Local Partnership and the Developmental Welfare State: How Diagnostic Monitoring Links Them Charles

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Local Partnership and the Developmental Welfare
State How Diagnostic Monitoring Links Them
Charles SabelDublinSept. 7, 2006
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The Argument very generally

• The welfare state, in Ireland and elsewhere,
  assures social solidarity less and less by
  transfer payments and more and more by bundles of
  customizedperson centricservices that allow at
  risk individuals and groups to shape their life
  chances.
• Local partnerships in Irelandand elsewhere are
  pioneering and delivering such services.
• But the newdevelopment welfarestate and the
  partnerships face overlapping problems in
  pursuing this goalproblems so great that at
  least in some places (such as Ireland) the
  success of one may well depend on the success of
  the other.

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And somewhat more particularly

• Of the overlapping problems a key one is the lack
  of capacity for diagnostic monitoring systematic
  review of the choice of services, and the manner
  and effect of their provision, which both reveals
  problems and points to likely causes.
• Since customized services must constantly be
  adjusted to changing circumstance, the capacity
  for diagnostic monitoring is a necessary, but not
  sufficient condition for the provision of
  person-centric services.

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Regarding the partnerships..

• In addition to this common problem partnerships
  face a related and daunting problem of their own
• They were originally created to empower
  communities.
• In providing services of the new kind they
  empower individuals.
• Until the relation between the original and new
  forms of empowerment is clarified--if it can
  be--many partnerships will worry that their
  innovation and energy could subvert their values

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But the focus today is on diagnostic monitoring,
specifically that

• Large human-services in the USchild protective
  services, mental health institutions, schoolsare
  developing sophisticated techniques for
  diagnostic monitoring.
• These techniques are based on comprehensive,
  peer-review of representative cases to reveal
  internal variation in the service providers
  performance, and to suggest what makes for good
  and bad provision.
• In this they resemble the root-cause analysis of
  Toyota-style production systems more than the
  randomized experiments usually cited as the
  gold-standard in policy evaluation.

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All of which points to some prescriptive and
speculative conclusions

• On this logic the partnerships, with each other
  and in collaboration with the relevant statutory
  authorities, should use the available modelsor
  find superior alternativesto build the capacity
  routinely to diagnose their own shortcomings and
  suggest remedies
• doing so will disrupt some current forms of
  community participation
• But it could well suggest how community and and
  individual empowerment can reinforce each other,
• While clearing the way to new and arguably more
  democratic and participatory forms of oversight
  by the public authorities.

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A final preliminary A Caveat on Cohesion

• Cohesionadministrative rectification or
  rationalization is necessary and dangerous
• Necessary because once the innovation and
  customization of services is mainstreamed,
  oversight and organization of the service
  providers must be subjected to mainstream
  disciplines as well
• The danger, or course, is that the disciplines
  crushes the innovation
• Diagnostic review allows for and helps guide an
  orderly, accountable search for innovation that
  fully respects local autonomy while providing
  oversight authorities with a more comprehensive
  and penetrating view of what the public is
  financing then ever before.

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Put more bluntly

• Given the present hesitations in the partnerships
  regarding their role the chances of a dispirting
  compromise are great.
• Some in government will see the partnerships as a
  machine for delivering many small, useful favors
  to the electorate
• Many in the partnerships will accept that role as
  a way to winter over the present confusions
• This kind of compromise is not criminal. But in
  this case it could obstruct engagement with
  deeper problems whose solutions in key to
  renewing both the state and the partnerships.

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Towards the Development Welfare State

• Failure of the traditional, insurance-based
  welfare state
• Increase in non-actuarial risk
• Breakdowns of unemployment insurance
• Failure of pension systems

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With the result that

• government must help individuals and families
  control their life fate by
• Enabling them to acquire the capacity to mitigate
  the risks they face on their own
• This requires training and support services
  tailored to the needs of particular groups
• Schools that teach kids who dont get taught at
  home
• Continuing education for workers
• Child protective services for kids in families
  that fail
• Hence the need for

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New Public Goods

• The content and value of traditional public goods
  is assumed to be self-evident
• Because all potential users assume other users
  recognize their value as well, the standard
  issues concerning public goods are
  free-rider/Thiebout-matching problems.
• In new public goods defining the good is as
  difficult as solving the finance problem.
• Upshot--rebuilding the old public administration
  to provide new public goods is an urgent task

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The Irish Developmental Welfare State--NESC, 2005

• the development of services is the key to
  improving social protection for Irelands
  population in the coming years.... The principal
  requirements for widening participation today are
  of a nature which increases in social welfare
  alone are inadequate to address e.g., access to
  childcare by lone parents, education and training
  for people with low skills.., the return to
  education of early school leavers .. public
  services and public places that are accessible to
  persons with disabilities,

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Evolution of Irish Partnership(ODonnell, 2005)

• Over the five programmes since 1987, the emphasis
  has shifted from macroeconomic to structural and
  supply side policies,
• the range of supply-side issues has widened to
  address key constraints on Irish growth, such as
  childcare and life-long learning.
• This change in the substance has involved a
  parallel change in method.
• While macroeconomic strategy can be agreed in
  high-level negotiation, complex cross-cutting
  policies on social exclusion, training, business
  development or childcare cannot.
• Consequently, to address the growing list of
  supply-side issues there has been an expanding
  array of working groups, task-forces,
  frameworks and forumsinvolving
  representatives of the various social partners.
  In a few areas of policysuch as long-term
  unemployment, rural and urban re-generation and
  business developmentnew institutional
  arrangements have been created involve actors on
  the ground.

