Recommendations for infant and toddler care and development based on current brain research and its implications How much do children's early experiences affect their cognitive and social development? How important is the parent's role in child development? Is it possible to ameliorate or reverse the consequences of early developmental deficits? This vitally important book draws on the latest research from the social sciences and studies on the brain to answer these questions and to explore what they mean for social policy and child and family development. The authors affirm that sound social policy providing for safe and appropriate early care, education, health care, and parent support is critical not only for the optimal development of children, but also for strengthening families, communities, and the nation as a whole. Offering a wealth of advice and recommendations, they explain: * the benefits of family leave, child care, and home visitation programs; * the damage that child abuse inflicts; * the vital importance of nutrition (and breast feeding) for pregnant women and young children; * the adverse effects that occur in misguided efforts to disseminate research too early; * and more. Written by experts in the field of early child development, care, and education, the book is essential reading for parents and policymakers alike.

List of Tables Preface 1. Introduction Introduction; Family environment; Family Environment and School Performance; Justification of the study; Statement of the Problem; Operational Definitions; Objectives of the Study; Hypotheses of the Study; Delimitation of the Study. 2. Review of Related Literature 3. Plan and Procedure Introduction; Methodology; Sampling; Tools used; Construction of Family Environment Scale; Family Environment Scale for Children; Family Environment Scale for Parents; Non Verbal Test of Intelligence; Socio Economic Status Inventory; Data Collection; Statistical Techniques used. 4. Analysis, Interpretation and Discussion of Results Introduction; School Performance of Elementary School Children Relation to their Family Environment, Intelligence and Socio-Economic Status; School Performance of Elementary School Children in Relation to Childrens Perception of Family Environment; School Performance of Elementary School Children in Relation to Parents Perception of Family Environment; School Performance of Elementary School Children in Relation to their Intelligence; Impact of Family Environment on School Performance of Elementary School Children; School Performance Differentials in Elementary School Children at Different Level of Family Environment (as Perceived by Children); School Performance Differentials of Elementary School Children at Different Levels 6 Family Environment and School Performance of Family Environment as Perceived by Parents; Impact of Family Environment on the School Performance of Elementary School Children belonging to Similar Intelligence Group; School performance Differentials in Elementary School Children belonging to Similar intelligence group at different levels of Overall Family Environment (as perceived by children); School Performance Differentials in Elementary School Children belonging to Similar Intelligence Group at Different Levels of Five Dimensions of Family Environment (as perceived by Children); School Performance Differentials in Elementary School Children belonging to Similar Intelligence Group at Different Levels of Overall Family Environment (as perceived by Parents); School Performance Differentials in Elementary School Children belonging to Similar Intelligence Group at Different Levels of Five Dimensions of Family Environment as Perceived by Parents; Discussion of Results. 5. Main Findings Educational Implications and Suggestion for Further Research Main Findings; School Performance of Elementary School Children in Relation to their Family Environment, Intelligence and Socio-Economic Status; Impact of Family Environment on School Performance of Elementary School Children as Brought out by School Performance Differentials at Different Levels of Family Environment; Impact of Family Environment on School Performance of Elementary School Children Belonging to Similar Intelligence Groups as Brought out by School Performance Differentials at Different Levels of Family Environment (As Perceived by Children and Parents); Educational Implication; Suggestion for Further Research. Summery Introduction; Justification of the Study; Statement of the Problem; Operational Definition of the Terms Used; Family Environment; Objectives of the Study; Hypotheses; Delimitation of the Study; Method; Sample; Tools Used; Statistical Techniques Used; Main Findings; Educational Implication; Suggestion for Further Research. Appendices Bibliography Index

Population ageing has fuelled interest in pensions and intergenerational equity, leading to privatization of pensions. Yet the gender implications of such policies and the connections between the gender contract and the generational contract remain unexplored. Women, Work and Pensions examines how women's paid and unpaid work, interacting with the gendered pension systems of six liberal welfare states - Britain, the US, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand - contributes to female poverty in later life. By comparing how these welfare states deal with women's employment, family roles and pension entitlement, the nature of the residual welfare model is better understood. Changes over the past three decades in the gender contract and in women's employment suggest that family caring may have less impact on women's pensions in the future. Yet pension reforms which diminish the effectiveness of women-friendly features in state pensions through cuts and privatization point in the opposite direction. This issue, and how the pension penalties of caring vary with women's class, ethnicity and birth cohort, are major themes of the book.

