Welfare Case Managers Research Articles

Planning for success: The interdisciplinary approach to building Bayesian models

This paper describes a process by which anthropologists, computer scientists, and social welfare case managers collaborated to build a stochastic model of welfare advising in Kentucky. In the process of collaboration, the research team rethought the Bayesian network model of Markov decision processes and designed a new knowledge elicitation format. We expect that this model will have wide applicability in other domains.

The Welfare Contract and Critical Case Management

ABSTRACT Drawing on three years of ethnographic research on the decision making processes of welfare case managers in urban Kentucky, we focus here on a group of case managers who subvert the demands placed on them by neoliberal welfare policy. These women refer to their own experiences as low-income, single parents to reconceptualize notions of the “un/deserving” poor, the welfare contract, and what it means to be “self-sufficient.” Case manager resistance and moral constructs are instructional, making explicit the dehumanizing aspects of the system and valuing a rights-based discourse which recognizes the state's obligation to ensure the welfare of all citizens.

The Role of Specialty Mental Health Care in Predicting Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Out-of-Home Placements

Objective: This longitudinal, prospective study examines the role of specialty mental health care as provided by community-based, usual-care practice settings in predicting out-of-home placements among children served by a child welfare and juvenile justice system. Method: The mental health needs of 1,249 children from 22 counties in Tennessee were assessed when the children were referred for child welfare and juvenile justice, in-home, case management services. The outpatient specialty mental health care received by the children in the 6-month period following the referral was recorded using the Service Assessment for Children and Adolescents and reimbursement records of TennCare. Children were then followed for 1.5 years to identify those who were subsequently placed in out-of-home care. Results: A majority of the children needed specialty mental health care, but most of these children did not receive it. This is important because their need was the best predictor of subsequent out-of-home placement. The odds of an out-of-home placement in the follow-up period were reduced by 36% to 40% for those children who received specialty mental health care. Conclusions: Improved systematic screening for mental health problems and access to specialty mental health care for children referred for in-home child welfare and juvenile justice case management services are promising strategies for reducing out-of-home placements.

Is Social Work the Best Educational Degree for Child Welfare Practitioners?

ABSTRACT The purpose of this three-year research project was to identify the educational and training needs of public child welfare case managers and recommend baccalaureate programs that would best meet those needs. Surveys, focus groups, and content analyses were used to identify the learning needs. The social work curricula were found to contain the most comprehensive match of skill development and theoretical and values content with the learning needs of case managers.

Views from the Frontline

Abstract Through in-depth interviews, Kentucky welfare case managers compare their experiences working under Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) with their experiences working under Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Interviewees unanimously agreed that TANF is more ambiguous, complex, and stressful than AFDC, both for clients and managers. Although case managers embrace the self-sufficiency goals of TANF, the strict work requirements, overwhelming paperwork and limited education and training opportunities create conflicting goals and barriers that frustrate case managers, leading to suggestions of a return to some rules of AFDC while retaining the TANF goal of independence from the welfare system.

Can Welfare Case Management Increase Employment? Evidence from a Pilot Program Evaluation

Welfare reform has increased the importance of employment over simple eligibility determination. Research has focused on strategies for enhancing employment among welfare recipients, and this article adds to the literature by examining specifically the effects of using an assessment tool to assist case managers in targeting services to a heterogeneous client population. Analysis indicates that clients of case managers who used the screener, compared with a set of clients of case managers who did not use it, received more services and had higher program participation rates but experienced no improvement in short‐term employment outcomes. This suggests that the instrument as a tool in case management is effective at identifying client needs, which is the first step to achieving more favorable employment‐related outcomes in the long run.

The Effects of Organizational Culture and Climate on the Access to Mental Health Care in Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Systems

This study examined the effects of organizational culture and climate on the access to mental health care for 588 children referred to child welfare and juvenile justice systems in 21 Tennessee urban and rural counties. Cross-level, hierarchical linear models (HLM) analyses indicated that children served by child welfare and juvenile justice case management units with constructive organizational cultures were more likely to receive the needed mental health care. For example, controlling for the child's need for mental health care and other child and family characteristics, the odds of a child receiving mental health care in a case management unit with the most constructive culture were 11 times the odds of receiving mental health care in a unit with the least constructive culture. Constructive cultures were characterized by organizational norms and expectations that case managers would be mutually supportive, develop their individual abilities, maintain positive interpersonal relationships, and be motivated to succeed. These findings suggest that efforts to improve access to mental health care for children referred to child welfare and juvenile systems should include the development of constructive organizational cultures in case management units responsible for the children's care.