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For exampleLocal Solutions to Local Problems

• The Incredible Years Educational Programme The
  Incredible Years Programme, co-ordinated by
  Clondalkin Partnership. The programme is a highly
  validated early intervention and preventative
  programme used to address the problem of
  Emotional and Behavioural Difficulty (EBD) in
  young children (2-10 years). It seeks to provide
  cost effective preventative programmes that all
  families, teachers, and childcare workers dealing
  with young children can use to promote social,
  emotional, and academic competence.
• High/Scope Holistic Approach to Early Childhood
  Development High/ Scope is an integral part of
  the work of the Early Years Intervention
  Co-ordinator within Roscommon Partnership,
  through the provision of accredited training ,
  ongoing site visits to High/Scope Groups, and the
  provision of cluster group training to those
  implementing High/Scope within the County. This
  is undertaken in partnership with the Health
  Service Executive and High/Scope Ireland
• Look at me now (Emploment Programme Development)
  A key focus of the work of the Northside
  Partnership Employment Programme development team
  is responding to the training needs of clients
  relevant to the current employment market.
  Liaison with the Local Employment Service Network
  is essential to the development of programmes
  that meet client requirements. Another key factor
  for the Employment Programme is links with
  employers.
• Rural Transport The highly successful Rural
  Transport Initiative has been in a pilot phase
  since its commencement in Kerry in 2002, and will
  be mainstreamed in 2007 under the direction of
  the Minister for Transport and overseen by Pobal.
  South Kerry Development Partnership Ltd (SKDP)
  was instrumental in the establishment of the
  rural transport initiative in the region,
  
  
• DICP approach to Community Development The
  principle aim of the Dublin Inner City
  Partnership (DICP) is to improve the quality of
  life, and secure the rights of income for inner
  city residents, through increased access to
  quality education and employment opportunities,
  and by increasing public and private investment
  in these disadvantaged areas.
• Partnership Court - A Success Story for Physical
  Infrastructure Partnership Court is a 22,000 sq
  ft Enterprise Centre, developed by Dundalk
  Employment Partnership  

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The pattern of the new services

• A team of professionals with diverse areas of
  specialization
• Work with clients, their families and the key
  institutions with whom they interact
• To create individualized plans for improvement,
• Drawing on and integrating a shifting collection
  of services.
• Plans are revised in the light of experience

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A natural way to monitor this kind of service
provision

• Is to apply to the same method to the service
  providers themselves--
• Making improvement plans
• And revising them in the light of actual
  performance
• But thats not what happens in Ireland

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The Monitoring GapAssessing the Impact of the
Services for the Unemployed

• a) A caseload sample, which comprised a sample
  of 861 clients from
• 16 Partnerships from the 2003 Services for the
  Unemployed caseload,
• who took part in a postal survey to determine
  progression outcomes
• and impacts two to three years on.
• b) A tracking sample drawn from the same 16
  Partnerships which
• comprised 84 clients from the 2005 caseload who
  were interviewed
• on a one-to-one basis over a nine-month period in
  order to track shortterm
• progression and to assess qualitative impacts in
  greater depth.

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Leading to findings like

• 1 Clients face a wide range of barriers to
  participation in the labour market, including
  health issues, caring responsibilities,
  skills-related barriers, the opportunity cost of
  losing benefits to take up low-paid employment,
  as well as perceptions of discrimination.
• 2 Nevertheless, the caseload sample showed a
  significant turn-around in terms of employment
  and self-employment outcomes as a result of
  interventions under the Services for the
  Unemployed Measure.
• 3 After receiving support from the Partnerships,
  just over half of the caseload sample said they
  had no difficulties getting employment,
  self-employment or education and training.
  Respondents were satisfied, in the main, with
  their current employment and indicated some
  positive progression in terms of improved
  employment over time
• 4 98 of the caseload sample indicated that the
  service provided by the Partnerships had made a
  positive difference to their lives. This
  difference took a combination of forms,
  reflecting the multi-faceted nature of needs.
• 5 The range of impacts cited by respondents (e.g.
  confidence-building, motivation, family benefits,
  becoming involved in the community) demonstrates
  the wider social inclusion and psycho-social
  impacts of the Services for the Unemployed
  Measure and the person centred, holistic
  approach. The tracking sample showed a marked
  improvement in confidence levels and outlook on
  life over a nine-month period.

