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Effective Services for Children and Families: Lessons From the past and Strategies for the Future
Pages 48-64

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From page 48...
... Radin Washington Public Affairs Center University of Southern California For three decades Americans have debated the difficult question of how to structure human service delivery systems. Despite the dramatic political, economic, and social changes that have taken place in the United States over the past 30 years, this question has continued to plague social policy analysts and advocates.
From page 49...
... While a revolution for the rights of women came into its own, it too has had difficulty dealing with economic rather than legal rights. Health care for the elderly is vastly improved, despite the current attacks on Medicare funding.
From page 50...
... The Economic Opportunity Act created quite a long list of programs: Head Start, Neighborhood Legal Services, Neighborhood Health Centers, Foster Grandparents, Job Corps, VISTA, and various job training programs to be run through the Department of Labor. The idea was that, for those programs that were to be delivered at the local level, the CAP agency would be the umbrella coordinating agency and might run some of the services itself but not necessarily.
From page 51...
... The CAP agencies receded into being small social delivery agencies, basically outside the organized social service delivery system. (That is where many, if not most, of those that survived are today)
From page 52...
... They learned, too, that direct federal funding of a locally untethered set of service delivery agencies runs a particular risk that such agencies will not become part of a local service delivery network. For the long run, local service delivery agencies and entities which are accountable to or connected to local governmental or philanthropic institutions or networks are going to be more effective than those that are not.
From page 53...
... Policy planners believed that by developing opportunities for consolidation at the national level, state and local agencies would be able to rationalize the system and create new structures that were more effective deliverers of services. HEW funded a number of demonstration programs aimed at the integration of services at the local level but was never able to obtain congressional approval for large-scale reform efforts.
From page 54...
... Other than Social Security, activities of the Veterans Administration, certain agricultural matters, the federal prisons, and services for the military and their families, the federal government does not deliver services directly. It pays for them, and in recent years it has moved away from extensive use of tiny categorical programs that tie up state and local governments and private providers in multiple reporting, overlapping and even inconsistent regulations, and multiple planning requirements and grant applications.
From page 55...
... That there is a major structural agenda is particularly worth bearing in mind in talking about effective services. Measures to make services comprehensive, accessible, and better coordinated are structural to be sure, but they will miss their mark unless they are accompanied not only by adequate funding but also by a long list of other structural changes, including better education and training of those delivering the services and changes in public personnel policies that create sanctions against unproductive workers and rewards for those who are productive.
From page 56...
... EDELMAN AND BERYL A RADIN The Search for the Panacea Solution The third myth about the 1960s is that people believed there was a silver bullet, a single magic program that if we could just find it would solve all our ills.
From page 57...
... Fragmentation reduces use, and block grants weaken constituency support for funding because no single constituency can be sure it will benefit from an increase in funding for the block. Recipient accountability is reduced by the use of block grants because there is no articulated set of standards against which to judge grantee performance.
From page 58...
... Service Delivery and Access Models Multiservice Centers and Settlement Houses There was never a federal program specifically designed to fund multiservice centers, but a number the Roxbury Multi-Service Center in Boston is a typical example were funded or stimulated by federal activity in the 1960s. The Door in New York City is an example of a multiservice center directed specifically at high-risk teenagers.
From page 59...
... In addition, there were separate state, county, and/or municipal social services offices and public health clinics and separate groups of job training and drug treatment programs, as well as nonprofit agencies offering a variety of specialized services, funded by combinations of United Way and public dollars and perhaps other local philanthropy. In most cities, especially the large ones, it was difficult to rationalize these overlapping and uncoordinated centers.
From page 60...
... The result is that services are typically more complete and referral patterns more clear than would otherwise be the case. Offices for Children In the largest states it is difficult to contemplate the creation of an operating agency that would have under its jurisdiction all services for children and families if by that phrase one would mean to include public assistance, food stamps, social services, child welfare protective services, mental health, mental retardation, and juvenile justice.
From page 61...
... A key lesson to be drawn from the CAP, the Model Cities, and the multiservice center experiences is that, apart from a few individual multiservice centers and settlement houses, a fully funded, highly targeted, comprehensive approach in an area of great poverty has never really been tried. One possible challenge to pursue for the 1990s would be a few such comprehensive approaches in areas of concentrated poverty.
From page 62...
... Professionals and other staff delivering services would have to be highly committed, able, and willing to accept the salaries ordinarily associated with such positions. And even a large investment in the settlement house itself would not create the myriad of necessary referral places or ensure their responsiveness to a telephone call seeking to make an appointment.
From page 63...
... We have recognized the importance of beginning programs or projects with a mapping of local perceptions of needs and finding ways to ensure a sense of participation and ownership by those who are the recipients of the services. At the same time, we have learned that change requires partnerships between many different actors: the professionals who actually deliver the services; the elected officials who must provide the resources for them, at least when they come to be replicated on a broad scale; the citizens who are the consumers of the services; and the administrators and managers at national, state, and local levels.
From page 64...
... We know that the problems faced by children and families are interrelated and interdependent. While public safety, available jobs, school improvement, and affordable housing are separate problems, they are also closely related when we are talking about areas of concentrated poverty.


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