Literature Review

Privatization
       E.S. Savas, a strong advocate of privatization, defines it as “the act of reducing the role of government or increasing the role of the private institutions of society in satisfying people’s needs, that is, producing goods and delivering services” (2005, p. 16). Privatization is an alternate form of public service delivery; it occurs when federal, state, and local governments use either for-profit or non-profit organizations to partially or fully produce goods or deliver services. The concept of privatization lies in the notion that “regardless of the specific form it takes, privatization introduces market-based competition into government where it otherwise does not exist” (Gilroy, 2006, p. 3). It is a widespread belief that when competition is brought into social service delivery, it serves as a “strategy to lower the costs of service delivery and achieve higher performance and better results” (Gilroy, 2006, p. 1). Competition in social service delivery is predicated on the assumption that citizens will receive produced and delivered public services that meet or exceed their expectations.

       There are a number of approaches to privatization. Contracting, one widely used approach, occurs when “the government sets the standards but signs an agreement with a private provider, for-profit or not-for-profit, to provide goods or manage services” (Auger, 1999, p. 437). Contracting is a desirable service delivery tool because it allows government to retain control of the good or service while reaping the benefits of the private sector in producing or delivering it for them. Likewise, there are arguments for and against contracting of social services. Two common arguments for contracting include saving money and enhancing government performance and services (Savas, 2000). A common argument against contracting is the lack of market-based competition found in social service areas like child welfare. This argument suggests that, as a public good, contracting for child welfare services does not foster competition; i.e., if competition is key to effective privatization efforts but is not found in social service areas like child welfare, what then is the purpose and benefit of privatization?

 Child Welfare Services
       For the purpose of this research, child welfare services includes: “family preservation, independent living, emergency shelter, residential group care, foster care, therapeutic foster care, intensive residential treatment, foster care supervision, case management, postplacement supervision, permanent foster care, and family reunification” (Florida Statutes, 1998, § 409.1671). These are the services that the Florida legislature chose to privatize in 1998, and they pertain to the child welfare services discussed in this study. According to Brooks and Webster, “the public child welfare service system in the United States is a continuum of programs and services available to children who are at risk of abuse or neglect, or who have experienced abuse or neglect, and their families” (298). Two categories of child welfare services made available to help children in the public child welfare system are in-home and out-of-home services.

       In-home services are given after an investigation assesses that a child can remain in the home while s/he or his/her family receive further assistance (Mallon & Hess, 2005). These services include, but are not limited to, child care, mental health counseling, parenting classes, and substance abuse treatment (Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, 2007). Family preservation is the primary goal of in-home services. When a child receives in-home services, it is important that child welfare agencies develop an appropriate service plan that will prevent out-of-home placement and continuously monitor the implementation of that plan and the child’s continuing safety in the home (Mallon & Hess, 2005). Out-of-home services are commonly known as foster care. Foster care occurs when a child welfare agency temporarily provides for the child’s welfare and protection by taking physical and legal custody of the child. Foster care provides a variety of placements for a child including a residential group home, foster home, relatives, or a treatment setting until permanency is achieved (State of Florida Department of Children and Families, 1999). It is the primary goal of the child welfare agency to reunify children who have been placed in foster care with their families. Children can only be reunified with their parent(s) or guardian(s) if—and only if—it is safe to do so.

Community-Based Care
       Community-Based Care is the operational term used to describe Florida’s privatized child welfare services initiative. Historically, the state of Florida had been the sole provider of child welfare services. However, in handling child welfare services, DCF faced problems in guaranteeing children’s safety. Discussions were conducted to formulate ideas on how to improve the troubled system. The decision to privatize  the delivery of child welfare services proved to be the best option.

       The state of Florida is comprised of fifteen districts with one or more counties within each district. Before Community-Based Care, DCF managed the delivery of child welfare services. The fifteen districts were responsible for planning, administering, and delivering the services while contracting with community-based agencies in providing support services to children and their families.

