Research to Practice: The Extent of Consumer-Directed Funding by MR/DD State Agencies in Day and Employment Services

Individual control over service delivery and life choices is well established as a value in supports for individuals with developmental disabilities. One strategy for expanding choice is mechanisms that allow consumers to direct their funding. This brief reports on the prevalence of these options in state MR/DD agencies for 1999

An Economic Evaluation of a Phosphate Basal Dressing Scheme for the Niamey Department

Coarse grain yields have remained relatively constant and production has stagnated in Niger during the past six years, while the population has risen. This paper examines one proposed government intervention to increase cereal production: the application of a one-time basal dressing using phosphates fertilizers. This intervention may provide a means of raising production to keep pace with increasing cereal demand; it may also augment soil fertility in the short run. This evaluation presents a preliminary economic analysis and suggests areas for further work towards a phosphate basal dressing scheme. In order to simplify the analysis, the scheme is only considered for millet production in the Niamey Department. Sections II and III examine the technical issues of a phosphate basal dressing scheme, and derive the assumptions concerning the effects of such a scheme which are made for the base case analysis. Section IV presents the economic evaluation; and Section V draws conclusions and recommendations from the analysis.Center for Research on Economic Development, University of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100878/1/ECON330.pd

From Paper to Action: State-Level Interagency Agreements for Supported Employment of People with Disabilities

Over the past decade there has been an increasing national emphasis on the participation of individuals with disabilities in the labor force. This concern was recognized through Executive Order No. 13078 signed by President Bill Clinton in March 1998, establishing the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities. The Task Force was charged with a mission to create a coordinated and aggressive policy to bring adults with disabilities into gainful employment at a rate that is as close as possible to that of the general adult population (Section 1 (c)). Legislation and policy changes have also been directed to increase employment opportunities. The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998 (P.L. 105-220) was implemented with a broad goal of consolidating, coordinating, and improving all national workforce development initiatives, including vocational rehabilitation and youth employment programs. The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 (P.L. 101-336), the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act (TWWIIA) of 1999 (P.L. 106-170), amendments to the Vocational Rehabilitation Act (most recently included in WIA), and changes to Medicaid regulations are all intended to expand access to employment. One mechanism for improving employment outcomes that is increasingly being emphasized or required in legislation and regulation is interagency agreements or interagency collaboration. This manuscript will describe the components of six interagency agreements nominated as effective in facilitating access to supported employment

Institute Brief: Developing Interagency Agreements: Four Questions to Consider

Recent legislation emphasizes collaboration between state agencies. A good interagency agreement is one tool that can assist collaboration and promote systems change. Researchers offer four important considerations for an effective agreement and a worksheet for agency personnel

Research to Practice: The National Survey of Community Rehabilitation Providers, FY2002-2003, Report 1: Overview of Services and Provider Characteristics

Two briefs examine the services people with developmental disabilities receive from community rehabilitation providers (CRPs). Despite recent emphasis on work in the disability field, people with DD were predominantly in sheltered employment or non-work services. Of people with DD in integrated employment, the majority had individual competitive jobs. However, three group employment models had above-average percentages of individuals with DD

Research to Practice: High-Performing States in Integrated Employment

Despite recent improvements, community employment outcomes vary widely across states. This report highlights successful practices of states that were identified as high performers in integrated employment for people served by state MR/DD agencies

Research to Practice: The National Survey of Community Rehabilitation Providers, FY2002-2003, Report 2: Non-Work Services

The second in a series exploring the services people with developmental disabilities receive from community rehabilitation providers (CRPs). Despite recent ideological emphasis on work, the majority of CRPs continued to offer non-work programs and a substantial proportion of the people they served were involved in those programs. Overall, the findings raise questions about CRP commitment to community integration

Limits of agricultural greenhouse gas calculators to predict soil N2O and CH4 fluxes in tropical agriculture

Acknowledgements This work was undertaken as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), which is a strategic partnership of CGIAR and Future Earth. This research was carried out with funding by the European Union (EU) and with technical support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The UN FAO Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture (MICCA) Programme funded data collection in Kenya and Tanzania. The views expressed in the document cannot be taken to reflect the official opinions of CGIAR, Future Earth, or donors. We thank Louis Bockel of the UN FAO Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA) for his comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Joining the conspiracy? Negotiating ethics and emotions in researching (around) AIDS in southern Africa

AIDS is an emotive subject, particularly in southern Africa. Among those who have been directly affected by the disease, or who perceive themselves to be personally at risk, talking about AIDS inevitably arouses strong emotions - amongst them fear, distress, loss and anger. Conventionally, human geography research has avoided engagement with such emotions. Although the ideal of the detached observer has been roundly critiqued, the emphasis in methodological literature on 'doing no harm' has led even qualitative researchers to avoid difficult emotional encounters. Nonetheless, research is inevitably shaped by emotions, not least those of the researchers themselves. In this paper, we examine the role of emotions in the research process through our experiences of researching the lives of 'Young AIDS migrants' in Malawi and Lesotho. We explore how the context of the research gave rise to the production of particular emotions, and how, in response, we shaped the research, presenting a research agenda focused more on migration than AIDS. This example reveals a tension between universalised ethics expressed through ethical research guidelines that demand informed consent, and ethics of care, sensitive to emotional context. It also demonstrates how dualistic distinctions between reason and emotion, justice and care, global and local are unhelpful in interpreting the ethics of research practice

Limits of agricultural greenhouse gas calculators to predict soil N\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3eO and CH\u3csub\u3e4\u3c/sub\u3e fluxes in tropical agriculture

Demand for tools to rapidly assess greenhouse gas impacts from policy and technological change in the agricultural sector has catalyzed the development of \u27 GHG calculators\u27-simple accounting approaches that use a mix of emission factors and empirical models to calculate GHG emissions with minimal input data. GHG calculators, however, rely on models calibrated from measurements conducted overwhelmingly under temperate, developed country conditions. Here we show that GHG calculators may poorly estimate emissions in tropical developing countries by comparing calculator predictions against measurements from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Estimates based on GHG calculators were greater than measurements in 70% of the cases, exceeding twice the measured flux nearly half the time. For 41% of the comparisons, calculators incorrectly predicted whether emissions would increase or decrease with a change in management. These results raise concerns about applying GHG calculators to tropical farming systems and emphasize the need to broaden the scope of the underlying data