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**Alerts
Appropriations
Alert - Take Action to Prevent Funding Cuts to Key Food and Nutrition
Programs
From: The Food Research and Action Network
Both the House and the Senate are moving very quickly on
this year's appropriations process and are failing to adequately provide for
important food and nutrition programs. Advocates need to put immediate pressure
on their Members to prevent cuts in funding for WIC, TEFAP, the Commodity
Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) and the Community Food and Nutrition Program
(CFNP).
http://www.frac.org/html/news/appropriations04.htm
**Children, Youth &
Families
Teen Birth Rate at Record Low
New figures released by the National
Center for Health Statistics
indicate that the national teen birth rate continued to drop in 2002, the 11th
straight year of declines. The teen
birth rate fell to 43 births per 1,000 females aged 15-19 in 2002, a record
low. These new figures represent a five percent decline from 2001 and a 28
percent decline from 1990.
Press Release: http://www.teenpregnancy.org/about/announcements/pr/2003/release6_25_03.asp
Full Report – PDF: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr51/nvsr51_11.pdf
Leave No Youth Behind: Opportunities for Congress to Reach
Disconnected Youth
According the Center for Law and Social Policy too many
young people are not on the path toward successful adulthood, and the U.S.
has no coherent policy to help these disconnected youth become productive
members of society. Estimates of the
number of youth who are disconnected or at risk of becoming disconnected range
from nearly 3 million to more than 7 million. This report offers
recommendations to help disconnected youth in six programs being considered by
the 108th Congress for reauthorization: the Adult Education and Family Literacy
Act, the Higher Education Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,
the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
program, and the Workforce Investment Act.
PDF: http://www.clasp.org/DMS/Documents/1057083505.88/Disconnected_Youth.pdf
Who Will Adopt the Foster Care Children Left Behind
A report from the Urban Institute finds that the number of
children in foster care eligible for adoption far outnumbers those who are
adopted each year. At the beginning of
fiscal year 1999, for instance, 128,000 of the nation's approximately 558,000
foster care children were available for adoption. Over the next 12 months, only 47,000 of them,
or 37 percent, were successfully placed.
For clues to help state recruitment efforts, Urban Institute researchers
examined the characteristics of parents who have adopted children from the
foster care system and those of children who are waiting for permanent homes.
http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=310809
Unemployment, Access to Guns Among Factors That Turn
Domestic Violence Deadly
According to a nationwide case control study from Johns
Hopkins University,
access to guns, threats to kill and most of all, unemployment, are the biggest
predictors of the murder of women in abusive relationships. Results of the study show that the abuser's
lack of a job is the strongest social risk factor, increasing the risk of
femicide fourfold. The abuser's access to a firearm increased the risk to more
than five times, and threats to kill her and threats with a weapon also were
strongly associated with homicide after taking the other factors into account.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-06/jhmi-uat062703.php
**Community
Development
New Report on Housing Discrimination
The Urban Institute reports that one out of every five
Asians and Pacific Islanders faces discrimination in the home and rental
markets. The results are from the second
phase of the first national study of such housing bias. This report presents
national results for Asians and Pacific Islanders based on a sample of 11
metropolitan areas that account for more than three quarters of all Asians and
Pacific Islanders living in metropolitan areas nationwide.
http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=1000502
** Economic Security
New
Book Assesses Urban Poverty Reduction Policies
A new book from the Urban Institute finds that over the past
three decades, the concentration of poverty in America's
inner cities has exacerbated a wide range of social problems. School
delinquency and dropout, teen pregnancy, out-of-wedlock childbirth, violent
crime, and drug abuse are magnified in neighborhoods where the majority of
residents are poor and, increasingly, minorities. In response, policymakers
have embarked on a large and coordinated effort to "deconcentrate"
the urban poor by dispersing the residents of subsidized housing to other more
economically and racially mixed residential areas. The first chapter of this book is available
online.
http://www.urban.org/pubs/clearing/index.html
$300 Billion
Deficits, As Far As The Eye Can See
A report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
finds that if the tax cuts are extended and other likely costs occur, deficits
will total $4.1 trillion over the next ten years, will never fall below $325
billion in any year, and will reach $530 billion by 2013.
http://www.cbpp.org/7-2-03bud.htm
**Education
Investment to Accelerate Creation of Strong Charter
Schools
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a $22
million investment in the NewSchools Venture Fund to increase the number of
high-quality charter schools around the country by creating systems of charter
schools through non-profit charter management organizations. These organizations will give thousands of
disadvantaged youth access to a rigorous, personalized education by making it
easier and more cost-effective to start and run good charter schools.
http://www.pnnonline.org/article.php?sid=4538
**Health
Standard Depression Treatments Found Effective for Low
Income Minority Women
Researchers at Georgetown
University and the UCLA report that
the standard recommended therapies for major depression work well for young,
low-income minority women, a group not previously studied. In work published in
the July 2 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the
researchers found that medication and cognitive behavioral psychotherapy (CBT)
treatments are effective options for young Latinas and African-American women.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-07/gumc-sdt063003.php
**Hunger
FRAC
Report on Status of Federal Summer Meals Programs: "Hunger Doesn't Take A
Vacation"
The Food Research and Action
Center reports that only one in
five of the 15.5 million children who receive free or reduced priced school
lunches on a typical day during the regular school year are served by federal
nutrition programs during the summer. In
July 2002, on an average weekday, 3.25 million children from low-income
families received meals at recreation centers, schools, parks departments,
Churches, Boys and Girls Clubs and other sites through either the Summer Food
Service Program (SFSP) or the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).
http://www.frac.org/html/news/062603summerFood.htm
**Welfare Reform &
Reauthorization Activities
Policy into Action: Implementation Research and Welfare
Reform
A new book by leading social welfare policy analysts and
program administrators offers state of the art thinking on how social policy
changes are translated into practice. It describes the range of methods that
can be used to understand, design, and conduct process and implementation
evaluations. Implementation research explores how concepts become policies and
programs and evaluates how the policies work and how the programs are
experienced by those involved. The first
chapter of the book is available online.
http://www.urban.org/pubs/policy/index.html.
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