Social policy planning in a federal structure: A social learning strategy

Current social welfare policy planning reflects an inadequate sense of the problems to be solved and an incentive structure which discourages responsible decision making. Proceeding from overly simple cause and effect models, social welfare policies are designed with detailed administrative regulations to insure uniformity and regularity of behavior across the states. When problems are not solved, policy makers focus on the failures of personnel to follow all the detailed regulations. This leads to additional efforts to enforce compliance. There is evidence that implementation personnel consistently and purposively do stretch or ignore regulations in order to service clients. An alternative to further detailed regulations then is to use the autonomy of state units in the federal structure by eliminating negative incentives to innovation and creating incentives to experiment with alternative programs. As a social learning strategy this would encourage innovation and make it possible to learn from the experience of personnel who daily confront the realities of welfare problems and the large array of administrative details.     

Total Client Sampling and a Test of Family Preservation Services

Abstract

This study evaluates a five year quasi-experiment in the provision of family preservation to families at imminent risk of placement, comparing outcomes with a five year baseline experience and “customary services” program in a similar city. Clients in the experimental group received concrete services and a large amount of psychotherapeutic care of one sort or another. Clients in the two comparison groups probably received similar amounts of concrete services but much less therapeutic care. Clients in the experimental group were placed at a much lower rate than clients in either comparison group. Moreover, the home environment of experimental clients also improved much more than the home environment of controls.     

Treatment services received in the CASAWORKS for Families program

This article presents information on treatment services received by women participating in an initial multistate evaluation of CASAWORKS families. Results indicated most women received services to address medical, employment, basic needs, alcohol and drug, family, and psychiatric problems during the first six months of the program. The clients also had frequent contact with their case managers and were retained in the program for an average of 222 days. Considerable variation was observed across sites in the percentage of clients who received various services and the number of sessions they received. In Cox regressions, shorter retention in the program was predicted by referral to program from Child Protective Services or parole/probation, social conflicts, employment, and marijuana use at baseline, whereas a history of suicide attempts was associated with longer retention. Longer retention was associated with better alcohol use outcomes but was unrelated to employment or drug use outcomes.     

Designing useful evaluations: The stakeholder survey

The failure of program evaluations to provide policy decision-makers with useful information is a familiar complaint. This paper discusses an approach towards designing and implementing more useful evaluations — the stakeholder survey. Stakeholders are individuals, or groups, who have a direct interest in the program being evaluated. The central premise of the paper is that the information needs of stakeholders should be incorporated directly into the formulation of evaluation objectives, and the design of the evaluation to achieve those objectives. The paper presents a rationale for the stakeholder survey, describes its major components, and reports on the application of the approach in a large program evaluation. Key issues involved in applying the approach are also considered. The evidence from this study suggests that such surveys are not only feasible, but also of considerable value to the evaluation team.     

Understanding Client Communities Spatially for Developing Effective Interventions: Application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Technology for Program Planning in Health and Human Services Agencies

Social workers are better equipped to understand the need to incorporate geographical aspects pertaining to their clients’ lives as part of their practice, given the significant influence these factors have on client well-being. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology is a useful tool for administrators and planners to make informed decisions regarding human service programs including examining program outcomes and impact as well as streamlining program implementation. This article synthesizes the literature to date on GIS in health and human services with examples of real world applications.     

Training Counselors to Use Computer‐Assisted Career Guidance Systems More Effectively: A Model Curriculum

A model graduate training curriculum that emphasizes the counselor's role in assisting clients in the effective use of computer‐assisted career guidance (CACG) systems is described. This 4‐module graduate training program emphasizes client readiness and exploration using CACG systems, skill building and simulation exercises, and service learning with career clients. The study is evaluated from the perspectives of counselor educators, counselor trainees, and career clients. Findings from 4 institutions support the efficacy of a model curriculum for graduate training and the beneficial outcomes of using CACG systems under appropriate conditions.     

Using client exit interviews to illuminate outcomes in program logic models: a case example

This paper describes how client exit interviews can assist human service administrators and workers to better understand the outcomes their programs are designed to accomplish. Specifically, the qualitative component of a demonstration family literacy program evaluation is used to illustrate how client input can be used to fine-tune the outcomes component of a program's logic model. An analysis of semi-structured exit interviews with 35 clients, who were randomly selected from all 89 served in the first year of the program, resulted in revision to the program's original logic model, creating explicit ‘testable’ pathways to achieving intended outcomes.     

