Natural and man-made disasters have gained attention at all levels of policy-making in recent years. Emergency management tasks are inherently complex and unpredictable, and often require coordination among multiple organizations across different levels and locations. Effectively managing various knowledge areas and the organizations involved has…

Employability skills are central to gaining and keeping employment (e.g. whether paid or unpaid, as an employee or self employed) as well as career progression. The lack of such skills is regularly referred to as one reason for the United Kingdom's often cited long tail of underachievement. Employability skills are at the forefront of government…

Recruitment of African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian-Americans is a priority across the federal government. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) must report annually on minority employment, and its findings show some gains. Overall, minorities were 33% of the federal work force in 2008, meaning they were…

This article explores the impact of the Every Child Matters agenda on a group of multi-agency professionals with regard to a number of key issues--such as leadership, multi-agency collaboration, and individual practice. One of the main challenges concerning the successful implementation of the ECM agenda is to ensure that effective training is…

A Washington research group is raising questions about the wisdom of the U.S. Department of Education's favored strategies for turning around the lowest-performing schools with stimulus funding, saying that its research shows that similar federal approaches to school restructuring have not been effective. The questions raised by the new study were…

This column provides brief summaries of transition-related articles published in 2008 in other professional journals. The 70 articles included descriptive, experimental, and qualitative research as well as program descriptions, conceptual papers, and practitioner pieces. All areas of Kohler's (1996) Kohler, P. D. (1996). "Preparing youth with…

In the emerging literature, cases involving recurring, unsubstantiated allegations of child sexual abuse have generally been categorized as Munchausen by proxy. Recent scholars have recommended restricting the label to the original conceptualization, involving purposeful deception motivated by psychological needs for medical attention. This leaves…

With the dissemination of its Innovation Strategy in 2002, the Canadian government further solidified its commitment to a knowledge-based national competitiveness strategy. Through the unfolding of a multi-million dollar Workplace Skills Strategy (WSS) agency, and the launch of two research agencies, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and…

An analysis of spending trends that is designed to discourage policy makers' focus on finding new revenue rather than reining in spending suggests that the model for financing colleges has reinforced educational inequities and failed to increase the rate at which students graduate. According to the analysis, "serious fault lines" in the current…

This article looks at policy for quality assurance and evaluation in Scotland, its history and more recent developments, and in particular, at the emphasis on school self-evaluation. It examines the history of the concept, its constituent elements and the role of the Inspectorate in establishing it. Further, the article discusses the Scottish…

This paper, the second in a series of two guideline papers emerging from the 2007 Best Practices for Mental Health in Child Welfare Consensus Conference, provides an overview of the key issues related to parent support and youth empowerment in child welfare and presents consensus guidelines in these important areas. The paper also discusses some…

In an attempt to move, if not balance, the scales of activity toward increasing scientific capability across a diverse national population, U.S. federal funding agencies are purposefully linking research funding to broad national impact. Among United States federal agencies, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has led the way in the integration…

Every year, the ministry writes to the public post-secondary institutions outlining operating budget allocations, service delivery targets and priority issues. The letters are a component of ministry planning, as identified in the accountability framework. Goals and objectives are identified in the annual ministry service plan. Each institution…

Resources are listed for community college vocational educators working with handicapped students. The bibliography first provides an operational definition of "handicapped" and then enumerates and annotates resources under the following topics and bibliographic forms: (1) assessment of the vocational educational needs of the handicapped, (2)…

A study was conducted in a single four-county region in Minnesota to determine the nature and extent of nonformal education, or educational programs designed for people who have completed secondary education (or who are beyond the compulsory school age) and which are offered by any institution or agency outside the traditional postsecondary…