Showing papers on "Service system published in 1980"

Evaluation and Organizational Development: A Management-Consulting Approach

Abstract: This report presents the rationale and design for the use of a management-consulting approach to evaluation that links organization development and accountability. The contextual environment in which the approach was developed is in the public sector. The approach calls for a team of consultants to review the operations of an agency in five areas: administration, agency services, fiscal management, legal, and service system. The design and implementation procedures are illustrated from the data obtained in a review of a drug and alcohol agency. Evaluation is viewed as an ongoing process, with the first iteration being to help develop the organization in its early stages ofgrowth, including the necessary monitoring system, to allow for more extensive outcome measures onfuture evaluations.

Serving the mental health needs of the elderly: the case for removing barriers and improving service integration.

Abstract: Utilization rate information reveals that elderly persons are not adequately served by the existing mental health service system. The authors identify cultural, systems, and resource related barriers to full service, emphasizing psychological barriers which may be present in both the elderly client and the therapist. Overcoming these barriers will require, first, that professional training programs and local in-service training activities be modified to expand multi-disciplinary learning opportunities. Then, the authors advocate systems change to move through in-house outreach, advocacy and programming activities toward an integrated system of community services for the elderly. Mental health workers are seen as uniquely qualified to serve as standard-bearers in developing a locally integrated service delivery system.

Information processing system

Abstract: PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To realize new organization for a retail store and a financial to cooperate.SOLUTION: A deposit service system 200 comprises an account management device 14 and a responsible person terminal 22 of the bank and a deposit service device 16 mediating plural retail stores and banks. The responsible person terminal 22 notifies the deposit service device 16 of attribute condition of the retail stores to be targeted for cooperation. The deposit service device 16 holds attribute information about each of the plural retail stores and identifies a retail store matching the attribute condition of the retail stores notified from the responsible person terminal 22 as the retail store which should cooperate with the bank. The deposit service device 16 detects a fact that discount sale has been carried out for consumers in the retail store which should cooperate with the bank and notifies the account management device 14 of the fact. Depending on the notice, the account management device 14 purchases financial products which have low fluidity with using the amount responded to the reduced price on financial products which have high fluidity and are hold in the bank by the consumer as financial funds.

Implementation and Evaluation of a Behavioral, School-Based Special Service Delivery System

Abstract: This investigation compared the relative effectiveness of two alternate behavioral approaches to the delivery of individual, special service programs within a public school district. A multiple baseline design was used wherein two multidisciplinary special service teams were randomly assigend to two elementary schools, with each school being randomly assigned to a different service delivery system. The service delivery systems were: (1) an explicit, termed COMPASS, which required the use of a system approach to the design, implementation, and evaluation of special service programs; and (2) an implicit system, termed non-COMPASS, which did not rely on the use of the system approach. Effects of the implementation of COMPASS were assessed relative to non-COMPASS on two measures of service delivery productivity: lag time in days for response to pupil referrals for special services; and the number of individual, speical service programs which were designed, implemented, and evaluated by each team. COMPASS had ...

Assessment of family planning service delivery in Egypt.

Abstract: The Arab Republic of Egypt has used family planning service delivery as the main vehicle for implementing its national family planning policy since 1965. This paper reports results of a study undertaken during 1975-77 using a systematic sample of 100 health units offering family planning services in 2 governorates of Egypt. The findings suggest that there is considerable potential for improving the service delivery system through better management. Broadening the choice of contraceptive methods increasing the quality and quantity of outreach and communication activities for new and continuing contraceptors and improving staff availability could lead to improvements in national program participation and continuation. (Authors modified)

Client utilization of service in relation to mental illness in a population

Abstract: Psychiatry is confronted with an increasing demand for evaluation and service research, partly induced by the crisis in economy. The general problem about how the resources are used to give a comprehensive care to individuals suffering from mental disorder in a population is discussed within three sets of questions. These are true prevalence in relation to treated prevalence, factors which influence entrance to the service system and factors which determine utilization of service over a time period. The two first questions are discussed in the light of earlier research, the third one is illustrated by referring to an ongoing study in Oslo.

