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Redesigning the Work of Human Services explores alternative organizational designs for the delivery of human services-designs that emphasize collaborative governance and partnerships among public and private agencies, local control and responsibility for results, and the use of innovative information, planning, and community capacity-building technologies. This book redefines the debate about whether human services should be privatized or not. The author suggests that the basic task of human services-to enable families to socialize the young-is one that can neither be fulfilled effectively by the state nor by private agencies. Rather, carefully crafted public-private partnerships, when combined with new accountability mechanisms and the sophisticated use of emerging information technologies, are likely to offer more in the way of effective, efficient, and appropriate human services. Because this work is solidly grounded in the literature on both human and business services, the author's suggestions for major redesign are comprehensive and intelligently qualified.
List of contents
Introduction
Definitions and Historical Overview
Children and Families as Common Pool Resources: A Metaphor for Understanding Family Policies
Strategic Planning in Human Services: Promoting Competition and Local Responsibility for Problem-Solving
Public-Private Partnerships in Human Services: Negotiating the Trade-off between Flexibility and Accountability
Linking Tasks and Technologies in Designing Community Social Services
Streamlining Social Services
Budgeting, Managing, and Monitoring for Results in the Interorganizational Environment: An Impossible Dream or Public Sector Revolution in the Making?
Community Asset Mapping: Place-Based Stories and Grass-Roots Development
Next Steps in the Redesign of Human Services
References
Index
About the author
John O'Looney
