potential Medicaid Savings Through Cost
Contributions from Noncustodial Parents
A report from the Center for
Law and Social Policy summarizes recent reports from the Office of the
Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on
seven states’ potential for recouping some of their Medicaid costs for children
in single-parent families through improved medical support enforcement. In particular, the OIG is interested in the
capacity of noncustodial parents who did not provide
private health care coverage to their children to contribute toward the cost of
their children’s Medicaid coverage.
http://www.clasp.org/DMS/Documents/1079378268.76/view_html
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