Service Delivery Network Research Articles

Cracks in a postdisaster service delivery network

AbstractPoor linkage cracks are defined and identified empirically in a postdisaster service delivery network. These cracks exist when essential services are provided only by isolated or peripheral clusters of organizations. Network analysis is used to identify the isolated and peripheral clusters of organizations. Measures of experience in responding to disasters and service capacity are used to identify the organizations whose services are essential in the network. Cracks prevent the network from responding effectively in the aftermath of a disaster. Suggestions are made for using network analysis to identify cracks and to improve planning and coordination in all kinds of service networks.

TEACHING ABOUT OLDER PEOPLE WITH MENTAL RETARDATION: AN EDUCATIONAL MODEL

Extended lifespans and an increase in community‐based services have created an environment in which it is imperative that educational and service systems focus attention on older people with developmental disabilities. Although the cumulative effects of growing older with a lifelong disability create a unique set of issues and service needs, gerontology courses seldom include content on these elders. An insufficient educational focus translates into a service system inadequately prepared to meet critical individual needs. In this paper we describe an educational model used to prepare students to work with older people who have mental retardation. Students in the course described, part of the Interdisciplinary Leadership Training Program in Aging and Developmental Disabilities at the University of Georgia, are exposed to the ecological perspective as a way to examine various issues related to the aging population with mental retardation. Students explore issues relevant to older individuals with mental retardation and the various contexts in which these individuals function. The six units of the course are: overview of the older population with mental retardation, physiological issues, mental health issues, social support systems, service delivery networks, and legal and ethical concerns. Content from the course model can easily be infused into foundation gerontology courses to expose a greater number of students to the group of older people who have mental retardation.

Senior centers in rural communities: Potentials for serving

Although senior centers are highly visible and used by more elderly people than any other service, there are gaps in the research on centers, particularly rural centers. This study used case studies of three centers in rural Minnesota to examine how centers meet the needs of local elderly and their role in the service delivery system. Senior centers play a potentially important role in the rural service delivery network because of the paucity of services available in rural communities yet they often do not develop into multipurpose centers which serve as focal points for the delivery of services. Two out of the three centers studied serve the elderly primarily as social and recreational centers and provide little or limited access to the broader service network. The centers studied illustrate the great variability found among rural organizations. In order to address the needs of local elderly, senior centers need to establish their place within the community and to determine their goals.

Genetic Disorders Underlying Facial Deformities

Man is vulnerable to over 6,000 genetic disorders. One out of every twenty newborns will have an expression of a genetic disease during the first year of life (Shapira, 1986). This article provides a brief overview of basic types of genetic disorders and how they are manifested in children. Particular emphasis is given to facial deformities that early childhood special educators see in the classroom. Service delivery networks for genetic screening are presented as well as sources of family support groups. Basic knowledge of genetic disorders and available services is important for the educator of young children, because such knowledge helps the teacher make appropriate referrals.

Managing Program Headquarters Units: The Importance of Matrixing

In their classic work on matrix organizations, Davis and Lawrence expressed skepticism about the utility of matrix structures for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of governmental programs.' They suggested that rigidities of structure and process that inevitably develop around the expenditure of public funds greatly inhibit the use of flexible organizational designs in the public sector. This article argues that the use of matrix designs, in fact, may be a key to effective performance for an important class of public sector organizations, namely the headquarters units of federal or state programs. These are not the units that actually provide services or conduct operations. Rather, they are the units that are responsible for allocating funds to program operators at the state or local levels, developing program policies and regulations, designing service delivery models or operational techniques, conducting system-wide planning, providing technical assistance or training for operating personnel, and monitoring field operations. Over the course of three recent research projects, the author and his colleagues interviewed nearly three dozen national and state directors of job placement, training, social services, energy assistance, and welfareemployment programs.2 Each of these individuals was simultaneously the director of a dispersed service delivery network and the supervisor of a program headquarters unit. Our interviews indicated that many of them had clear ideas about the design and management of their service delivery systems, but only a few had a similarly coherent doctrine for the organization and management of their program headquarters units. Their efforts to describe such a doctrine often laid heavy emphasis on compliance with conventional bureaucratic norms (functional departmentation, formally specified roles for individuals and subunits, delegation down the chain of command, unit of command). Their descriptions of actual events, however, often yielded a substantially different picture. Ad groupings, special assignments, and informal procedures abounded. Functional boundaries were violated. Intervening supervisory layers within the unit were often by-passed. Individuals frequently worked outside their formal roles. Directors and unit members characterized the reality as fire fighting, ad hoc or ad hominen management, or muddling through. These descriptions suggested that the program directors are being pulled3 in three different directions. First,

General hospital psychiatry: overview from a sociological perspective.

The role of the general hospital within the psychiatric service delivery network has undergone profound changes in recent years. Current issues in general hospital psychiatry revolve around questions concerning boundaries, target populations, appropriate services, structural characteristics, and deinstitutionalization. Decisions in general hospital psychiatry derive from a series of influences that originate at varing distances from day-to-day hospital operations. Planning should ideally be filtered through the hospital's internal decision-making process in order to ensure a "bottom-up" rather than a "top-down" emphasis in service policy.