Case management: lessons from earlier efforts

Case management is a major, new initiative in the provision of community support services to implement public policy of maintaining mental patients in the community. A review of the case management function as used in the anti-poverty program in the 1960s, shows that a case manager works in a task environment consisting of a multitude of independent service agencies, works within the culture of a core service agency, and relates to chronic clients. The case manager's position is shaped by each of these relationships. Each provides dimensions for a formative evaluation of the program. Case management evaluation can identify issues, and document problems to contribute to the rational redesign of our service system.     

Characteristics of the Homeless Mentally III in Case Management: Differentiation Using Major Diagnostic Categories

The homeless mentally ill are more disabled than other homeless people and require more services, but important variations exist. This study examined relationships between broad Axis I diagnostic clusters and demographic and service variables for 328 clients receiving case management at a community program for the chronic mentally ill homeless. Demographic characteristics, medical history, educational, psychological, and marital history, and case management variables were examined for psychotic, affective, and miscellaneous other clients. Differences were found in such areas as suicide attempts and current suicide status, psychiatric treatment history, education, overall impairment of functioning, length of time homeless, and time in case management but not in status at termination or number of senlices required. Psychotics had lower adaptive functioning, spent less time in case management, but had as successful outcomes as affective clients. Psychiatric diagnosis provides information that might assist case management for the homeless mentally ill.     

Characteristics of the homeless mentally ill in case management: Differentiation using major diagnostic categories

The homeless mentally ill are more disabled than other homeless people and require more services, but important variations exist. This study examined relationships between broad Axis I diagnostic clusters and demographic and service variables for 328 clients receiving case management at a community program for the chronic mentally ill homeless. Demographic characteristics, medical history, educational, psychological, and marital history, and case management variables were examined for psychotic, affective, and miscellaneous other clients. Differences were found in such areas as suicide attempts and current suicide status, psychiatric treatment history, education, overall impairment of functioning, length of time homeless, and time in case management but not in status at termination or number of services required. Psychotics had lower adaptive functioning, spent less time in case management, but had as successful outcomes as affective clients. Psychiatric diagnosis provides information that might assist case management for the homeless mentally ill.     

Ethnic and class factors affecting mental health clinic service

Service delivery by a mental health clinic to clients from an older suburban catchment area containing both lower and middle class blacks and whites was studied. The epidemiologic method was employed, relating service delivery to the characteristics of the various population groups within the catchment. The findings indicate that low service rates for blacks were not related to ethnicity alone, but to the combination of black ethnicity and low social status; however, middle class blacks and middle class whites who entered treatment received similar service. Poor blacks had higher admission rates than poor whites with similar need indicators. In continued treatment, poor blacks received lowest service rates while minority status poor whites living in a predominantly black area received highest service rates. Social class mediated black service utilization. Severity of illness, interacting with social class and minority status mediated white service utilization. Outreach is suggested not only for poor blacks but also for poor whites, especially those living in areas in which they represent an ethnic minority.     

For-Profit Welfare: Contracts, Conflicts, and the Performance Paradox

This article examines how financial inducements in performancecontracts shape the inner workings of a for-profit welfare-to-worktraining program serving long-term recipients. Our work paysparticular attention to how contract requirements shape relationshipsbetween manager and line staff and their treatment of clients.We argue that contract design, coupled with bottom-level managementefforts to meet contractual obligations, leads to a performanceparadox—the same actions taken to achieve contractualresults ironically produce negative program practice and poorclient outcomes. Thus, rigidly constructed legal agreementsbetween the government and private service providers can distortincentive structures, causing programmatic conflicts betweenmanagement and staff, and do little to reduce long-term welfareuse and diminish recipients' poverty.     

Characteristics of Gamblers Using a National Online Counselling Service for Problem Gambling

Immediate interventions for a range of health concerns are increasingly being delivered online due to their ease of access and potential to attract new treatment cohorts. This paper describes the development and implementation of a national Australian real time chat and email service for problem gambling. Between September 2009 and September 2011, over 85,000 people visited Gambling Help Online. In addition, 1,722 people engaged in real time chat with trained gambling counsellors, while 299 accessed the email support program. Almost 70 % of people accessing these programs were seeking treatment for the first time, with email contacts significantly more likely to be new treatment seekers (78.0 %) compared with chat clients (68.1 %). Chat clients were more likely to be male than female and aged under 40 years, while email clients, while still highly accessed by young males, were more often female and aged over 40 years. These initial findings suggest that online counselling provides an important alternate mode of service delivery, which is attractive to new treatment seekers. Further research is required to determine the efficacy and impact of this service type on long-term gambling outcomes.     

