Sunday, February 22, 2015
A People-centered System
The opening statement of this article is “COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The director of the state office charged with better coordinating welfare and job programs offered a simple example to illustrate why Gov. John Kasich has proposed changing the system” (Higgs, 2015).
Higgs, the writer of the article, explains that Douglas Lumpkin, the director of the office of Human Services Innovation, believes that the challenges of most families are across multiple systems. For example, a person receiving benefits could be seeing a caseworker for multiple things such as infant mortality issues, child welfare, temporary assistance for families and children benefits, and perhaps another for mental health or addiction issues. Along with all of this, that same person might be meeting with a caseworker for a job training and placement program.
Under Kasich’s budget proposal, counties would have a point agency that would coordinate all the rescources. The benefit of a point agency is that individuals would only have to meet with one person at the point agency who could link them to the resources they need.
This proposal would target people aged 16 to 24, and the idea of this intervention is to help individuals before they get stuck in the cycle of poverty.
Lumpkin believes that this type of intervention would be a “more person-centered approach”.
Link to article: http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2015/02/people-centered_system_the_goa.html
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ReplyDeleteThat would make things much simpler for clients. If they are able to keep the caseloads fairly manageable I could see this as a benefit, though that is a lot of work for caseworkers and requires knowledge of programs across the board from addictions to education. This could also present more stress to the caseworkers dealing with the more 'difficult' clients. I can see both positive and negative with this.
ReplyDeleteIt is a great idea to try to simplify the process. I think how the system currently is makes it easy to be confused or even give up. However, in the example, the client is going from two caseworkers to one. It is an improvement, but I still think we have work to do. This caseworker then has to be competent in all available resources, and then refers out. The individuals are still referred to many different people which is not taking much of the burden of them. I don't really have an idea of how to change this, but if the process could be simplified even more, it would become even better.
ReplyDeleteBetsy, I think you raise a really great point about caseworker knowledge and workload. There is often a push for more integrated care in helping, health, and social service professions because it provides the continuity of care and easy access of care for people. However, this form of integration may put a lot of work on caseworkers. I wonder if a push for truly integrating systems in the promotion of collaboration plus work towards simplification would be better, instead of pure simplfication and minimization of service management.
ReplyDeleteI think there is a difference between integration and collaboration when it comes to caseworkers. This sort of reminds me of the Ohio Benefit Bank; however, the OBB is a database. If people/systems collaborate rather than one caseworker having to connect all of the dots for a lot of people, this could be quite successful. The skeptic in me has to wonder if Kasich is trying to cut costs...
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