The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable growth of corporate welfare programs in American industry. By the mid-1920s, 80 percent of the nation's largest companies--firms including DuPont, International Harvester, and Metropolitan Life Insurance--engaged in some form of welfare work. Programs were implemented to achieve goals that ranged from improving basic workplace conditions, to providing educational, recreational, and social opportunities for workers and their families, to establishing savings and insurance plans. Employing the critical lens of gender analysis, Nikki Mandell offers an innovative perspective on the development of corporate welfare. She argues that its advocates sought to build a new relationship between labor and management by recasting the modern corporation as a Victorian family. Employers assumed the authoritative position of fathers, assigned their employees the subordinate role of children, and hired male and female welfare managers to act as ""corporate mothers"" charged with creating a harmonious household. But internal conflict and external pressures weakened the corporate welfare system, and it eventually gave way to a system of personnel management and employee representation. With the abandonment of the familial model, the form of corporate welfare changed; but, as Mandell demonstrates, its content left an enduring legacy for modern industrial relations. |Mandell examines the growth of corporate welfare programs around the turn of the 20th century. She argues that businessmen hoped such programs would transform conflict-ridden relations between management and labor into a harmonious partnership modeled after the Victorian family.

This comprehensive Medicare manual will bridge the gap between confusing Medicare rules and the real world. For the 39 million people already on Medicare, it contains an overview of what Medicare covers, and what it does not (a relatively short list), and explains when to pay bills and when NOT to.

This is the fifth and final in a Series of five manuals produced by the Social Security Department of the ILO to provide the reader with information on all the major elements of social security, including the principles, administration, financing, pension schemes and social health insurance. It provides an overview of social health insurance schemes and looks at the development of health care policies and feasibility issues. In addition, it also examines the design of health insurance schemes, health care benefits, financing and costs, and organization as well as considering the operational and strategic information requirements. Other manuals in this series: - Social security principles (Vol. I) - Administration of social security (Vol. II) - Social security financing (Vol. III) - Pension schemes (Vol. IV)

This is one of two volumes devoted to pension reform that are appearing as part of a series of studies of social security issues prepared by the ILO. The two pension volumes examine approaches to reform taken by four advanced EU-applicant countries, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia.

Mediating Divorce: A Step-by-Step Manual is written for family law attorneys and therapists who need a comprehensive resource for facilitating the divorce mediation process.

Written by Marilyn S. McKnight and Stephen K. Erickson, two widely known pioneers in the field of divorce mediation, this useful guide will show how to implement the techniques needed to be an effective divorce mediator.

It includes helpful information for understanding and working through the emotions experienced by people going through a divorce.

Technology has a major role in today's advanced society. In the UK it has been at the centre of Government policies aimed at modernising government and increasing transparency, accountability and governance. However, the reality is that many organisations in the public sector are failing to engage with IT in any meaningful way. This report examines the usage of information technology within housing associations, focusing on the use of technology to extend effective governance through remote access and electronic communication. It also examines current practice in developing and implementing e-strategies, identifies good practice and considers the potential of CIT in enhancing service delivery, achieving accountability and empowering residents

