Transport experiences of people with disabilities during learnerships

Transport is a known national barrier for people with disabilities in South Africa. It is similarly identified as a barrier in learnerships and economic opportunity programmes. This article discusses the extent to which transport is a barrier during learnerships for students with disabilities. The Department of Transport administered an online evaluation questionnaire to a random sample of students with disabilities. Results were coded in terms of 'barriers to access' and 'barriers to participation'. The data were organised into themes. The collated evidence is discussed in this article. The findings demonstrated that transport barriers were present in different modes of transport and different parts of the travel chain. However, the findings also demonstrated the negative impact of transport on the learnership experience and economic opportunities. The findings indicated that inaccessible transport is an integral cause of learnership incompletion for students with disabilities, where the universal accessibility of both transport and the built environment are a prerequisite need. Most students with disabilities reported that transport was not a barrier to learnership participation or that problems with transport could be resolved. Nevertheless, it was one of the identified barriers that negatively affected learnership participation experiences. It was a significant barrier to learnership completion for students with the most severe experience of disability. The sample consisted of only 32 students and a high number of unspecified responses. Evidence from other studies indicates that transport for all persons with disabilities remains a barrier warranting further examination, because public transport has remained inaccessible for over 23 years. Further research is required to verify this study and to investigate learnership cost­benefit for all students

"Breaking the chain of poverty": family planning, community involvement, and the Population Council-Office of Economic Opportunity alliance.

The Office of Economic Opportunity-Population Council program is an example of a mid-twentieth-century federal government/private foundation cooperative effort to place family planning and maternal health at the center of a fight against entrenched poverty. These joint efforts were the trend in family planning and maternal health provision by the 1960s and had two overlapping but also contradictory goals. The first was to provide contraceptive services to poor women to reduce the numbers of poor children, thus relieving the poor of added mouths to feed. Popular fears of a population explosion, mounting welfare rolls, and an increase in the numbers of African Americans receiving welfare fueled this goal. The second aim, however, was to expand comprehensive maternal health services to help reduce poverty by increasing poor women's involvement in and control over the health institutions that could have significant impact on their lives. While the first goal pivoted on encouraging poor women to bear fewer children, the second sought to integrate poor women into community healthcare delivery systems.

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Grants.gov is your source to FIND and APPLY for federal government grants. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is proud to be the managing partner for Grants.gov, an initiative that is having an unparalleled impact on the grant community. Learn more about Grants.gov and determine if you are eligible for grant opportunities offered on this site.

The new federal role in education and family services: goal setting without responsibility.

This article explores the diminishing role of federal government following a series of legislative mandates to maximize equal educational opportunity; it also examines the escalating poverty rate resulting from the economic restructuring of the country. It calls for systemic reform in education, health, and human services followed by an integration of these services.

Identification and reporting of child maltreatment by Head Start personnel: attitudes and experiences.

A two-part questionnaire was administered to 143 Head Start personnel in order to determine how personal characteristics of the Head Start workers and the characteristics of the families they serve, affect the identification and reporting of child maltreatment. Of additional interest was whether some forms of maltreatment, once identified, would be more likely to be reported than other forms of maltreatment. The results support the efficacy of educational programs in child maltreatment for increasing the identification and reporting of maltreatment by workers. They also indicate that there are complex interactions between certain characteristics of the reporter (e.g., educational level) and prior training in maltreatment identification. Finally, neglect, although more frequently identified by the workers, appears to be least likely of all forms of maltreatment to be reported to official sources. Results are discussed in light of their implications for future research and practical application.

Changes in children's behavior after a natural disaster.

Five months after a severe winter storm, a survey of children whose behavior had been assessed by means of a parent rating scale during a Head Start program 6 months before the disaster showed that some problem-behavior scores had increased significantly. The subgroups of children at higher risk were boys, whose Anxiety scale scores increased, and children accepted for Head Start only because their parents said they had special needs, whose Aggressive Conduct scale scores increased. For the entire group of children, school behavior improved. The findings support previous impressions that parents deny their children's problems after a natural disaster.

Consumerism: the tables are turning.

The consumer movement as we have known it in the past may have a diminished function in the coming decade as business and industry and government exert increasing power as buyers of health services on behalf of the people.

The pre-employment inquiry guide.

In recent years, government regulation of both EEO and affirmative action has grown rapidly. As a result, the road to hiring an employee is strewn with pitfalls for the unaware and the uninitiated. This practical guide, written for the practicing personnel manager, takes account of the latest government directives in the field and should prove a valuable tool for anyone involved in the business of hiring.

Structural conflicts in the neighborhood health center program: the national and local perspectives.

The paper reports the findings of a study of the neighborhood health center (NHC) program which was initiated by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) in 1965. The study focuses on the structure of the NHC system (funding agency, operating agency, and community board), analyzes the goals of the different sets of actors, and argues that the conflicts which evolved within the system were the natural outcome of the divergence in the goals of the different actors. Based on a series of 88 in-depth interviews with key health officials in OEO as well as project officers in NHCs throughout the country, the study suggests a framework for a more comprehensive analysis of the outcome of the NHC program and notes the implications of these findings for some current health legislation.

Innovations: components of bundles.

Acceptance by target populations of new programs funded by government is a phenomenon which one should be able to explain with existing innovation theory. In a study of a newly formed group health practice, funded in part by OEO, it is found that a commonly used set of predictors has little utility in explaining individuals' adoption decisions or their levels of knowledge and attitudes regarding the program. Additional analysis suggests that the ways in which potential and actual clients reacted to certain components of the program "bundle" determined their decisions.