       Community-Based Care was formed into a lead agency design. Across the state of Florida, DCF established twenty-two contracts with lead agencies in which some agencies were responsible for either one or multiple counties (Gilroy, 2007). Only private or non-profit community-based agencies were eligible to serve as lead agencies and were given the task of taking on some of the operational and management responsibilities that were originally performed by the DCF district service centers (Freundlich & Gerstenzang, 2003). The Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability states that lead agencies are responsible for delivering, administering, and planning client services to families and children (as cited in Freundlich & Gerstenzang, 2003). Lead agencies also work in conjunction with subcontract agencies to organize, manage, and provide needed services for children and families relative to child welfare.

Prior Studies on Privatized Child Welfare Services
        Few studies have evaluated safety solely on privatized child welfare services. Any data that is provided in assessing privatized child welfare services presents challenges for researchers, including evaluating the effectiveness of safety. One challenge is the variability in privatization models. Every state’s child welfare system is different. States that decide to privatize their child welfare services will choose a plan that fits well with their own child welfare system. Different privatized child welfare services models make it difficult for researchers to identify replicable models or components, to compare privatization models, to create outcomes across privatization studies, and to draw conclusions concerning the effectiveness of privatization (Planning and Learning Technologies & University of Kentucky, 2006). Another challenge is the lack of available pre-privatization data from state data systems, which prevents researchers from comparing privatized and non-privatized systems (Planning and Learning Technologies & University of Kentucky, 2006). To determine the effectiveness of privatized child welfare services, it helps to see the results before the program was implemented. In many cases, states either do not have or provide little pre-privatization data to help in this effort.

        According to Freundlich and Gerstenzang (2003), Kansas has implemented the most well-known statewide child welfare privatization policy effort. In 1996, the governor of Kansas initiated the statewide privatization of family preservation, foster care, and adoption services due to the range of systemic problems identified in Kansas’s Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services (SRS). In relation to safety, there were problems involved with Kansas’s privatized child welfare services program. In particular, the major issue and cause for criticism had to do with their rushed implementation process. Kansas’s implementation plan was different from Florida’s Community-Based Care execution plan. The advocacy group, Kansas Action for Children, found that Kansas did not use any pilot programs to test the initiative’s cost assumptions or its new performance-based standards or to evaluate the contractor’s ability to deliver services under new case rates (Freundlich & Gerstenzang, 2003). After a short period of planning between July 1996 and February 1997, Kansas conducted a competitive bidding process to select the non-profit organizations that would serve as the lead agencies, and, during the first nine months of the privatization initiative, SRS transferred the cases of thousands of children in foster care to private providers (Freundlich & Gerstenzang, 2003). The rushed implementation of the initiative led to some negative outcomes, including strained relationships among SRS, community stakeholders, and the non-profit agencies that performed the services; stress placed on children/families/direct service workers; raised tensions in the relationship between private providers and other professionals; few fully developed service options; widespread communication breakdowns; and a shortage of available trained professional staff to take care of the transferred cases (Freundlich & Gerstenzang, 2003). These problems indicated that, if rushed, implementation of privatized child welfare services initiatives could disrupt the effective operation of services and put children’s safety at risk.

        Carroll and Whipple (2006) conducted a report on the first year statewide performance of Florida’s Community-Based Care plan. A positive aspect of Community-Based Care was the decrease in caseloads. It was discovered that case managers working for lead agencies had lower case loads than under the state run child welfare system (Carroll & Whipple, 2006). This finding is important because case managers with lower case loads have increased interaction with children; increased interaction lowers the chances of children either going missing or becoming injured, thus keeping them safer (Carroll & Whipple, 2006). Carroll and Whipple (2006) also discovered that, as children moved toward permanency at a faster rate, there was an increase in the number of children who experienced repeated abuse and had to return to foster care. This finding demonstrates that the increase of repeated abuse could be the result of lead agencies attempting to place children in foster care back into their homes too soon to parents or caregivers who are still incapable of caring for them properly.

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