NCJ Number
107326
Journal
Child Welfare Volume: 66 Issue: 2 Dated: (March/April 1987) Pages: 101-112
Date Published
1987
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This study of decisionmaking at child welfare intake examined relationships between worker, client, and agency characteristics and the degree to which structured decisionmaking procedures were used at intake.
Abstract
This study is part of a secondary analysis of the data collected by Stein and Rzepnicki (1984) in a research project to develop and test structured procedures for making child welfare intake decisions. The structured decisionmaking procedures developed by Stein and Rzepnicki define and structure the tasks of intake workers, restrict autonomous judgment, and make worker actions more visible. The current study correlated worker (31) characteristics, experience, and inservice training with an ordinal measure of use of procedures. Client (208 families) and case characteristics were correlated with use of procedures for each of the 739 intake decisions, and the use of procedures were correlated with the agency service unit in which the decision was made. The findings suggest that the structured decisionmaking model provides a useful training tool for new intake workers to reduce decisionmaking time and provide a useful reference for high-risk intake decisions. The study also poses hypotheses regarding the implementation of innovations that structure worker activity and increase worker accountability. 21 references.