Looking After Children: a case of individualised service delivery

Abstract

This is a discussion of the debate in the literature on the new Looking After Children system of managing out of home care for children. This is an important program initiative in results-oriented government that takes an individualised approach to children in care. The literature generally falls into the two categories of either relatively uncritical advocacy of LAC or its wholesale critique. These two camps pass as ships in the night and echo polarised epistemologies within policy analysis. There is very little analytical attention to LAC as an instance of the wider human service trends of individualised planning and case management.

Distant relations: limits to relational contracting in domestic violence programmes

“…Considerable research has focused on the capacity of service provider agencies to meet contractual requirements for reporting and accountability as well as actually delivering the services. A number of researchers in Australia, (Buchanan and Considine, 2002;Owen et al, 2001;Spall and Zetlin, 2004;Yeatman and Penglase, 2004) and in the US and Canada (Light, 2003;McMullen and Brisbois, 2003;Nittoli, 2003;O'Connor and Ilcan, 2005;Romzek and Johnston, 2005;Saunders and Brisbois, 2004) have identified a range of commonly reported challenges for service delivery as a result of these changes. In particular, the project-based, fixed-term funding arrangements typically associated with contracting out are seen to have resulted in increased use of short-term employment contracts by most NGOs, and there are arguments in the scholarly literature that this can seriously undermine the potential for capacity building in these agencies (Healy, 2004;Meagher and Healy, 2003;Wagner and Spence, 2003).…”