Costs and Outcomes in Children's Social Care


Book Description

This text presents the findings of a set of original research studies and reports on the way that care services for children are delivered, the cost of providing services and the extent to which they improve outcomes for children. It also looks at services provided by the statutory, and examines how resources are distributed.




Understanding Costs and Outcomes in Child Welfare Services


Book Description

Today's child welfare services operate under a limited supply of resources. This book explains how finite resources can be used most effectively, providing social work managers and policymakers with a comprehensive costing model to assess the links between needs, costs and outcomes across the full range of child welfare services.




America's Children


Book Description

America's Children is a comprehensive, easy-to-read analysis of the relationship between health insurance and access to care. The book addresses three broad questions: How is children's health care currently financed? Does insurance equal access to care? How should the nation address the health needs of this vulnerable population? America's Children explores the changing role of Medicaid under managed care; state-initiated and private sector children's insurance programs; specific effects of insurance status on the care children receive; and the impact of chronic medical conditions and special health care needs. It also examines the status of "safety net" health providers, including community health centers, children's hospitals, school-based health centers, and others and reviews the changing patterns of coverage and tax policy options to increase coverage of private-sector, employer-based health insurance. In response to growing public concerns about uninsured children, last year Congress voted to provide $24 billion over five years for new state insurance initiatives. This volume will serve as a primer for concerned federal policymakers and regulators, state agency officials, health plan decisionmakers, health care providers, children's health advocates, and researchers.




Social Care Management, Strategy and Business Planning


Book Description

Social Care Management, Strategy and Business Planning is a comprehensive guide to strategic social care management, covering all the knowledge and skills that managers in the 21st century must have, and showing how to make theory a practical reality. The book aims to make business planning a more accessible and user-friendly process, offering practical advice on how to tackle the everyday tasks which good social care management should involve. Topics covered include strategic planning, business development, commissioning and contracting, project management, decision-making, risk, and evaluation techniques. The book also acknowledges the challenges of working collaboratively within a complex legislative and policy framework and juggling different aspects of the management tasks whilst retaining professional identities and ethics. Also included are practical examples and lively tips and comments from practising managers on their experiences in different areas of business planning. This book will be essential reading for anyone involved in managing or leading practice either in the front line or at a more strategic level. It will be useful to post-qualifying social work students and is particularly valuable to anyone following a management training programme.




A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty


Book Description

The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.




A Practical Guide to Outcome Evaluation


Book Description

*Highly Commended in the Health and Social Care category of the 2011 BMA Medical Book Awards* For those involved in commissioning and running projects working with people, measuring performance and assessing outcomes are an essential part of applying for and maintaining funding, and a way of demonstrating the project's achievements. This versatile 'how to' book guides you through the process of evaluating your project in order to improve funding applications and build the case for your project's survival. The guidance in this book will help you to set out what the aims and projected outcomes of your project are, how these will be achieved, and shows you how to capture evidence for outcomes. To cater for readers working in different settings, a broad range of case examples is used including youth groups with at-risk young people, a refuge for women who have suffered domestic violence, a road safety education programme and midwives encouraging new mothers to stop smoking. The book also includes a host of practical features designed to provide a deeper understanding of the subject, including activities, reflective tools, and a glossary of key terms. A Practical Guide to Outcome Evaluation will help to ensure the success of projects that make a difference to people's lives, and will be an essential reference for managers and practitioners working in people-orientated professions including social work, health, teaching, youth work, criminal justice, the arts and the emergency services.




Evidence-based Decisions and Economics


Book Description

The need for evidence-based decisions that take account of botheffectiveness and economics is greater now than ever. Using casestudies and illustrative examples throughout the authors describehow the activities and outputs of evidence synthesis, systematicreview, economic analysis and decision-making interact within andacross different spheres of health and social policy and practice. Expanding on the first edition the book now covers approaches toevidence synthesis that combine economics and systematic reviewmethods in the applied fields of social welfare, education andcriminal justice, as well as health care. Written by economists andhealth services researchers closely involved in developingevidence-based policy and practice it showcases currentstate-of-the-art methodology and will be an invaluable read for allpolicy-makers and practitioners using evidence to inform decisions,analysts conducting research to support decisions and studentsdiscovering the need for evidence-based decisions to incorporateeconomic perspectives and evidence.




Costs and Consequences of Placing Children in Care


Book Description

It costs more to place a child in the care of a local authority than it does to send a child to a top boarding school, and there are substantial variations in costs both between and within authorities. This book gets to the bottom of the costs of care and provides an insight into how these variations in cost relate to differences in children's needs, and most importantly, whether higher costs reflect better services and better outcomes for children. Costs and Consequences for Children Placed Away from Home draws from new original research, and considers the implications for best practice and future policy. It also features information about a newly pioneered resource: a fully workable decision analysis model designed for use in local authorities which uses historical data for each child to calculate the probable cost consequences of difference placement choices. This book sheds light on how to calculate the financial and social costs of care, and will be invaluable to both social work managers and policy makers working in children's services.




Promoting Resilience in Child Welfare


Book Description

Since the beginnings of its development in Britain in 1987, the Looking After Children (LAC) initiative has had a profound influence in Canada-as well as in Australia and across Europe-in sharpening the developmental focus and improving the quality of services for children and adolescents who, because of abuse, neglect, extreme poverty, or other circumstances, live in out-of-home care. Promoting Resilience in Child Welfare presents reviews of research, new empirical findings, and useful practice and policy suggestions derived from the perspectives of LAC and resilience theory by an array of international voices. Practitioners, out-of-home care providers, youths in care, in-service trainers, students, researchers, and many others will find much in this book that speaks to more effective ways of improving the lives of young people being looked after in out-of-home care. (Midwest).




From Neurons to Neighborhoods


Book Description

How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.