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Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences Research Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Urban Poverty & Community Development Rob Fischer, has been selected to write a commissioned paper for the upcoming White House Conference on Research Related to the Faith-Based and Community Initiative to be held in June 2008.
A new report from the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University addressing the foreclosure issue calls for refinancing loans or providing assistance to homeowners as an effort to maintain property values and prevent vandalism and deterioration to vacant structures.
When a regional nonprofit organization wanted to invest in distressed neighborhoods and to improve services to minority populations, it turned to Case’s Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences to help with research methods, data collection, and analysis.
According to Mark I. Singer, Ph.D., professor of social work at Case’s Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, police officers who get tough with neighborhood youth who are not committing any crimes are increasing, not decreasing, the potential for conflict.
Mental health and chemical dependency providers, administrators, policy makers, and advocates have become increasingly aware of the complex challenges related to the psychological, medical, social, and employment needs of people with severe mental illness, including those with a co-occurring substance use disorder. Accordingly, the Ohio Department of Mental Health approved the utilization of federal funding to establish a center focused on these issues.
Most children who are in foster care because of abuse or neglect come from poor families headed by single mothers who have historically relied upon welfare. While the child welfare system in the United States is dedicated to protecting children from maltreatment and returning foster children to their parents as soon as possible, public policies sometimes make this difficult.
Today, nearly ten times more children are being diagnosed with autism compared to 20 years ago. Associated with this trend has been a proliferation of intervention programs. Recently, a research team at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences led by Gerald Mahoney, Ph.D., the Verna Houck Motto Professor for Families and Communities, examined the impact of a newly developed intervention—Responsive Teaching (RT)—on 20 autistic, two and a half year old children.
Lillian F. Harris Professor Claudia Coulton has been examining outcomes following welfare reform since soon after the reform legislation was signed into law.

January 1, 2000 through September 1, 2007
It is now 6 months later and the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development, using its NEO CANDO database, has updated the results of the Behind the Numbers Brief Number 6, Houses in transition: a report on properties owned by financial institutions and real estate organizations in Cuyahoga County, 2007.
Behind the Numbers, BRIEF NO. 6, Titled "Houses in transition: A report on properties owned by financial institutions and real estate organizations in Cuyahoga County, 2007," discusses the rapid rise in foreclosure rates and housing abandonment in Cleveland and its surrounding suburbs.
This topic is garnering national attention and threatening to overwhelm the government agencies and community organizations that address the problem.
The Poverty Center has released its May 2007 Briefly Stated, "Space to learn and grow: Early care and education capacity in Cuyahoga County." This document summarizes recent research which investigates the effects of County programs which promote increased capactiy and quality in the region's childcare.
The Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development creates maps for numerous research projects that may be of interest to a wider audience. With this map of community gardens, prepared by the Center's Kristen Mikelbank, in collaboration with Matthew E. Russell of the Center for Health Promotion Research for his paper Steps to a Healthier Cleveland: 2006 Community Garden Report, the Center debuts its mapping series. View the map of Cleveland's Community Garden Sites by Neighborhood here.
Efforts to Stop Smoking Target Mental Health Agencies
Behavioral health staffs that need to take a smoke break might have some relief from their tobacco habits as they start tobacco cessation programs along with their mental health and substance abuse clients.
The Center for Evidence Based Practices, a joint program of Case Western Reserve University's Mandel School of Applied Social Science and the psychiatry department at the School of Medicine, have received a grant to design and implement tobacco cessation programs that target clients and staffs at behavioral health agencies.
Team Decisionmaking (TDM) is one of the four core strategies of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s foster care reform initiative called Family to Family. The foundation selected David Crampton, assistant professor of social work at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences to join a national research team that is evaluating the implementation of Family to Family.
Claudia Coulton, Co-Director of the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development, is presenting the Catalog of Administrative Data Sources for Neighborhood Indicators at the IASSIST (International Association for Social Science Information Services & Technology) 2007 Conference in Montreal. This monograph discusses using neighborhood indicators to identify problems, plan programs, stimulate community activism, target investments, evaluate initiatives and otherwise inform the community about itself.
Dean Grover Gilmore's research on visual perception and Alzheimer's disease literally brought new focus to the issue: His research found that it is age-related impaired visual perception that greatly affects the ability of older adults to perform well on intelligence tests. Read more about this ground-breaking research in an article from the 2007 issue of Case Western Reserve University's publication The Value of Research.
WCPN's Mhari Saito interviewed Mike Schramm, a programmer analyst at the Center on Urban Poverty, regarding an analysis that he did regarding the number of unrecorded sheriff's deeds in Cuyahoga County.
Presents "Building upon the work of others: The Cleveland Community Building Initiative Experience" to the Central Neighborhood Committee, at The Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland October 17, 2006

NEO CANDO expanded in depth and breadth, now including 17 northeast Ohio counties and data down to the parcel level.