ALLOCATING RESOURCES FOR CHILD-WELFARE SERVICES - THE EFFECT OF A CASELOAD-DRIVEN APPROACH

The authors examine the unintended effects of a funding mechanism base d on historical caseload statistics on the number of recorded investig ated child abuse and neglect reports in seven California countries fro m January 1985 to December 1992. Forecasting results show that in five out of the seven counties, in the presence of an allocation methodolo gy based solely on caseload statistics, the number of recorded investi gated reports was approximately three to thirty-five percent higher th an it would have been had only population measures been used. The find ings suggest that a funding mechanism based solely on population measu res may eliminate the unintended effects of increasing child welfare c aseloads.