Screening and Assessment in TANF/Welfare-to-Work: Local Answers to Difficult Questions

Welfare reform efforts and significant caseload declines have resulted in a commonly held belief that those remaining on welfare face multiple barriers to employment, or are in some way "hard-to-serve." Clients with complex barriers to employment, disabilities, or medical conditions, are often grouped under this broad heading. One of the most significant challenges facing states and localities related to serving the hard-to-serve population is identifying the specific conditions and disabilities clients have that may be a barrier to finding and maintaining employment.In 1999, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services contracted with the Urban Institute to conduct a Study of Screening and Assessment in TANF/Welfare-to-Work (WtW). The first phase of the study involved a review of the issues and challenges faced by TANF agencies and their partners in developing strategies and selecting instruments to identify substance abuse and mental health problems, learning disabilities, and domestic violence situations among TANF clients. The issues and challenges identified through that review are presented in Ten Important Questions TANF Agencies and Their Partners Should Consider (hereafter referred to as Ten Important Questions). The second phase of the study involved case studies of a limited number of localities to further explore how TANF agencies and their partners responded to the issues and challenges identified during phase one. The findings from the case studies are presented in this report.Findings are based on discussions held between November 2000 and February 2001 with TANF agency staff and staff of key partner agencies in six localities: Montgomery County, KS, Owensboro, KY, Minneapolis, MN (the IRIS Program), Las Vegas, NV, Arlington, VA, and Kent, WA

AIMHI NT 'Mental Health Story Teller Mob': developing stories in mental health

The Australian Integrated Mental Health Initiative in the Northern Territory is one of a number of sites funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council. The project has been working with Aboriginal Mental Health Workers (AMHWs), and the Top End Division of General Practice (TEDGP) to adapt mental health information to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander context through development of mental health stories. The stories focus on personal strengths and family support, and use local artwork and images, local language, metaphors and music. The concepts have been incorporated into service provider training and psychoeducation resources in the Northern Territory. Development and evaluation of mental health literacy initiatives is important in the context of high rates of mental illness and burden of disease in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccination Status Among University Freshmen in Hawai‘i

Purpose/Background: The HPV vaccine provides immunity against nine HPV strains that cause cancer and genital warts. It is recommended for 11 to 12 year olds, and catch-up immunization is recommended for females 13 to 26 years old and males 13 to 21 years old. College students represent an important population for HPV vaccination due to their increased risk for HPV infection. Despite the benefits of the HPV vaccine, its coverage rates are low in Hawaii. Hawai‘i is the home of two large universities on two islands that are representative of Hawai‘i’s populations, including Native Hawaiians, Filipinos, and Pacific Islanders. The purpose of this study was to assess the current HPV and HPV vaccine knowledge, barriers and beliefs among incoming Freshmen university students at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. Materials & Methods: In 2016, 200 University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM) and University of Hawai‘i at Hilo (UHH) Freshmen students responded to a survey that assessed their knowledge and awareness of HPV, the HPV vaccine, their current vaccination status, and barriers and motivators to vaccination. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize each survey variable first for all students and then separately for each campus. Results: Overall 76% of Freshmen from both campuses heard of the HPV vaccine and 54% reported hearing it from their health care provider. Only 28% UHM and 23% UHH Freshmen students have received partial (1-2 shots) or completed doses of the HPV vaccine. For those who received the vaccine, 45% reported that they were told by their parent and 43% were told by their doctor. For the 147 students who did not receive the vaccine, 28% reported that they are still not sure to get it and 20% need more information. Their main reasons for not receiving the HPV vaccine were: their doctor did not mention the vaccine to him/her (44%), he/she never knew about the vaccine (18%), and they don\u27t know enough about the vaccine (17%). Discussion/Conclusion: Although the HPV vaccine has been available for 13 years, young adults remain unvaccinated. Freshmen students reported that they are informed about the vaccine, but were not vaccinated because of the lack of parental and/or healthcare provider recommendation. With no active education campaigns in Hawaii promoting the HPV vaccine at college campuses, a first step to increasing vaccination rates is to develop a health education campaign to inform students of the HPV vaccine and its availability at campus clinics and neighboring pharmacies

Geometric reasoning for map-based localization

Journal ArticleAn essential aspect of map-based navigation is the determination of an agent's current location based on sensed data from the environment. Formally, this amounts to specifying the current viewpoint in some world model coordinate system. This localization process has two distinct components: one involving the establishment of correspondences between aspects of the sensed data and the map or model, and the other involving derivation of constraints on the viewpoint based on the correspondences that have been determined

Funneling Versus Focusing: When Talk, Tasks, and Tools Work Together to Support Students’ Collective Sensemaking

Rigorous and responsive science teaching is based on supporting all students in making progress in their understanding of important science ideas over time. In this article, we explore how did classroom talk patterns of funneling and focusing support student sensemaking. We share how talk, tasks, and tools within classroom activity work together to either funnel students toward reproducing normative scientific answers or focus students on deepening their understanding about unobservable causal mechanisms of phenomena. We use classroom examples from two science lessons where students used data to describe and communicate about how and why stars change over time. By recognizing these funneling and focusing patterns in classroom activity, teachers can attend to and modify the talk, tasks, and tools to improve and support opportunities for students’ sensemaking about important science ideas while they make progress on revising their own ideas over time