Program and Fiscal Design Elements of Child Welfare Privatization Initiatives

摘要

In 2006, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (ASPE, DHHS), funded the Child Welfare Privatization Initiatives Project to provide information to state and local child welfare administrators who are considering or implementing privatization reforms. The project will produce six technical assistance papers on a range of topics about planning for and implementing privatization initiatives in child welfare systems. Although widely used, the term privatization has no single definition in child welfare or in other human services. In child welfare, some use the term broadly to refer to all contracted service arrangements while others use it more narrowly. Further, some states and jurisdictions use other terms such as community based care in Florida. The term privatization took on new dimensions in child welfare during the mid-to late- 1990s when two states, Kansas and Florida, privatized most of their child welfare programs and a broader number of states began to outsource the case management function and introduce fiscal risks and rewards linked to performance. For some states, the percent of a states overall budget that is allocated to contracted services may not dramatically increase with the launch of a privatization reform. For example, performance based contract reforms in Illinois and the District of Columbia do not significantly increase the proportion of services that are outsourced. However, contract expectations, roles and responsibilities of public and private agency workers, and contract payment arrangements, change in these sites.