General Reports and Other Publications
NHS: Following NICE clinical guidelines can help improve the care of people with long-term conditions who also have mental health problems, a leading thinktank says.
A new report by The King's Fund, ‘Long-term conditions and mental health: The cost of co-morbidities’, says following certain steps, such as those outlined in NICE guidelines, can ensure that mental health problems are identified.
ESRC: New research into the different ways that English and Polish people use language in everyday family situations can help members of each community to understand each other better and avoid cultural misunderstandings.
IPPR: New polling commissioned from YouGov by the think tank IPPR shows a worrying gap between the amount young people on low incomes have in savings accounts and their perception of how much they really need, in a report ‘Young people and savings’.
PC&PE: The House of Lords European Union Committee has recently published its report, ‘EU Area Crisis’ on the euro area crisis. The Committee agree with the Government that the optimum outcome from the December European Council meeting would have been an agreement on a new treaty to deal with the crisis signed by all Member States that protected UK interests.
TUC: Using the American U6 measure of unemployment - which includes unemployed, discouraged, marginally attached and under-employed workers - would mean unemployment in the UK standing at 6.3 million, higher than any point since the early 1990s, according to a new TUC analysis.
WWF: The first ever snow leopard prey survey in Bhutan’s newest national park has revealed astonishing footage of snow leopards scent-marking, a sub-adult snow leopard, Tibetan wolf, threatened Himalayan serow, musk deer and a healthy population of blue sheep, the main food source for snow leopards.
Press release ~ Photos & video associated with this release are available here ~ Climate Change Vulnerability assessment for Wangchuck Centennial Park (15Mb)
ESRC: 9 out of 10 people who were married or cohabiting talk, to their partner about their worries, according to data from Understanding Society, the world’s largest longitudinal household study of 40,000 UK households. 94% of those surveyed rely on their partner for support when a problem crops up. Family members & friends can also provide important sources of positive support, but mainly for women
Understanding where people receive emotional support from is important, researchers argue, because existing evidence suggests a 'buffering effect' of having positive social support in the face of shocks such as divorce, ill-health, bereavement, or losing your job. Having positive & strong social support also appears linked with better psychological & physical health.
IfG: The report ‘Coalition: Voters, Parties and Institutions’ brings together leading commentators, academics & political figures to examine how the coalition government came about, describe how it works, and look at the views of voters, backbenchers and the media.
TUC: There is a huge gap in the rhetoric the government uses on disability and the reality of how its policies impact on opportunities for disabled people, says the TUC. In its submission to the Office for Disability Issues (ODI) consultation on its 3-year strategy on disability, the TUC argues that for disabled people who are able to work, paid, decent, secure & safe employment is the best route out of poverty and is an important step towards social inclusion.
However, while the government says that disabled people need to do more to get into work and off benefits, its current policies are reducing the employment opportunities available to disabled people, says the TUC. The submission points out that ministers are making it even harder for disabled people to find a job - at a time when there are already far too few vacancies to provide the necessary opportunities for everyone looking for work.