With her analysis of the thirty-year campaign to reform and ultimately to end welfare, Gwendolyn Mink levels a searing indictment of anti-welfare politicians'assault on poor mothers. She charges that the basic elements of the new welfare policy subordinate poor single mothers in a separate system of law. Mink points to the racial, class, and gender biases of both liberals and conservatives to explain the odd but sturdy consensus behind welfare reforms that force the poor single mother to relinquish basic rights and compel her to find economic security in work outside the home. Mink explores how and why we should cure the unique inequality of poor single mothers by reorienting the emphasis of welfare policy away from regulating mothers to rewarding the work they do. Every mother is a working mother, the bumper sticker proclaims, but the work mothers do pays no wages. Mink argues that women's equality depends on economic support for caregivers'work. Welfare's End challenges the ways in which policymakers define the problem they seek to cure. While legislators assume that something is wrong with poor single mothers, Mink insists that something is wrong with a system that invades their rights and negates their work. Showing how welfare reform harms women, Mink invites the design of policies to promote gender justice.

Schorr provides an informed examination of the sources of welfare reform, its successes and considerable failures, and the economic and social forces that shaped the 1996 welfare reform. He summarizes developments in the history of welfare that led to an overwhelming public call for reform. Having participated in many of these developments as a high government official and as a policy practitioner, Schorr brings a unique perspective to these issues.

Assessment of accomplishments and damage rests on reports, research, and extensive data. Concluding that the 1996 legislation was the wrong way to go, Schorr explores underlying policy issues; Should all mothers be required to work at all times? How do we define poverty? How are wages related to welfare?--to frame solutions. In the process, Schorr underscores why welfare recipients are not a population distinct from the working poor population; that low wages, poor welfare, and our unequal distribution of income are tightly linked; and that reforming welfare will require major economic and social changes. Schorr offers a chilling forecast of the society we will have if we continue on our current course and, as an alternative, outlines deeply changed, more constructive policies. Must reading for scholars, students, and policy makers as well as those in the general public concerned with social welfare policies.

The Clinton administration's failed health care reform was not the first attempt to establish government-sponsored medical coverage in the United States. From 1915 to 1920, Progressive reformers led a spirited but ultimately unsuccessful crusade for compulsory health insurance in New York State. Beatrix Hoffman argues that this first health insurance campaign was a crucial moment in the creation of the American welfare state and health care system. Its defeat, she says, gave rise to an uneven and inegalitarian system of medical coverage and helped shape the limits of American social policy for the rest of the century. Hoffman examines each of the major combatants in the battle over compulsory health insurance. While physicians, employers, the insurance industry, and conservative politicians forged a uniquely powerful coalition in opposition to health insurance proposals, she shows, reformers' potential allies within women's organizations and the labor movement were bitterly divided. Against the backdrop of World War I and the Red Scare, opponents of reform denounced government-sponsored health insurance as ""un-American"" and, in the process, helped fashion a political culture that resists proposals for universal health care and a comprehensive welfare state even today. |Shows how the issues that prevented passage of the 1915-1920 campaign for compulsory health insurance in New York helped to shape a national political culture that continues to resist proposals for universal health care as ""un-American.

In the opening pages of this powerful examination of American politics, Theda Skocpol reveals a curious pattern: Our politicians argue over programs for the very poor or tax cuts for the very rich, and they worry over the precarious security of our longer-living grandparents and the educational neglect and corresponding bleak future of our children. But, with the spotlight on the youngest, the oldest, the richest, and the poorest, rarely do we find policies concerned with average working men and women of modest means, those the author terms the "missing middle." Skocpol draws us into the history of this disturbing trend and reveals the repercussions of the increasingly simplistic and moralistic stands being taken by our politicians. Taking lessons from the root causes of this shift, she presents a compelling case for family-oriented populism and identifies the bold reforms needed to revitalize American democracy.

