Professional Autonomy? Organizational Self-interest?-Creaming Issues in the Contracting of Placement Services for the Disadvantaged Youth
Resource
臺大社會工作學刊, 14, 061-121
Journal
臺大社會工作學刊
Journal Issue
14
Pages
061-121
Date Issued
2007-01
Date
2007-01
Author(s)
Abstract
Fair and equal accessibility is an issue that attracts most attention in the privatization of social services. Often criticized under the contracting regime is the contractor's tendency to avoid those cases that are more difficult or cost more. This paper, using Placement Services for the Disadvantaged Youth (PSDY) as an example, explores whether the contracting process favors certain type of clients, resulting in those clients with multiple, complex, and chronic problems can only receive less quality services or worse even are refused of services, creating the so-called "social service passed-over". This paper's conclusion includes several points: the contracting process of PSDY is a quadripartite relationship that is more complex than the "third party contracts". Differences in professional decisions and poor collaboration between the departments within the Department of Social Welfare leads to insufficient definition of service, makes effective contract management difficult, provides minimum protection of client accessibility. Consequently, contractors, by using their information collected at the interview sessions as well as their professional expertise, were able to choose cases, i.e. "creaming". After allowing clients' inhabitation, contractors are still able to manipulate and create situations for clients to withdraw. With an objective to maximize profits, contractor's model for operation becomes "maximum professional fee with minimum caseload". The authors's opinion is that the performance evaluation or performance-based contracting may not be the reasons for contractor's case picking. Defining service requirements without considering specific needs of individual clients may be the cause for contractor's opportunist behavior. The resources made available and attention paid by the Placement Services of the local government have direct bearing on the clout the contract managers have in dealing with contractor's performance. This paper presents four recommendations: classifications of service requirements (cases); maintaining an in-house production of services within the government; reasonable cost accounting to ensure sufficient resources, establishing a central referral system, and designing a meaningful performance evaluation mechanism.
Subjects
篩案
契約委託
少年安置
第三方契約
組織自利
creaming
contracting-out
placement Services for the disadvantaged youth
third-party contracts
organizational self-interest
Type
journal article
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