CONTRACTING-OUT SOCIAL-SERVICES

Despite the enormous share of social services in government spending a nd the strong incentives on government to rationalize services, the al ternative service delivery (Asn) literature has given little attention to social-service delivery. In our paper, we review current approache s taken to social-service delivery in Ontario by the Ministry of Commu nity and Social Services (MCSS). Although the Mess retains responsibil ity for the social-services system, it provides social services almost exclusively through private non-profit agencies under purchase of ser vice contracts. Two themes emerge from our examination of these relati onships. First, the standard privatization model has limited applicati on to social-services delivery. Contracts are generally not awarded in a competitive fashion, and contract termination discipline is rarely applied. Given the inadequacies of current performance measures for so cial services, monitoring contract performance is difficult. Second, t he success of attempts to shift provision to private non-governmental entities is intimately linked to the effectiveness of accountability m echanisms, especially outcome-based performance measures. Improving pe rformance measurement is therefore an important priority. In addition to advocating further research into the effectiveness of social servic es, one interesting MCSS initiative has been to look to client communi ties to help monitor the performance of agencies. We conclude that amo ng the different institutional approaches to social-service delivery, contracting with non-profits is the one that currently seems most appr opriate.