This is the fourth in a Series of five manuals produced by the Social Security Department of the ILO to provide the reader with information on all the major elements of social security, including the principles, administration, financing, pension schemes and social health insurance. This manual takes a look at and makes comparisons between public and private pensions, methods of protection in public schemes, old age benefits, invalidity benefits, survivor's benefits. Of particular interest to certain countries will be a section dealing with transforming existing "provident fund schemes" into ones based on social insurance. Other manuals in this series: - Social security principles (Vol. I) - Administration of social security (Vol. II) - Social security financing (Vol. III) - Social health insurance (Vol. V)

This is the second in a Series of five manuals produced by the Social Security Department of the ILO to provide the reader with information on all the major elements of social security, including the principles, administration, financing, pension schemes and social health insurance. This manual deals with one of the most important aspects for any social security institution or scheme administration. It provides a general overview, looks at policy, structures, common features and examines principles of good management, as well as levels of administration, coverage, registration procedures, collection and recording of contributions, and the award and payment of benefits. The public relations element is also dealt with and a close look is taken at the management of human resources, recruitment, training, career development and performance. Other manuals in this series: - Social security principles (Vol. I) - Social security financing (Vol. III) - Pension schemes (Vol. IV) - Social health insurance (Vol. V)

Parents play an important role in shaping the adult lives of their children. The way they use their time and money while children are growing up can have long-lasting consequences. In particular, the paid work done by fathers and mothers affects both the amount of income coming into the family and the time they have available to spend with their children. This report examines the links between parents' employment patterns while their children were growing up and what happens in those children's lives when they become young adults. This study focuses on a number of outcomes, notably: educational attainment; employment and economic inactivity; mental health; and for women, childbearing at an early age. Some of its findings carry important implications for public policy and for further research. A number are likely to prove controversial, arousing public debate concerning their meaning and contemporary relevance.

A supportive, practical guide for the recovering addict's family - From the author of Treating the Alcoholic, and Treating Adult Children of Alcoholics - A supportive, helpful, practical book for family members of recovering addicts - Offers both practical, immediate assistance, and a long-term perspective - Includes progress charts and exercises for each family member to record experiences of the recovery program ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Successful recovery from drug and alcohol addiction is not only a harrowing journey for the addict, but for the addict's family as well. Even though recovery often places a severe stress on recovering families, they are rarely encouraged to go outside to find the support they need. If outside help is unavailable, families are left to struggle with an unhealthy system of relating that's often all wrong for recovery. This guide seeks to help and support recovering families.

A quarter century of trickle-down economics has failed. Economic inequality in the United States has dramatically increased. Many, alas, seem resigned to this growing chasm between rich and poor. But what would happen, ask Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott, if America were to make good on its promise of equal opportunity by granting every qualifying young adult a citizen's stake of eighty thousand dollars? Ackerman and Alstott argue that every American citizen has the right to share in the wealth accumulated by preceding generations. The distribution of wealth is currently so skewed that the stakeholding fund could be financed by an annual tax of two percent on the property owned by the richest forty percent of Americans. Ackerman and Alstott analyze their initiative from moral, political, economic, legal, and human perspectives. By summoning the political will to initiate stakeholding, they argue, we can achieve a society that is more democratic, productive, and free. Their simple but realistic plan would enhance each young adultis real ability to shape his or her own future. It is, in short, an idea that should be taken seriously by anyone concerned with citizenship, welfare dependency, or social justice in America today.

Why, in the recent campaigns for universal health care, did organized labor maintain its support of employer-mandated insurance? Did labor's weakened condition prevent it from endorsing national health insurance? Marie Gottschalk demonstrates here that the unions' surprising stance was a consequence of the peculiarly private nature of social policy in the United States. Her book combines a much-needed account of labor's important role in determining health care policy with a bold and incisive analysis of the American welfare state.

Gottschalk stresses that, in the United States, the social welfare system is anchored in the private sector but backed by government policy. As a result, the private sector is a key political battlefield where business, labor, the state, and employees hotly contest matters such as health care. She maintains that the shadow welfare state of job-based benefits shaped the manner in which labor defined its policy interests and strategies. As evidence, Gottschalk examines the influence of the Taft-Hartley health and welfare funds, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (E.R.I.S.A.), and experience-rated health insurance, showing how they constrained labor from supporting universal health care.

