Overview of Service Delivery to Children

Abstract

The human services delivery system contains three components: education, health, and social services. The organization of each component differs and each has its own financial and programmatic relationships to federal, state, and local governments. Each component addresses different problems and serves different subsets of children through a variety of programs. A major shortcoming in this tripartite system is its inability to deal with children with multiple problems in an effective, coordinated way. The fragmentation, specialization, and complexity of the current system prevent effective service delivery. One solution is to reorganize the current system by linking or integrating health, education, and social services. This approach emphasizes prevention, attempts to deal with children and families holistically and promptly, and is designed to meet multiple needs across professional and program categories. Service integration using this approach has been part of recent collaborations that often involve the school system and sometimes use school facilities as a base for delivering health and social services. In the past, reformers outside the human services system were usually the ones to propose collaboration and school involvement. Today, in contrast, the impetus comes increasingly from providers within this system, who operate as equal partners. She United States is focusing anew on the content, quality, and delivery of human services for children. Led by concern about the apparent inadequacies of the current education system, particularly for at-risk children, there is increased interest in linking health and social services to education to ensure that children receive the full array of services they need. Proponents of this approach urge that there should be more emphasis on prevention and early intervention and a focus that extends to the needs of the entire family unit, not just the child. Among education, health, and social services providers, this interest has led to a growing number of collaborations to integrate service delivery. There are important antecedents in the American experience for linking health and social services to education. David Tyack describes early efforts in his article in this journal issue. His article deals not only with the character of these efforts, but also with the motivation behind them. Attempts at integrating health, social, and education services at This content downloaded from 157.55.39.157 on Mon, 01 Aug 2016 05:06:13 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms