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Reflections on the assessment of outcomes in child care
Author(s) -
Parker Roy
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
children and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.538
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-0860
pISSN - 0951-0605
DOI - 10.1111/j.1099-0860.1998.tb00066.x
Subject(s) - accountability , psychological intervention , perspective (graphical) , outcome (game theory) , psychology , work (physics) , social work , applied psychology , political science , computer science , economics , economic growth , engineering , mechanical engineering , mathematical economics , artificial intelligence , psychiatry , law
Measuring the outcomes of social work interventions with children raises complex issues. The instability of intermediate outcomes emphasises the need to undertake regular and carefully timed assessments. Differences in approach and perspective can obscure relationships between evaluations of organisational performance and assessments of outcome for individual children; user perspectives introduce another point of view. Assessing outcomes of family support services raises questions of accountability. Aggregate information about children looked after, collected through the Looking After Children project, should help to establish the chances of certain outcomes being realised, although the influence of some factors may not be easy to explain.