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And recommendations like these

• 2 Targeting and outreach. The Partnerships have
  been very successful in their targeting and
  outreach strategies. Nevertheless, strategies
  should be continuously improved to meet the needs
  of emerging target groups and some existing
  target groups which are not yet adequately
  addressed.
• 3 After-care. A successful model of after-care
  has been developed for enterprise clients that
  could be used to inform the development of a
  model of after-care for those in receipt of
  employment support.
• 4 Links with employers. There is a need to
  develop strategic links with employers so as
  toraise awareness, develop after-care strategies
  and draw on employers goodwill.
• 5 Innovation. It is part of the ethos of
  Partnerships to try new approaches. It is
  imperativethat they retain and further develop
  this aspect of their work into the future.

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And these

• 6 Inter-agency cooperation. To add value to
  mainstream delivery of services and to provide
  seamless service provision Partnerships will
  need to further develop and expand their
  strategic alliances, including referral
  strategies, protocols and case-working
  mechanisms.
• 7 Performance indicators. Performance indicators
  must reflect the broad focus and impact of the
  Measure. The current set of indicators captures
  labour market outcomes, but the suite of
  indicators also needs to capture psycho-social
  impacts and financial impacts. There needs to be
  greater use of after-care, follow-up and tracking
  mechanisms at local level to capture impacts over
  time.
• 8 Learning networks. It is recommended that the
  Partnerships cluster to form learning networks,
  possibly in regional groupings, so as to maximise
  resources and coverage.
• 9 Informing policy. Maximising their full
  potential to inform policy-making requires
  Partnerships to work together in a more formal
  and coherent fashion.
• 10 Integration of measures across the LDSIP.
  There is a case to be made for having a social
  inclusion programme which more effectively
  integrates community development, education and
  labour market measures.

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The Best Critique of MonitoringTrutz Haase
Kieran McKeown, 2003

• The work of the area-based Partnerships and
  Community Groups will be evaluated as part of the
  Mid-term Evaluation of the two Regional
  Operational Programmes during early 2003.
• It is clear from the Terms of Reference and the
  data available from ADM that the Mid-term
  Evaluation will focus on up-to-date counts of the
  number of people who have benefited under each of
  the initiatives, comparing these with the targets
  that were set at the onset of the LDSIP. It is
  the opinion of the consultants that without
  considerable additional research a more detailed
  impact assessment of the extent to which the
  social inclusion measures have ameliorated the
  disadvantage experienced by the target groups and
  areas will not be possible.

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Reliable analysis requires

• more comprehensive follow-up information on the
  medium and long-term positions of individuals
  participating in the Partnerships activities
• comprehensive data from a control group with
  which the performance of programme participants
  can be compared and
• comprehensive secondary data collected using
  large-scale surveys or, where available, from the
  relevant departments. On the basis of the data
  currently available, the only quantitative
  assessment of the overall impact of the local
  development programme that will be possible in
  the foreseeable future, in the consultants
  opinion, is a comparative analysis of changes in
  key socio-economic indicators for the Partnership
  areas, including changes in their overall
  deprivation score, following the release of the
  2002 Small Area Population Statistics by the CSO.
  But this will only allow a retrospective
  evaluation of the impact of the OPLURD, leaving
  the question of the impact of the LDSIP open
  until the 2006 Census is completed.

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Familiar problems with randomized experiments (rx)

• Hard to do randomized experiments with
  politically mobilized groups
• Unethical or irresponsible to do them with
  politically inert ones.
• These problems aside rx assumes that there is,
  independent of the experiment, some machinery
  generating good hypotheses to test.
• But frequentlyalmost always in problem solving
  when the problems are humanthe best way to
  generate a good hypothesis is to find the
  problems in one that turned out to be bad.
• In these cases the most useful evaluation becomes
  a way of learning what caused, and might remedy
  mistakes.

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Qualitative Service Reviews QSRs

• Origin of QSRs as monitoring tool in
  mental-health/special education/ child-protective
  services reform consent decree
• Intensive investigation of representative cases
  in representative regions.
• Peer review as reliability check and teaching
  tool
• QSRs as root-cause analysis
• From micro- to macro- results
• Doing qsrs on successes.

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Why engagement with QSRsor something like them
is inevitable

• Once the need for customization of services is
  recognized, all service providers must be good at
  customizationand only a discipline like QSR can
  ascertain this
• Governmentremember the NDWSis trying to gain
  the capacity to monitor itself this way
• So it will press its collaboratorsremember the
  examples in Local Solutionsto correspond.
• And then there is the budget problemcustomization
  means in theory that all resources could be used
  for each client
• Limits can be set by a crude rule that defeats
  its purposeso much and no more for each of a
  certain kindor by QSR-type investigation of what
  works.

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Why the outcome of the engagement is contingent

• Resistance form principlethis kind of review
  betrays the authenticity of community
• Resistance from routinenot what we do\
• Resistance from timidity and want of resources
• The possibility of unholy coalitions between
  localists and bureaucrats

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The possibility of something better

• New forms of oversight--QSRs and parliamentary
  review
• New Forms of Empowerment--People as
  Professionals, professionals as people.