Municipal Service Suits, Local Public Services and Service Equality

Abstract: WOODROW JONES, JR. San Diego State University Since local public bureaucracies are the key determinants in the quality of urban life, governmental outputs, particularly public services, must be distributed in such a manner to assure that the poor, disadvantaged and minorities receive their proper share of services. A number of researchers have written that public bureaucracies tend to be less responsive to these

Historic Trends in the Delivery of Services to Teenage Parents

Abstract: This paper will examine the political, social, and economic factors which underlie the transition in services from unwed mothers to teenage parents over the past 15 years. The experience of agencies in the Boston area serves as the basis for this case study. Data have been collected from open-ended interviews with key service providers who have developed and implemented policy related to adolescent parents. The findings indicate that, prior to 1960, agencies were responding to what was perceived as individual problems or circumstances. Illegitimacy was thought to be an unconscious attempt by white middle class women to fulfill psychological needs. The rediscovery of poverty resulting in the expansion of human services, and the declining utilization of maternity homes due to changing social attitudes relative to abortion and childbearing led to the creation of comprehensive service programs for adolescent parents. Unlike their predecesors, these programs were designed to serve a younger, black population that planned to keep its infants. The reorganization of the service system, however, still failed to address the problem of white working class adolescents who comprise the greatest number of teenage parents. The last 15 years have witnessed the creation of a vast array of specialized services for pregnant adolescents. Prior to the development of such programs, little help was available to this group. Some youthful pregnant girls found assistance in the maternity homes that worked cooperatively with child welfare agencies. These programs were, however, designed to provide shelter for a group of largely white, middle class, past-adolescent women who had become pregnant out-of-wedlock. Casework services at these homes sought to encourage the mothers to release their infants for adoption so they could be raised in a more advantageous environment and the mothers could resume their "normal life course" following delivery. Since most of the residents were over 18, there was no need for educational services. In addition, most pregnancies and deliveries were normal, so they required only conventional medical care. In marked contrast, the 1960's and 1970's saw the development of comprehensive service programs specifically designed for pregnant girls who were still of school age and who in most cases planned to keep their children. School age mothers had been found to be at greater risk than women who bore their children later in life (Klerman and Jekel, 1973; Furstenburg, 1976; Presser, 1978). These young women and their children suffered worse medical outcomes. They typically dropped out of school, and they were faced with the problems of completing their own adolescence while raising a young child. As a result, the comprehensive service programs offered a combination of medical, educational and social services throughout the prenatal period to help alleviate the consequences of adolescent childbearing. In order to explain this shift in service delivery it is necessary to consider what happened during the sixties that resulted in the redefinition of three aspects of the service delivery system: (1) of the problem, from illegitimacy to adolescent parenthood; (2) of the service population from white middle class young women who planned to place their infants for adoption to low income, primarily minority, adolescents who plan to raise their own children; and (3) of the service needs, from intensive casework around the issues of loss and fulfillment to a comprehensive approach including medical, educational, and social services. Certainly one factor which led to these changes was the rapid increase in the number of pregnancies and deliveries to school age women (Baldwin, 1976). Much of the current literature on teenage pregnancy has placed the main issues of the field in the context of changing demographic trends. It is common for articles to begin with a statistical description of patterns of adolescent sexuality and reproduction. A publication of the Allan Guttmacher Institute (1976) goes so far as to speak of adolescent pregnancy as an "epidemic". While such studies adequately document the extent of need, they do not explain the shape services take at a particular time. If one is to understand both the development of new models of services to school-age parents and the problems for which solutions still must be found, it is necessary to look beyond demographic changes and to examine the impact of social movements. It is the contention of this paper that the black protests in the sixties and the women's movement both shaped the response to the rapid increase in the number of adolescents bearing children. Black protests greatly influenced the redefinition both of the problem and of the population which was to receive the newly defined comprehensive services; further, the women's movement helped to create new options for those women who had previously gone to maternity homes to conceal an out-ofwedlock pregnancy. A review of the situation also demonstrates that one group is still not receiving comprehensive services. These are white, working class adolescents whose births far outnumber those of blacks. Similarly, their exclusion from the service sector must be analyzed in terms of these two social movements.

Traffic Assistance Service System for ESS

Abstract: This paper describes the traffic assistance service system that has been developed as a standard operator position system applicable to ESS and is employed in a variety of NEC's telephone switching systems. To provide services of various kinds of semiautomatic calls, it is important that operator position system is not only a cost-saving system but also has a wide range of flexibility. For this reason, this operator position system has been developed as an operator position system which is theoretically independent of the main switching system and is employing a variable function share control system and an optimum modularity of both hardware and software. Also, as the operators attend their positions continuously during their work time, it is important that various human engineering factors are incorporated in the operator position system. In this regard, the following factors have been introduced in this operator position system; equalization of operators' work loads and a call handling system which depend on the operator's will, simplification of call handling procedures inclusive of automatization of some operations, plasma display provision designed with operator's visual sense taken into consideration, and employment of operator console of such physical construction that is based on the movable range of the human body and on easiness of the operator's work performance.

On optimizing a one-server system with several types of customers

Abstract: This paper deals with the determination of an optimal strategy for the service system M/M/l with n types of customers under the possibility of the system's ruin. A method how to construct the optimal strategy is presented. A numerical example explaining the described theory is given.