For this Assignment, imagine you are an administrator (choose your path assignment) who faces funding problems because your major funder has determined that your clients do not have proper access to services. Many of the access to service issues are community based, so you contact your peers in the town to design a plan that allows clients to access needed services quicker. Continue on the same path as you initially selected—you are one step closer to graduation now!
Path 1: Child and Family Welfare Scenario
You are the director of child prevention services for the school system. While you and your staff do not directly work for the state, a major portion of your funding comes from the school budget. The school administrators audited your program’s success to determine the feasibility of continued funding. Their findings revealed that the agency is providing excellent service to child clients but is doing a sub-par job in connecting families with needed ancillary services. You conduct an internal investigation into your case manager procedures and discover that they are making appropriate referrals. The difficulty is that each agency has different intake policies, procedures, and requirements, meaning that clients must spend at least an entire morning or afternoon just applying for each service. Further, many families do not have time to travel between a few agencies to get the services. (Many do not have reliable transportation.)
In a 4-5 page paper, design a plan for service delivery between multiple agencies that reduces paperwork and intake time. Be sure to include the following in your design:
- List some typical obstacles that interfere with the clients’ ability to access services across agencies.
- What are some creative ways to facilitate client care between many different types of agencies (e.g., food bank, mental health agency, welfare to work)?
- Often agencies have service-specific rules and laws that they must follow. Remember that most agencies must now follow HIPAA regulations; think about how you can use this knowledge to your advantage. What suggestions do you have for helping agencies in your town to streamline the intake process? Are there ways to facilitate access to services by eliminating some of the intake procedures? Why or why not?
- How does this plan eliminate the identified obstacles that interfere with the clients’ ability to access services at different agencies?
Suggested Format:
- Title page (Coffeetown Problem)
- Introduction (question one information-at least a half page)
- Use theories and problem-solving from your studies (questions 2 and 3-at least two and a half pages)
- Evaluation of the plan’s effectiveness (question 4-at least a half page)
