Measuring outcomes for children late placed for adoption

Selecting appropriate measures to assess the outcomes of permanent placement across a broad range of developmental dimensions is problematic. The Maudsley team are adapting and developing a package of instruments designed to identify the key influences on developmental recovery for a longitudinal sample of children late placed for adoption.     

What kind of information will be required if we are to reform health care?

The only logical way to avoid unnecessary future costs and improve quality is to analyze the past, providing input for the present. The informational management strategies are ready. There is continuous quality improvement, profiling with case-mix adjustment, and other techniques that will help us manage care and caring. But these strategies all rely on the customer being empowered to make truly informed decisions (the ethical principle of autonomy) and for us to advocate for patients (beneficence). Translating relevant data into information is the concentration of medical informatics. Virtually everyone in medical management can attest to the fact that, competitive forces notwithstanding, it is time for us to recognize not only that we are in the information business, but also that this information belongs to a larger community. Clearly, it is time to collaborate!     

Deconstructing disproportionality: views from multiple community stakeholders

While the existence of racial disproportionality has been well documented, the causes of disproportionality are less clear. Studies identifying contributing factors have relied largely on analyses of state and national data sets, which may lack the robust data necessary to fully explain the factors related to this issue. Further, a limitation of existing research is the lack of data from the voice of those in communities affected by disproportionality. This study was designed to develop a deeper understanding of disproportionality from the views of multiple community stakeholders. Using a qualitative approach, data were collected to provide a greater depth of information that can be used alongside existing studies toward developing an enhanced understanding of disproportionality in child welfare.     

Implementing Local Safeguarding Children Boards: managing complexity and ambiguity

Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) were established under the Children Act 2004 and have responsibility for coordinating and ensuring the effectiveness of the work of partner bodies to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Drawing on data from a Department for Children, Schools and Families and Department of Health‐funded evaluation, the paper examines the development of LSCBs and the challenges and issues that have been encountered by Boards in implementing new arrangements. In doing so, the paper contributes to current debates about some of the limitations of New Labour's safeguarding reforms as a vehicle for improving outcomes for children and families.     

Adventures in policy modeling! Operations research in the community and beyond

The literature describing operations research in the community is somewhat of a puzzle. On the one hand, several authors have denigrated the use of traditional operations approaches in addressing community problems, yet several studies document successful applications. Arguing that the operations research mindset is itself a great strength, we will review several examples where operations research methods have been employed creatively to the benefit of the community and beyond.     

A Note on Return on Foreign Assets and Foreign Presence for UK Multinationals*

Within the context of the international business literature on multinationality and performance we develop new data on the foreign presence and performance of large UK multinational enterprises (MNEs). There are 32 UK MNEs for which we can obtain data on both their degree of multinationality (measured by the ratio of foreign to total (F/T) sales) and their performance. Here, in addition to the traditional overall performance of the firm, shown as return on total assets, we use new data on the return on foreign assets (ROFA). We conduct analytical work to show the positioning of the UK MNEs in the ROFA and F/T sales space and provide regression results showing a linear relationship between multinationality and performance, using the new ROFA metric.     

Research Review: Economic evidence for interventions in children's social care: revisiting the What Works for Children project

Evidence about the cost‐effectiveness of interventions in children's services can help decision‐makers make more efficient use of scarce resources. We returned to six somewhat disparate interventions on which we had collated research evidence identified by service planners and practitioners as relevant to the well‐being of children in the course of the Economic and Social Research Council‐funded What Works for Children project. These are home visiting, parenting, cognitive–bahavioural therapy, mentoring, traffic calming and breakfast club interventions. We aimed to explore the nature and extent of evidence on cost‐benefit and cost effectiveness for these measures. We conducted searches for studies that looked at the costs as well as the effectiveness of the six interventions and found 24 studies matching our inclusion criteria. The studies were diverse in terms of study design and economic methods (including economic modelling and willingness to pay). Studies relating to parenting programmes and traffic calming gave the most positive indication that the interventions may be cost‐effective for the outcomes in question. The remainder of the studies did not give a clear picture, in large part because of a lack of demonstration that the intervention was effective.     

Underlying Labor Market Dimensions of “Opportunities”: The Case of Employee Turnover

The underlying labor market and organizationalsource of alternative job opportunities is re-examinedhere and applied to investigate employee turnoverbehavior. We contend that by refining this concept in terms of perceived and objectiveopportunities and market reference points, a clearerappreciation of this concept and more powerful model ofturnover will emerge. To this end, a cross-sectional and multistage longitudinal survey of 700 employeeswas conducted in eight medical centers at seven distinctlabor market locations. Measures of perceived andobjective opportunities in internal and external markets were introduced into logisticregressions which clearly showed that objectiveopportunities are a far better set of explanations ofactual turnover behavior than either perceived internalor external market opportunities. This relationship isfurther explored and its complexity woven into a labormarket-oriented turnover model.