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In the News

Newswire – EA:  Drier than Morocco!!!! - The Environment Agency (EA) has recently set out plans to help secure future water supplies and a healthy water environment. 

Water resources are already under pressure in many parts of England & Wales. In England, some 25m people live in areas where there is less water available per person than Spain or Morocco. The average person in England & Wales currently uses 148 litres – 260 pints – every day.

The Water Resources Strategy Action Plan sets the direction for how the EA and other groups will protect & improve water resources in the future.  The EA wants to work with industry to introduce an extended water efficiency labelling system for appliances.  It will continue to promote near-universal water metering of households in England, prioritising the most water stressed areas first.
 
The plan builds upon the organisation’s water resources strategy for England & Wales published in 2009. A separate action plan for Wales has been developed based on the Water Resources Strategy for Wales.
NAO: Short prison sentences ineffective in addressing underlying causes of criminal behaviour - More could be done to rehabilitate prisoners serving short sentences and reduce their risk of re-offending, according to a new National Audit Office report.

The National Offender Management Service (NOMS), responsible for managing such prisoners, has little information on the quality, cost or effectiveness of its rehabilitation activities.

More than 60,000 prisoners serve sentences of less than 12 months each year at a cost to NOMS of around £300m.  These prisoners present a significant challenge to NOMS: they tend to have more previous convictions than other offenders (an average of 16 previous convictions each) and, as a group, they also have a high level of homelessness, joblessness and drug & alcohol problems.

NOMS is currently struggling to manage this group effectively, in part because most spend 6 weeks or less in prison and the provision of daytime activity for them is generally inadequate to meet HM Inspectorate of Prisons' standards for a healthy prison.
Press release ~ NAO: Managing offenders on short custodial sentences ~ Reducing Prisoner Re-offending ~ Making Good ~ Youth Rehabilitation Order (YRO) ~ MoJ: Youth justice ~ London Criminal Justice Board ~ Heron Unit ~ Mayor's youth plan 'Time for Action' ~ Youth Crime Action Plan ~ YCAP One Year On ~ Feltham Young Offenders Institution ~ NOMS Alliances  ~ NOMS: Education, training and employment ~ NOMS: Accommodation ~ Offender Learning and Skills Service (OLASS) ~ EDM - Communication Difficulties and Young Offenders ~ BBC NEWS - Communication skills 'cut re-offending' ~ Working with employers to Reducing Re-offending – A Practitioners’ Toolkit ~ Locking up or giving up? Why custody thresholds for teenagers aged 12, 13 and 14 ~ Barnardo’s ~ Children in Trouble Campaign ~ Locking up or giving up - is custody for children always the right answer? ~ Community sentencing: Public Perceptions and Attitudes - Summary Research Report ~ Alternatives to Custody ~ Sacro ~ Restorative Justice Scotland: YouthJustice ~ SAP: Breach of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order ~ Re-offending of juvenile statistics ~  Reducing Re-offending Pathways ~  Community Sentencing - Reducing Re-offending, Changing Lives ~  NOMS third sector action plan 'Working with the third sector to reduce re-offending' ~ Toolkit: Local Solutions to Reduce Re-offending by Adult and Young Offenders ~  Reducing Re-Offending through Skills and Employment: Next Steps ~ Family Intervention Projects (FIPs) toolkit ~  Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) ~ DCSF: Family Intervention Projects - An Evaluation of their Design, Set-up and Early Outcomes ~ Advice: Sentencing principles - youths ~ HM Inspectorate of Prisons: Report on Young Offenders in Adult Establishments ~ Lets talk about it - A review of healthcare in the community for young people who offend ~ 'Transitions: a Social Exclusion Unit interim report on young adults' ~ Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists ~ BBC NEWS - Communication skills 'cut re-offending' ~ Read the former Chief Inspector of Prisons, Lord Ramsbotham’s, statement to the House of Lords on the value of speech and language therapy in prisons (scroll down to column 1447) ~ Justice Seen Justice Done ~ Office for Criminal Justice Reform ~ Publicising Individual Sentencing Outcomes to the Community ~ Publicising Criminal Convictions: The Importance of Telling the Public ~ Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime ~ You Be The Judge ~ Magistrates’ Association community engagement programmes

DH:  Ensuring everyone gets primary health care - A new short study - Inclusion Health - outlines how improvements in health care for the most excluded groups in society can be accelerated to ensure high quality services are available to all. 

The joint study by the Department for Health and the Social Exclusion Task Force in the Cabinet Office examined how well the primary health care needs of vulnerable groups are being met.