“Dirty” research in “real” places: A practitioner's guide to program evaluation in the human services

Traditional models of evaluation have often fallen short of their potential for improving services to clients. Using illustrations from a study of client turnover in group homes for troubled youth, this paper discusses practical ways to increase the impact of program evaluation in human service settings.     

From Practice Evaluation to Agency Evaluation

Abstract

This paper describes the efforts that a family service agency undertook to develop a workable evaluation program as part of a United Way demonstration project. Integrating basic elements from single subject design and goal attainment scaling with program logic modeling, a simple system for collecting and compiling data on clinical outcomes was created that could provide feedback on the progress of individual cases to workers, and agency wide improvement rates to clinic administrators and funding agencies. The model that evolved is manageable because it is simple, was developed by the clinical staff, serves a clinical purpose, meets the expectations of funding sources, and actively engages clients, workers and supervisors in an ongoing process of monitoring progress. Sample forms used to gather data are presented along with the results and next steps for the evaluation process.     

A Multi-Method Evaluation of the Teen Pregnancy Hotline in Taiwan

The present study examines the outputs and qualities of the thirteen teen pregnancy service hotlines in Taiwan that were funded by the Children’s Bureau in 2004 and 2005. The evaluation was made through agency visits, focus groups, document reviews, call-in tests and the use of a management information system. The results show that the average number of calls was low, and one agency did not receive any calls during the time period examined. The quality of services varied, and the advice provided by the hotline staff was influenced by the value orientation of the agencies. Most callers were adult women, and the major services they received were information and emotional support. The service characteristics were heavily affected by the goals and routine tasks of the agencies as certain agencies applied their existing services to the program without assessing their fitness to the needs of the potential clients. Suggestions for service improvement are provided, including an islandwide hotline to be set up and operated by a single agency with high accountability. Implications for program monitoring and documentation, staff training and knowledge-sharing, and service advertisement and promotion are also discussed.     

Program implementation and evaluation results: A reexamination of type III error in a field experiment

This paper reexamines the implementation results obtained from a true experiment in criminal justice. The original analyses found a significant difference in employment outcome between the control group and those experimental clients who received the highest level of treatment. The present analyses attempt to bracket true treatment effects by partitioning both experimental and control groups into treated and untreated subgroups, and by combining data from two independent sources. The original results do not obtain when implementation of the control treatment is also considered in the analysis. Corroborating earlier findings, a positive association was found between magnitude of experimental treatment implementation and employment, but it was unclear that the experimental program was responsible for this relationship. The limitations of the experimental design for disentangling effective components of treatment are discussed. The paper provides an example of the utility of secondary analysis for understanding evaluation results.     

Using database linkages to measure innovation,commercialization, and survival of small businesses

Here, we report the results of an outcomes evaluation of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). Since the programs’ inception, assessments of the SBIR/STTR programs at several federal agencies have utilized surveys of former grantees as the primary source of data. Response rates have typically been low, making non-response bias a potential threat to the validity of some of these studies’ results. Meanwhile, the availability of large publicly-available datasets continues to grow and methods of text mining and linking databases continue to improve. By linking NIGMS grant funding records, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office data, and business intelligence databases, we explored innovation, commercialization and survival for recipients of NIGMS SBIR/STTR funding. In doing so, we were able to more completely assess several key outcomes of the NIGMS SBIR/STTR program. Our evaluation demonstrated that the NIGMS program performed above baseline expectations along all dimensions, and comparably to other federal agency SBIR/STTR grant programs. In addition, we show that the use of extant data increasingly is a viable, less expensive, and more reliable approach to gathering data for evaluation studies.     

Effect of Brief Staff‐Assisted Career Service Delivery on Drop‐In Clients

Brief staff‐assisted career counseling services based on cognitive information processing theory were evaluated using 138 drop‐in clients who completed pre‐ and postintervention self‐report measures of knowledge about next steps, confidence in making next steps, and anxiety about career concerns. Significant changes occurred in each dimension and were significantly associated with the quality of career adviser interaction. Participants rated the experience as highly positive. Decreases in anxiety about career concerns were unrelated to the intervention. Implications include that a brief service delivery model yields positive outcomes for many clients but requires adjustments in organizational culture, physical environment, practitioner approaches, and client expectations. Future research should examine relational variables related to decreased anxiety with a brief service delivery model, the degree to which this approach works with specific career needs, and client attributes leading to successful versus unsuccessful outcomes with this model.