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Modeling Service Delivery as a System of Transitions

The Case of Foster Care

University of Illinois at Urbana

John P. Poertner

Sangamon State University

Service delivery systems influence outcomes of personal social services. To understand and redesign delivery systems new conceptual and analytic tools are needed. The notion of delivery systems as a set of statuses through which clients move permits construction of transition matrixes to display caseload dynamics. In this study, analysis of such matrixes for a large child care system reveals patterns of movement not otherwise seen. It is concluded from inspection of tables and from testing for Markov conditions that the system is not changing despite administrative interventions. Probabilities of movement among statuses appear to be functions of the system and not determined by the history of the particular child. These findings suggest that the fate of children in placement is determined more by system dynamics than by client or professional considerations. This study shows that modeling of service delivery as a set of transition probabilities is a useful tool for evaluation of social systems.

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