It concluded that considerable progress has been made, but also highlighted that socially excluded groups often have complex needs and require a sophisticated & flexible response from service providers.  In order to bring about improvements, the Government will support the delivery of the Inclusion Health agenda by establishing a National Inclusion Health Board.
Press release ~ Inclusion Health ~ DH: Health Inequalities ~ Marmot Review ~ ScotGov: Early Years Framework ~ Equally Well - health inequalities framework ~ Achieving our Potential - anti-poverty framework ~ IDeA: Healthy Communities Direction of Travel Survey results 2009 ~ Healthy Communities programme ~ Working Neighbourhood funding ~ CLG - Neighbourhood renewal ~ WNF Reward (scroll down and click on relevant link) ~ Ends and Means: The Future Roles of Social Housing in England ~ Reaching Out: An Action Plan on Social Exclusion ~ The Nurse-Family Partnership Programme: Implementation in England Second year in 10 pilot sites: the infancy period ~ Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) programme ~ New updated Child Health Promotion Programme (CHPP) ~ The Contribution of the NHS to Reducing Health Inequalities: Written Evidence to the House of Commons Health Select Committee submitted by Unite (Amicus Section) ~ Community Practitioners' and Health Visitors' Association ~ Health Profiles ~ Scottish Poverty Information Unit at Glasgow Caledonian University ~ DH – Infant mortality ~ Implementation plan for reducing health inequalities in infant mortality: a good practice guide ~ JRF – Child Poverty ~ End Child Poverty coalition ~ Child Poverty Action Group ~ Eradicating Child Poverty in Wales: Measuring Success ~ United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child ~ Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland ~ IRISS - Severe Child Poverty in Scotland ~ Estimating the Cost of Child Poverty - Approaches and Evidence ~ Taking Forward The Government Economic Strategy: A Discussion Paper on Tackling Poverty, Inequality and Deprivation in Scotland ~ Fairer Scotland Fund ~ Children and Families Measure ~ Children in Wales ~ Children in severe poverty in Wales: an agenda for action ~ Eradicating Child Poverty in Wales: Measuring Success ~ ‘Child Poverty Solutions Wales’ website ~ Toolkits ~ JRF: Combating child poverty in Wales: are effective education strategies in place? ~ Child Poverty Solutions Wales- Briefing (3) ~ ‘Ending Child Poverty: Making it Happen’ ~ CRC response to the consultation ~ Tackling Health Inequalities, 10 Years On ~ DH – Infant mortality ~ Implementation plan for reducing health inequalities in infant mortality: a good practice guide

MoD:  Essential development if our forces are ever to come home - 27 Afghan Aircrew are being trained in Wiltshire as part of a 2-year programme run by the UK Joint Helicopter Command (JHC), supported throughout by QinetiQ.  Training of the Afghan Pilots & flight engineers began in February 2008 at Boscombe Down under Project Curium.

The aircrew have been trained on fixed wing & rotary wing aircraft and are nearing the completion of their training in the UK in March 2010.  They will fly the Mi-17 when they return to Afghanistan, where their training will continue.   The crews trained here in UK are the seed corn of an indigenous Afghan National Security Force helicopter capability.
Forthcoming Events: Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit | 17-18 May 2010 | Lancaster London - The world’s most important gathering of new and established enterprise architects, strategists and senior level IT managers in their quest to strengthen and manage business and IT alignment. For many organizations, traditional approaches to EA are no longer relevant. Those at the vanguard are taking entirely new approaches, to harmonize business and IT. The problem isn't about architecting IT alone. It's about architecting the business within a larger business ecosystem. You have to keep up with this changing landscape, and the efficient and comprehensive place to do this is at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit. You'll acquire the tools and techniques to differentiate EA from being just another IT discipline, focus on redefining the relationship between IT and business, and get your bearings on how EA is changing and where its transformation can lead you and your organization for the better.

Click here to find out more and to register for the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit.

ESRC: Some of this week’s events at the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Festival of Social Science (12 -21 March 2010):

* Fear and loathing in Sheffield: public fear in an urban landscape (Wednesday 17 March 2010 2 - 4pm)

Members of the public are invited to participate in the experiment called: 'Fear and loathing in Sheffield: Public fear in an urban landscape’.  The experiment will explore the factors that contribute to people's fear of crime. In Britain, the fear of crime generally outweighs the actual risk of crime, but because the fear of crime is damaging to people's wellbeing, it is often seen as a social problem in its own right.  Related press release

* Communicating with your baby (Thursday 18 March 10am - 4pm)
Baby sign language is increasingly popular in the UK. It is based on hand gestures, which enable mothers to interact with their baby before he or she is able to talk.  This method means infants can communicate if they are hungry or want to play.  The event is targeted at mothers, especially those from low income backgrounds who want to bond better with their babies and learn interaction techniques. Related press release

Social science underpins many of Britain's most successful public policies from poverty alleviation, macroeconomics to crime prevention. Conversely, a lack of social science and the evidence it provides often leads to failed policies. Wishing to increase the impact of social science, a distinguished panel will discuss how research can strengthen its involvement in policymaking. Related press release
 
For information on other forthcoming public sector events please click HERE to visit the WGPlus Events Calendar
 
 
Date Posted
15/03/2010
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