**Children, Youth &
Families
Parents Can Help Teens
Choose 'Good' Friends
While parents often worry
about the influence peers have on their adolescent children, a new study from
Ohio State University indicates that they can play a role in helping their teens
choose 'good' friends. The results showed teens are more likely to have good
friends - ones who don't fight and who have plans for college, for instance
- if they have a warm relationship with their parents and if their parents
choose to live in a neighborhood with high-quality schools.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/osu-pch081205.php
NCCP Awarded Prestigious
Five-Year Cooperative Agreement
The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health was awarded a prestigious
five-year cooperative agreement from the National Bureau of Maternal and Child
Health within the federal department of Health and Human Services. With this
support, NCCP will create Project THRIVE: Linking Policies for Child Health,
Early Care and Learning, and Family Support. Collaborating with state and
other leaders in the field, THRIVE will increase awareness and provide policy
analysis that helps states strengthen and expand early childhood systems to
ensure that young children and their families have access to high-quality
health care, developmental services, and parenting supports.
http://lift.nccp.org/rel_8.html
**************************************************************************
Have a Website? Place HandsNet
Headlines on your site – visit http://www.handsnet.org/addheadl.htm
************************************************************************
Child Care Centers, Child Care Subsidies, and Faith-Based
Organizations: Preliminary Findings on Five Counties in 2003
According to The
Urban Institute faith-based organizations play an important role in the
provision and support of child care services. This document summarizes preliminary
findings from a forthcoming study on the extent to which child care centers
in five counties in four states across the country are affiliated with faith-based
organizations, housed in buildings belonging to faith-based organizations,
or provide religious instruction, organized prayer or worship services. The
research also explores whether faith-affiliated child care centers appear
to face any barriers to participating in child care voucher programs funded
through the federal Child Care and Development Fund.
http://www.urban.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&NavMenuID=3&Template=/TaggedContent/ViewPublication.cfm&PublicationID=9350
Planning Community-Based
Facilities for Violent Juvenile Offenders as Part of a System of Graduated
Sanctions
The Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) announces the availability of "Planning
Community-Based Facilities for Violent Juvenile Offenders as Part of a System
of Graduated Sanctions." The Bulletin, part of OJJDP's online Juvenile
Justice Practices Series, presents essential information regarding planning
community-based or regional facilities to provide secure confinement for serious,
violent, and chronic juvenile offenders and outlines a process for their development
within a comprehensive juvenile justice plan.
http://www.ojjdp.ncjrs.org/publications/PubAbstract.asp?pubi=12226
Effects of Juvenile Probation
Initiatives in California
Research conducted within
RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment
(ISE), a unit of the RAND Corporation, for the Chief Probation Officers of
California finds that over the past ten years, California has undertaken five major initiatives
aimed at juvenile offenders and at-risk youths. While juvenile arrests and
teen pregnancies have dropped, these outcomes cannot be definitively attributed
to the initiatives.
http://www.rand.org/publications/TR/TR297/index.html
The Economics of Juvenile
Jurisdiction
Commissioned by the John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development
and Juvenile Justice, a paper from the Urban Institute proposes methods for
an economic analysis of the nation's separate system of juvenile laws and
juvenile courts. Arguments about the value of juvenile justice versus criminal
justice traditionally focus on legal principles, adolescent development, and
the relative effects of prevention and punishment. This paper suggests adding
a cost-benefit approach to the debate. Do the benefits of maintaining a separate
legal system for young offenders outweigh the costs? What are those costs
and benefits, and can they be measured?
http://www.urban.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&NavMenuID=3&Template=/TaggedContent/ViewPublication.cfm&PublicationID=9348
Treatment Grants for
Former Juvenile Inmates
About $19.2 million in grants
over four years were awarded by the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services
Administration for programs to treat alcohol and other drug abuse among juveniles
and young adults returning from prison.
http://www.jointogether.org/saredirect/?Object_ID=577943&ID=saFunding
**Civic Participation &
Engagement
HUD Hosts Free Training
to Community and Faith-Based Groups Seeking Grants
Many smaller community and
faith-based organizations have difficulty navigating the application process
for federal grants. To help these community service providers better access
federal funding, the Department of Housing and Urban Development today announced
an ambitious schedule of free grant writing seminars designed to create an
equal opportunity for those seeking grant funding. "The Art & Science
of Grant Writing" training sessions will provide personal instruction
from key HUD staff on how to become more competitive for federal grant funds,
how to qualify for 501c3 nonprofit status, and how to structure an organization
to secure government funds.
http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr05-107.cfm
************************************
Get more information on
these issues at http://www.ecommunityissues.com.
