Improving the Economic and Life Outcomes of At-Risk Youth, Spring 2003

Outlines ideas and strategies for designing programs to engage alienated and disaffected young people in activities designed to help them acquire skills, gain work experience, and improve their lives. Proposes a specific major experimental program

Improving the Economic and Life Outcomes of At-Risk Youth, Fall 2002

This paper outlines ideas and strategies to engage alienated and disaffected young people and help them acquire skills, gain work experience, and improve their lives. Based on lessons learned from three decades of demonstrations and evaluations concerning at-risk youth, the paper presents ideas that government agencies and private foundations could consider when working to fill important service and knowledge gaps. It offers suggestions about how to change the public discourse about young people at risk and how to strengthen the public will to capitalize on this population's strengths and potential. The paper recommends three program strategies, all of which leverage youth-serving institutions and existing funding streams and lay the groundwork to expand programs whose effectiveness has stood the test of evaluation. The fundamental premise of this paper is how to increase youth engagement as a prerequisite to success. It draws upon existing research, the experiences of youth programs that have had unusual success in attracting and retaining enrollees, insights from a youth development perspective, and the observations of youth program practitioners and young people themselves. Recommendations are presented in the areas of goals and framework for action, program design, and broadening public support and building capacity

Building a Learning Agenda Around Disconnected Youth

In December 2007, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave MDRC a grant to conduct reconnaissance on promising strategies to reengage disconnected young people and improve their long-term outcomes. The primary objective of the grant was to identify key leverage points for future investment by government and foundations. MDRC consulted with researchers and policy experts, reviewed the results of completed and ongoing evaluations of youth programs, visited a number of innovative youth programs and cities with strong youth strategies, and hosted a meeting of youth practitioners. The goal of the paper's recommendations is to develop a menu of approaches for the heterogeneous population of disconnected youth--analogous in some ways to the multiple pathways that are being developed for high school students. The recommendations fall into two broad categories: building knowledge about mature, existing programs (to better understand whether they work, for whom, and why) and investment in developing and/or scaling up new programs that address areas of unmet need, such as efforts to restructure General Educational Development (GED) preparation programs so that they are more tightly linked with postsecondary programs, both occupational and academic; new "leg-up" strategies for older youth with very low basic skill levels, for whom a GED may not be a realistic goal; and new strategies to engage young people who are more profoundly disconnected and unlikely to volunteer for youth programs

Family Members as Case Managers: Partnership Between the Formal and Informal Support Networks

The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.Presenter: Joann Ivry, Ph.D., Director of Programs for Older People, Jewish Family and Children's Services, Boston, Massachusetts - "Family Members as Case Managers: Partnership Between the Formal and Informal Support Networks".The Ohio State University College of Social Wor

Cerebellar Involvement in Clumsiness and Other Developmental Disorders

Cerebellar abnormalities have been linked to a number of developmental disorders. Much evidence is based on the analysis of highresolution MRI scans. Imaging and behavioral studies have led researchers to consider functional contributions of the cerebellum beyond that associated with motor control. I review this literature, providing an analysis of different ways to consider the relation between cerebellar abnormalities and developmental disorders. Interestingly, although clumsiness is a problem of coordination, the contribution of cerebellar dysfunction to this developmental problem has received little attention. Select studies indicate that some clumsy children have difficulties on tasks requiring precise timing, similar to that observed in adult patients with cerebellar lesions. I suggest that the underlying neural bases of clumsiness are heterogeneous, with cerebellar dysfunction likely a major contributor for a subpopulation of such children

Spare Parts Supply Chain Shipment Decision Making in a Deterministic Environment

Determining the optimal lot size is a well discussed problem across many industries. This paper suggests a deterministic approach to shipment decision taking in a deterministic environment of spare parts supply chain. The model considered a deterministic forecast for the incoming faulty units. An objective function was modeled by taking in consideration three main elements: the number of malfunctioned units, the shipping cost and the storage cost. A deterministic forecast allowed calculating the cost effective schedule of shipments and its lot sizes. The purpose of this paper it to study the reverse logistics supply chain of a typical telecom devices company (that offers warranty/repairing services) and try to reduce its transportation and handling costs in order to bring added-value to the customer and by doing so, expand the competitive advantage of the company