Labor, Gottschalk asserts, missed an important opportunity to develop a broader progressive agenda. She challenges the movement to establish a position on health care that addresses the growing ranks of Americans without insurance, the restructuring of the U.S. economy, and the political travails of the unions themselves.

Why, in the recent campaigns for universal health care, did organized labor maintain its support of employer-mandated insurance? Did labor's weakened condition prevent it from endorsing national health insurance? Marie Gottschalk demonstrates here that the unions' surprising stance was a consequence of the peculiarly private nature of social policy in the United States. Her book combines a much-needed account of labor's important role in determining health care policy with a bold and incisive analysis of the American welfare state.

Gottschalk stresses that, in the United States, the social welfare system is anchored in the private sector but backed by government policy. As a result, the private sector is a key political battlefield where business, labor, the state, and employees hotly contest matters such as health care. She maintains that the shadow welfare state of job-based benefits shaped the manner in which labor defined its policy interests and strategies. As evidence, Gottschalk examines the influence of the Taft-Hartley health and welfare funds, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (E.R.I.S.A.), and experience-rated health insurance, showing how they constrained labor from supporting universal health care.

Labor, Gottschalk asserts, missed an important opportunity to develop a broader progressive agenda. She challenges the movement to establish a position on health care that addresses the growing ranks of Americans without insurance, the restructuring of the U.S. economy, and the political travails of the unions themselves.

Marriage is the foundation of the family and of society. Yet many of us find it difficult to keep our marriages alive and well. So many marriages today end in tears that young people often wonder whether they should marry at all. Mehri Sefidvash's Coral and Pearls looks at some of the reasons why relationships fail to thrive and offers practical suggestions for keeping our marriages vibrant, joyous and intact: * What we can do to keep our love for our partner alive * How we can develop mature love * How we can create a spiritual bond with our partner.

Since the late 1970s, the high-rise developments of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) have been dominated by gang violence and drugs, creating a sense of hopelessness among residents. Despite a lengthy war on crime, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, the CHA has been unable to reduce the violence that makes life intolerable. Focusing on three developments--Rockwell Gardens, Henry Horner Homes, and Harold Ickes Homes--Sue Popkin and her co-authors interview residents, community leaders, and CHA staff. The Hidden War chronicles the many failed efforts of the CHA to combat crime and improve its developments, offering a vivid portrait of what life is like when lived among bullets, graffiti, and broken plumbing. Most families living in these developments are headed by African American single mothers. The authors reveal the dilemmas facing women and children who are often victims or witnesses of violent crime, and yet are dependent on the perpetrators and their drug-dominant economy. The CHA--plagued by financial scandals, managerial incompetence, and inconsistent funding--is no match for thegang-dominated social order. Even well-intentioned initiatives such as the recent effort to demolish and "revitalize" the worst developments seem to be ineffective at combating crime, while the drastic changes leave many vulnerable families facing an uncertain future. The Hidden War sends a humbling message to policy makers and prognosticators who claim to know the right way to "solve poverty."

Skillfully interweaving Bernice's own eloquent words about her harrowing abuse with descriptions of other women's similar experiences and a rich synthesis of statistical findings, Jody Raphael demonstrates convincingly that domestic violence and dependence on public assistance are intricately linked. In a work that is sure to stir controversy, she challenges traditional views and stereotypes (conservative and liberal) about welfare recipients, arguing that many poor women are neither lazy nor paralyzed by a "culture of poverty," but instead are trapped by their batterers.
Bernice's ordeals at the hands of her abusive partner -- brutal beatings, violent rapes, threats on her life, stalking, blocked access to birth control, and sabotage of efforts to find a job -- resonate throughout the work. The experiences she relates provide crucial insights into the welfare system and illuminate its failures, successes, and potential in helping women like her.
This disquieting yet inspiring book puts a human face on the heated public policy debate over welfare reform. Above all, it is Bernice's life story and, through her voice, the story of countless other battered women who are isolated in poverty and welfare by the power and control of their abusers.