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Advocates Say Rise In Inquires About Adoption, Abortion Linked To Recession
Several large adoption agencies are reporting an increase in the number of women with unintended pregnancies who are considering adoption, a trend that some advocates say is tied to the recession, USA Today reports. Scott Mars of American Adoptions said that he has observed a 10% to 12% increase in the past year in the number of women asking about adoption and a 7% to 10% increase in actual placements. Mars said that the economy has led women to "take a second look at adoption." Adam Pertman of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a research group, said, "Finances are one of the major reasons women feel compelled to place their children for adoption." According to USA Today, more women also are considering delaying pregnancy or inquiring about abortion because of financial factors. A recent Gallup poll found that the economy has prompted one in 10 married women to delay pregnancy. Vicki Saporta of the National Abortion Federation, which represents abortion providers, said that calls to the group"s hotline have increased nearly threefold since 2008 and that many of the calls have come from women who have experienced job loss in their families.According to Joan Jaeger of the Chicago-area adoption agency The Cradle, about 30% more women are asking about placing a child for adoption than in 2008. She noted that many of the women inquiring about adoption are in their 20s and have at least one child. Joseph Sica of Adoption by Shepherd Care said he has seen a "dramatic increase in girls calling us from the hospital" who are interested in placing a child for adoption. Sica said that many of these women expect to receive assistance in raising their infants but inquire about adoption after they give birth and find that little help is available. He said that in 2008 his agency facilitated 14 such adoptions, an increase from 11 in 2007 and four in 2006. However, Chuck Johnson -- chief operating officer of the advocacy group the National Council for Adoption -- said that the percentage of women who place a child for adoption remains low overall, which he attributed to access to legal abortion and greater societal acceptance of single parenthood. Data from the National Center for Health Statistics show that before abortion became legal in 1973, one in five never-married white women and one in 10 never-married women overall placed a child for adoption after giving birth. Since then, that rate has "plummeted," USA Today reports. A 2002 survey, the most recent available, found that only 1% of such women placed a child for adoption (Koch, USA Today, 5/19).
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Some Governors Oppose Medicaid Expansion Proposals
"Some governors are pushing to scale back or kill proposals to expand Medicaid to provide health-care coverage to the uninsured, raising a new challenge to President Barack Obama"s effort to overhaul the system," The Wall Street Journal reports. Health care proposals in the House and Senate "would expand the program to cover at least a third of the nation"s 46 million uninsured, but states are worried they would get stuck with a big part of the tab." Medicaid is "expected to be a primary topic" when a group of governors -- "including Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington and Republican Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi" -- head to Washington, D.C., this week "to discuss health care with White House and congressional officials."
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British Dental Association Reaction To Publication Of Earnings And Expenses Statistics
Statistics released yesterday by the NHS Information Centre reflect a year when dentists were working hard to make the new dental contract of 2006 work, according to the British Dental Association (BDA). The Dental Earnings and Expenses, England and Wales, 2007/08 report, which considers the earnings of dentists who undertook NHS work in England or Wales in the second year of the new contract, paints a picture of earnings settling after a transitional year in 2006/07.
Cardiovascular

Nurses Open To Idea Of Robots

Front-line staff in the nursing and care sector would welcome sensor and robot technology in nursing homes and the homes of elderly people. The reason is that such a move would free up time that personnel could use for social contact with clients. They also believe that sensors and robots will enable elderly people to stay longer in their own homes. These are some of the results of a study carried out by SINTEF for the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities. The background for the study is the "elderly boom" and the challenges that the nursing and care sector will face when fewer and fewer people of working age have to look after a rapidly growing population of old people. Freeing up time The survey found that staff regard cleaning, and moving and lifting patients as potential applications for "care and nursing robots". They also concluded that the development and introduction of new technology should take place in such a way that the level of social support that they provide will be maintained, or preferably, be improved. Several different categories of nursing and care personnel in Porsanger, Kongsberg and Trondheim were interviewed; of these, 29 individual staff members were interviewed in depth. At first, many of the informants were sceptical to the idea of introducing robots into Norwegian homes and nursing homes. However, in the course of the interviews many of them began to mention situations in which they could imagine using a robot. Help with dirty clothes "It is worth noting that the staff still prefer themselves to perform tasks that currently require personal contact. However, they would like routine tasks such as dealing with dirty clothes to be handled by a robot," says Kristine HolbÃñ of SINTEF Technology and Society, who led the project. Safety sensors Where sensors are concerned, many care and nursing personnel are most concerned about monitoring the safety of old people. One home nursing respondent mentioned that if people who live at home need to have their health monitored by sensors, they ought to be in a nursing home! As part of the project, SINTEF also carried out a survey of existing and potential technology that could be relevant to the needs mentioned by the interviewees. However, project manager Kristine HolbÃñ warns our politicians that they should not use the report as a signal to let a whole raft of technologies loose in the care and nursing sector. "So far, we have only interviewed personnel. The next step will be to talk to all the user groups, map their wishes and needs, and start to test remedies on a small scale," says HolbÃñ. Avoiding "technology push" The project manager also emphasises that it is by no means certain that modern technology is the answer to all the problems of this sector, but that mechanical solutions and organisational changes may be the best in certain cases. "We need to be sure that any devices that we introduce are functional, and have to avoid "pushing" technology onto the users," says HolbÃñ, who also points out that there already exist technologies that could have been used successfully, but which were stopped by bureaucratic barriers. "For example, consider the situation of a dementia patient who walks out of the house in the middle of the night and wanders around the streets. This could easily be prevented by a simple door-mounted alarm that warns a monitoring centre, but the way things are today, such a person virtually must be declared mentally incompetent before this type of alarm can be installed. And while the mills of officialdom grind exceedingly slow, the patient may well become so reduced that she or he has already been admitted to a nursing home by the time that the alarm can be installed." SINTEF


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