ANALYSIS OF CLIENT CAREERS FOR PROGRAM EVALUATION

The present study analyzes the careers of clients, both within and agencies. Several phases of the careers of 316 adolescent clients are examined as part of a process evaluation of Professional Youth Services (PYS). Clients' movement within PYS is described to provide on understanding of when and why clients leave a helping and to describe some of the characteristics of clients who are most likely to have their treatment interrupted. In addition, clients' between agency movement is analyzed by exploring the other human service involvements) of clients; in this way the role of PYS in the larger service delivery network is clarified.

A study of coordination of services: Referrals

This article reports a study of referrals among social service and mental health agencies. Staff from human service agencies were interviewed about the process of referring and asked to make simulated referrals using mock clients constructed for this study. Interview data show lack of communication and inappropriate referrals as the biggest problems with the referral system. Interjudge agreement about the simulated referral choices was found to be not significantly different from chance. The data also suggest that agency staff refer on the basis of "habits" as much or more than on the basis of client problems. The frequency of inappropriate simulated referrals was relatively high (15%) considering that agencies included in the sample are large public agencies with broad definitions of what clients are appropriate for their services. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of existing incentives for agencies to cooperate or compete and need for methodology to evaluate service delivery systems or networks.

Clustering Services for Services Intergration:

This paper demonstrates an empirical method for clustering human services into more general categories. Nine clusters of services are obtained by factor analyzing 66 human services provided by the agencies in urban and rural counties in New York State. The structure of the particular nine clusters is then examined as a means of understanding how services naturally combine and cluster. The particular groupings suggest several characteristics about the organization of services that may assist in planning for service delivery. Regardless of whether nine clusters are the right number to describe service networks, the application of factor analysis to services data shows the usefulness of empirical clustering techniques in the study of service delivery networks and in the development of services integration plans.

Employee assistance programs

464 Work is a powerful force in our lives. 2. Business and industry are suffer It is one of man's strongest ties to reing significant economic losses because ality. Most adults spend more time at of employees wjth problems. It is es work and in work-related activities timated that a minimum of 10 percent than they do on any other activity, inof the workforce has serious problems eluding sleep. Recent research has beat any time.6 Studies done on employ gun to explore the centrality of the ees who are alcoholics indicate that 25 work experience as well as the indipercent of the salary of such employees vidual and social functions it prois lost owing to sickness, absenteeism, vides.1 It is work, for example, that accidents, poor judgment, and, in gen meets the basic need of economic sureral, deteriorating job performance, vival as well as other human needs If, as some claim, profits are the dom such as satisfaction, social status, and inating force in the world of work, emotional security. Work is such an then business and industry have a stake overwhelming factor that most people in rehabilitating its employees. The still organize their lives around the supposed value conflict between the struggle to make a living. Where we profit-making philosophy of business live, how we live, and whom we see and the helping philosophy of social socially are to a great extent dominated work could thus be merged into a corn by the work we do.2 mon concern to deal with the same Thus work is an important factor in problem. After the largely disappoint the well-being and proper functioning ing and superficial commitment of of the individual. How then has social business to the nation's social problems work integrated or dealt with the naof the sixties, business has now begun ture or function of work? A cursory to focus on the human and financial examination of both the literature and losses of its own employees.7 the field reveals neither a theoretical In turning its attention toward the nor practice framework. Some atwork environment, social work could tempts have been made during the past use an already established framework few years, but there has been no orga—the concept of person-in-situation nized effort that would constitute a sig—which relates to the whole human nificant trend in the profession.3 Efbeing within a fluid real-life situation.8 forts to account for social work's lack Looking at the person constantly mov of involvement might be traced to hising between home and work offers a torical developments, lack of leadernew perspective to achieve proper ship, or even value conflicts. Some functioning and equilibrium while fo have seen any attempt to work in an cusing on additional entry points to ef industrial or business setting as a feet change. Problems that show up in direct threat to the profession's values the work environment often have cau and a sellout to the evils of capitalism.4 sal or symptomatic links to the outside Rather than dismissing the work enenvironment. What can be hidden vironment too quickly, it might be within the privacy of the home often worthwhile to look at some critical will show up in a declining or irregu factors which indicate that the work lar job performance. Likewise, prob environment and workers are searchlems not apparent to the existing so ing for assistance in meeting human cial service delivery network manifest needs. themselves in the not-so-private site of 1. Employees and public interest the job. Through intervention in the groups are beginning to insist that buswork environment, social work can re iness and industry recognize and deal alize a new point of entry into people's with more than productivity. A recent lives as well as a new field of action in survey by the American Management which people can be helped to resolve Association in New York City of 2,821 their problems. upperand lower-management perHow then can the social work pro sonnel indicated that 90 percent fession begin to institutionalize its ser thought corporations should be convices in the work environment? This cerned with the total person, not just article examines a growing movement with daily output.5 in the work environment—the em