************************************
**Economic Security
Overcoming Concentrated
Poverty and Isolation
During the 1990s, the Department
of Housing and Urban Development launched three rigorous research demonstrations
testing alternative strategies for helping low-income families escape the
isolation and distress of high-poverty, central-city communities. All three
demonstrations were carefully designed to include rigorous controls and systematic
data collection so that their implementation and impacts could be systematically
evaluated. And all three are now generating provocative results that offer
new insights for ongoing program experimentation and policy development.
The Urban Institute draws ten broad lessons--including
lessons about the potential for success, about the realities families face,
about implementing complex strategies, and about obstacles to success.
http://www.urban.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&NavMenuID=3&Template=/TaggedContent/ViewPublication.cfm&PublicationID=9352
New Study Links Childhood
Poverty, Heart Attacks in Women
Women with disadvantaged
childhoods are more likely to have a heart attack in old age, but men who
grow up under similar conditions are not, according to a new study by Duke University sociologists.
The link between childhood poverty and poor health in old age is well-established,
but this is one of a handful of studies to find a difference in the way men
and women respond - in part because it examines men and women separately.
http://www.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20050810.124923&time=21%2005%20PDT&year=2005&public=1
**Education
States Try Harder yet
Gap Persists — High School Exit Exams 2005
According to a study released
by the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Education Policy, achievement gaps
on high school exit exams remain largely unchanged, despite a major push by
states to boost pass rates. "States Try Harder Yet Gap Persists — High
School Exit Exams 2005" is the fourth in a series of reports that study
the implementation of state high school exit exams. This year's report includes
a special focus on the impact that these exams have on English Language Learners
(ELL). A copy of the chapter focusing on ELL is available in Spanish.
PDF: http://www.ctredpol.org/highschoolexit/reportAug2005/hseeAug2005_press.pdf
New Grants Awarded To
Help Charter Schools Expand
The U.S. Department of Education
announced five grantees for the Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities
Grant program. Together, these grantees will serve approximately 48,000 students
in 120 charter schools in California, Delaware, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. Under this program, funds are provided
on a competitive basis to public and nonprofit entities, and consortia of
those entities, to leverage other funds and help charter schools obtain school
facilities through such means as purchase, lease and donation. Grantees may
also use grants to leverage funds to help charter schools construct and renovate
school facilities.
http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2005/08/08182005a.html
**Health
Medicare and Medicaid
at 40
The Medicare and Medicaid
health coverage programs were signed into law July
30, 1965. The Kaiser Family Foundation has
produced some new resources that examine how the programs came into existence
and how they have evolved, including video documentaries, interactive timelines,
background data and information, and a Webcast of an event featuring historian
Robert Dallek and key government officials responsible for the programs over
the past 40 years.
http://www.kff.org/medicaid/40years.cfm
Americans Can Help
Each Other Learn About the New Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit
A new advertisement about
the Medicare prescription drug benefit began airing August 15 on national
network and cable programs. The television ad is sponsored by the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services (HHS) and builds upon efforts to educate people
with Medicare and their families before coverage enrollment begins Nov.
15, 2005. Almost every American knows a Medicare
beneficiary – HHS is asking people to talk to beneficiaries, to help them
sign up and gain the peace of mind that Medicare will cover the prescription
drugs needed to stay healthy.
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2005pres/20050815.html
AHRQ-Supported Study
Finds Medical Disparities Narrowing
An increasing percentage
of black enrollees in Medicare managed care plans are being screened for breast
cancer or treated for diabetes or heart disease in accordance with nationally
recognized quality measures, according to a new study in the August 18 issue
of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study was supported by Health
and Human Services' (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
and Health Resources and Services Administration and by Brigham and Women's
Hospital.
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=101-08172005&site=rss
**Substance Abuse
Childhood Predictors
of Smoking in Adolescence
The smoking rate among adolescents
in the context of anti-smoking campaigns is troubling. Predictors of teenage
smoking that are commonly cited are parental smoking during childhood, peer
pressure during adolescence, and larger lung volumes. Researches investigated
these and other possible predictors of teenage cigarette smoking and found
that salivary cotinine, a measure of uptake of environmental tobacco smoke,
was a significant predictor.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/cmaj-cpo081105.php
HHS Awards $16.2 Million
for Methamphetamine Abuse Treatment
The Department of Health
and Human Services announced 11 new, three-year grants to provide treatment
for methamphetamine abuse and other emerging drugs for adults residing in
rural communities. The grants, awarded by HHS’ Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), total $5.4 million for the first
year and approximately $16.2 million for all three years. These new grants,
and the six grants awarded in 2004 through this program, support treatment
in rural areas that have been particularly hard hit by methamphetamine abuse.
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2005pres/20050818.html
