RE: Non customer contact time within Child Welfare sector

["Barbara Meddin" <barbarme@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

can you tell us how to get a copy of the report?

thanks


Dr. B. Meddin
Family and Children's Services
Perth, Australia

barbarme@fcs.wa.gov.au 


>>> GTooman@AmericanHumane.org 01/10/01 01:22am >>>
There are no benchmarks for client contact that I'm aware of, and I'm not
sure that there should be.  We at American Humane have conducted
workload/resource allocation studies in several states in the U.S.,
including the study in the State of California, and have found that systems
differ quite a lot on this subject.  

For one thing, defining "customer contact" and "non-customer contact" is
important, and not always obvious.  Does telephone contact count?  Does
travel to meet with a family count?  If travel counts, some work
units/offices may have a higher percentage of travel related to contact with
customers than others, based on geographic variables (urban vs. rural vs.
profoundly rural).  Also, if case aides drive clients to and from meetings,
but their availability is not uniform, then you also have potential
differences.  How one workload study defined client contact may not suit
your needs.

In the California Workload Study, we did look at rates of direct client
services, indirect case work, and administrative time as three separate
variables.  However, I would hesitate to use the California data as a
benchmark.  Instead, perhaps it would be best to use the California report
as an illustration as to how to develop your own study of this issue,
especially around the issues of defining services and work-tasks.

Gregory Tooman
Research Associate
Children's Services
American Humane Association
63 Inverness Dr. East
Englewood CO 80112-5117
(303) 792-9900 fax: (303) 792-5333
greg@americanhumane.org 
http://www.americanhumane.org/ 


-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy Devos [mailto:devoss@dcfs.co.la.ca.us] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2001 9:29 AM
To: Child Maltreatment Researchers
Subject: RE: Non customer contact time within Child Welfare sector


The State of California did a Child Welfare Services Workload Study (SB
2030) in 1999.  The California Department of Social Services web site is:
www.dss.cahnet.gov and has the report on the web site.

Sandy De Vos, LA County DCFS
-----Original Message-----
From: Ann-Catrine Ainsworth [mailto:anncata@fcs.wa.gov.au] 
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2001 10:53 PM
To: Child Maltreatment Researchers
Subject: Non customer contact time within Child Welfare sector


The department of Family & Children's Services in Perth, Western Australia
is currently reviewing its work practices.  

We are looking for information regarding how social workers split their
working time between direct customer contact and non customer contact time
in other organisations. Our focus is on the non customer contact time and
what it entails. 

The sort of information we're looking for is:
1) How many hours per week does a social worker work on average;
2) How much of the working time is spent on non customer contact work. This
might still be work relating to a specific customer but it is not dealing
with the customer directly e.g. administrative tasks, case management etc;
3) What tasks are included in the non customer contact time;
4) If any organisation have established some sort of work practice 'bench
marks' for how much time should be spend on the different tasks included in
a social workers working week we would also be interested in that.

Thank you very much in advance for any assistance 

Ann-Catrine Ainsworth
Business Process Re-engineering Consultant