Re: Client Satisfaction in Child Welfare

[<Jennifer.Gleeson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In the state of Victoria, Australia, we have almost completed the pilot of
a questionnaire that seeks feedback from parents of child protection
clients and clients from ages 11 to 17 about how they experienced the
service and what they thought of the service. The questionnaire is a
mixture of qualitative and quantitative style questions and we are seeking
feedback from clients in the investigation stage through to those on court
orders. The results will be ready in June 2000 and following this, we will
extend the survey to the rest of the state. I delivered a paper on stage
one of the project to the Australiasian Child Abuse and Neglect Conference
in Perth 1999 and you may contact me directly if you want a copy.

Our main objective for undertaking this project is for the results to
inform service design and delivery. As such, we are currently researching
strategies and models for incorporating feedback. If anyone can help with
this angle, it would be appreciated.

When we commenced this project in 1998, we could find very few examples of
a statutory child protection service publishing methodologies/results of
this type of research. There were examples of small studies or external
agencies conducting surveys but not studies on the scale we needed.

Jennifer Gleeson