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Local Agencies (local + agencies)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	60%

Selected Abstracts

Disaster mental health training programmes in New York City following September 11, 2001

DISASTERS, Issue 3 2010
Kimberly B. Gill
The need for mental health resources to provide care to the community following large-scale disasters is well documented. In the aftermath of the World Trade Center (WTC) disaster on September 11, 2001, many local agencies and organizations responded by providing informal mental health services, including disaster mental health training for practitioners. The quality of these programmes has not been assessed, however. The National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's School of Public Health reviewed disaster mental health training programmes administered by community-based organizations, professional associations, hospitals, and government agencies after September 11. Results indicate that the quality and the effectiveness of programmes are difficult to assess. A wide range of curricula and a widespread lack of recordkeeping and credentialing of trainers were noted. Most of the training programmes provided are no longer available. Recommendations for improving the quality of disaster mental health training programmes are provided. [source]

Alternative Pathways to Community and Economic Development: The Latrobe Valley Community Partnering Project

GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2005
JENNY CAMERON
Abstract Conventional approaches to development in areas that are experiencing economic decline invariably focus on business growth through interventions such as incentives, infrastructure development and job readiness training. This paper reports on a pilot project aimed at developing an alternative approach to community and economic development in the context of the Latrobe Valley, Victoria, a resource region that has experienced downsizing and privatisation of its major employer, the state-owned power industry. The project was shaped by a poststructuralist concern with the effects of representation. It sought to challenge familiar understandings of disadvantaged areas, the economy, community and the research process in order to open up new ways of addressing social and economic issues. The resulting four-stage research project was informed by the techniques of asset-based community development and action research, as well as by discourses of the diverse economy and communities of difference. During the two-year span of the project, four community enterprises were developed. The varying degrees of success they have met with in the four years since the project concluded highlight the critical role of local agencies such as the council in providing ongoing support for such endeavours. [source]

Review of the Integrated Groundwater and Surface-Water Model (IGSM)

GROUND WATER, Issue 2 2003
Eric M. LaBolle
Development of the finite-element-based Integrated Groundwater and Surface-Water Model (IGSM) began in the 1970s. Its popularity grew in the early 1990s with its application to California's Central Valley Groundwater Surface-Water Model in support of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act. Since that time, IGSM has been applied by federal, state, and local agencies to model a number of major basins in California. Our review of the recently released version 5.0 of IGSM reveals a solution methodology that deviates from established solution techniques, potentially compromising its reliability under many circumstances. One difficulty occurs because of the semi-explicit time discretization used. Combined with the fixed monthly time step of IGSM, this approach can prevent applications from accurately converging when using parameter values typically found in nature. Additionally, IGSM fails to properly couple and simultaneously solve ground water and surface water models with appropriate mass balance and head convergence under the reasonable conditions considered herein. As a result, IGSM-predicted streamflow is error prone, and errors could exceed 100%. IGSM does not inform the user that there may be a convergence problem with the solution, but instead generally reports good mass balance. Although our review touches on only a few aspects of the code, which exceeds 17,000 lines, our experience is that similar problems arise in other parts of IGSM. Review and examples demonstrate the potential consequences of using the solution methods in IGSM for the prediction, planning, and management of water resources, and provide perspective on the roles of standards and code validation in ground water modeling. [source]

Measuring outcomes of United Way,funded programs: Expectations and reality

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR EVALUATION, Issue 119 2008
Michael Hendricks
In 1996, United Way of America (UWA) developed and began disseminating the most widely used approach to program outcome measurement in the nonprofit sector. Today an estimated 450 local United Ways encourage approximately 19,000 local agencies they fund to measure outcomes. The authors first describe and then assess the strengths and limitations of the distinguishing features of the UWA approach, efforts to disseminate the approach, implementation by local United Ways, and actual outcome measurement by local agencies. The chapter ends with a description of United Way's relatively new emphasis on community impact and how that initiative relates to program outcome measurement. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]

Government Intervention in the Muda Irrigation Scheme, Malaysia: ,actors', expectations and outcomes

THE GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL, Issue 3 2000
CLARE L. JOHNSON
At the dawn of the third millennium the problems associated with large-scale irrigation lie largely unresolved. The outcomes of government policies rarely correspond with expectations, leading to conflict and misunderstanding between federal governments, local agencies and farmers. This paper examines the mis-match of expectations between policy implementors and policy recipients in the implementation of one government policy (tertlary intervention) in the Muda irrigation scheme, Malaysia. The findings illustrate that this policy is not achieving the productivity increase or water saving expectations for which it was designed. Instead, tertiary intervention has increased the capacity of the farmers to unofficially control the distribution and supply of the water resource and to engage in off-farm productive and non-productive activities. This results in: a significant over-supply of water; the inefficient use of this supply; and a reduction in yields without a reduction in incomes. Importantly, tertiary intervention has enabled the farmers to diversify their livelihood strategies whilst retaining access to the rice-farming culture. The findings presented in this paper serve to illustrate the significance of ,actor'expectations on policy outcomes and agrarian change. [source]