The Effects of Computerization on Public Child Welfare Practice

ABSTRACT This paper examines the impact of a new and promising case-based management information system on child welfare case management practices in two California counties. The objectives were to measure the extent to which computerization affected casework practices and to identify factors that influenced the effects of computerization. An exploratory longitudinal one-group pre-post design was used. Contrary to expectations, few differences were found, although workers spent more time alone after implementation of the system. A key finding is that the amount of time that caseworkers spent with clients was not reduced by the computer system.

Initial findings on cross‐system utilization of citizen foster care review board recommendations

AbstractDuring 1998 an estimated 560,000 children were in foster care across the United States. With increasing numbers of children in foster care policy‐makers are concerned with permanency planning. In an effort to promote permanency planning the US Congress enacted the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 which mandated that individual states (a) develop a case plan within 30 days of a child being placed in foster care, (b) incorporate a system of review into their foster care programs, and (c) review foster care cases at least every six months. Despite the level of policy activity centering on foster care review there has been a paucity of rigorous research. This study asks ‘How well utilized are foster care review recommendations by child welfare case managers and Juvenile Court judges?’ Results are framed in Systems Theory, specifically Complexity Theory. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The cross‐level effects of culture and climate in human service teams

AbstractThis two‐level study of child welfare and juvenile justice case management teams addresses construct, measurement, and composition issues that plague multilevel research on organizational culture and climate. Very few empirical studies have examined both culture and climate simultaneously, and none have provided evidence that culture and climate are distinct or similar constructs. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), within‐group consistency analysis (rwg), between‐group differences (ICC and eta‐squared), and hierarchical linear models (HLM) analysis provide evidence that climate and culture are separate constructs that vary by organizational unit, and are related to work attitudes, perceptions, and behavior. Findings link team‐level culture and climate to individual‐level job satisfaction and commitment, perceptions of service quality, and turnover. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Designing Programs for Heterogeneous Populations: The Value of Covariate Information

Normative judgments embodied in the American legal system mandate that, in certain respects, public policy should treat all members of the population uniformly. Nevertheless, the legal system permits many forms of disparate treatment of the population. The Medicare program provides health-care benefits to persons age 65 and older, but not to younger Americans. The federal welfare-to-work program known as TANF permits states to treat welfare recipients differentially, placing some in job-training and others in basic-skills classes. Judicial sentencing guidelines variously permit or require judges to sentence convicted offenders differentially based on past convictions. Public high schools track students, making class assignments vary with past student achievement. In these and other settings where legal constraints do not preclude disparate treatment, society may choose among many alternative treatment rules. A program could mandate uniform treatment of the population or require that treatment vary in particular ways with observable covariates of the persons treated (e.g., age in the case of Medicare, past convictions in the case of sentencing), or permit agents of society (e.g., judges, welfare case managers, school counselors) to make their own treatment choices, subject to specified constraints. Research on program evaluation can help to inform public policy through efforts to learn the consequences of alternative treatment rules. In particular, evaluation research should seek to characterize how treatment response varies across the population. If we learn that all persons respond to treatment in much the same manner, then the best policy may be one that treats all persons uniformly. However, if we learn that treatment response varies with observable covariates of the persons treated, then society may be able to do better by designing programs in which treatment varies appropriately with these covariates. For example, society may be able to lower recidivism among criminal offenders by sentencing some offenders to prison and others to probation. It may be able to increase the life-cycle earnings of welfare recipients by placing some in job-training and others in basic-skills classes. In these and many other cases, the key to success is to determine which persons should receive which treatments. Regrettably, evaluation research has had little to say about how treatment response varies with observable covariates of the persons treated. A common practice, especially in observational studies, has been to assume that all persons respond to treatment in the same manner. Studies that are sensitive to possible variation in treatment response may report findings by race or gender or age, but they rarely disaggregate the population more finely. As a consequence, policymakers seeking to design programs for heterogeneous populations have to speculate on the consequences of alternative treatment rules. This short article draws on my recent research (Manski, 1997, 2000a, b) to argue that increased attention to observable variation in treatment response would enhance the value of evaluation research.

Implementing Welfare Reform in Kansas: Moving, But Not Racing

Will welfare reform lead some states to race to the bottom? At leastfor Kansas, the answer appears to be a resounding no. Data gathered as part of the State Capacity Study's analysis of welfare reform suggest that in Kansas, elected officials and the bureaucracy have responded in afashion consistent with the state's political and administrative culture: cautiously and incrementally. First, Kansas' welfarereform policy has been driven primarily by bureaucratic decisions. Welfare administrators, supported by the governor, have minimized legislative resistance to their policy objectives. Second, from the perspective of welfare generosity, Kansas has not deviated significantly from its typical middle position relative to other states' policies. Third, Kansas' administration of reform embraces three primary strategies: decentralized management authority; new links with other agencies to tackle specific welfare problems; and a newly integrated approach tofrontline welfare case-management.