Service Networks in Florida: Administrative Decentralization and Its Effects on Service Delivery

Abstract

Once thought dying, services integration is showing signs of new life under a new name. Reformist concerns for coordinated programming and administrative efficiencies have taken a number of forms over the past 20 years. Federal block grants are the latest and, by all intents, the most widespread. While other political considerations were obviously involved in the Reagan administration's proposals for and congressional passage of block grant legislation, one major argument was that easing federal restrictions on state use of federal monies would give states more flexibility to improve administrative/budgeting arrangements. This in turn would allow programs to become more responsive to immediate state and local needs. This concern directly parallels that of earlier services integration reform efforts, most of which were short lived at best, in part because of continuing federal restrictions hampering such attempts. Now that federal legislation is reversing that restrictive trend, administrative and service delivery integration have again become topics of interest. Lessons from earlier attempts at services integration therefore have particular importance for the ongoing changes in intergovernmental relations. Of all the locations and the few states to attempt human services integration, Florida is the only one to have fully implemented and maintained such an arrangement.' Since the 1975 reorganization of Florida's Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS), the agency has undergone a number of minor shifts, but its basic structure remains intact. Furthermore, despite a flurry of interest that continued into the late 1970s and a number of early studies of HRS, only a few studies have gone beyond political commentaries,2 informant reports,3 or limited empirical surveys,4 to examine the extent and the ways in which reforms have actually been implemented. In earlier research, we reported on the first statewide examination of services integration implementation.' That study was based on the perceptions of HRS employees regarding the changes to an integrated system, the major characteristics of that change (e.g., collocation, generalist managers), and their evaluation of it. The study concluded that: (1) substantial progress has been made toward the integration of service delivery systems; (2)