Foster Care Book: Chapter 5
Chapter 5 - Outcome Management
When I was managing in business, I always refused to allow projects to begin if the person with the idea could not or did not define how the usefulness of the project was going to be measured. I really could not see spending R&D money on projects for which we could not define their worth. Practically all of the social projects started by our government never had a measurement of their worth described before they were started.
I located an article on the Internet - The Children’s Aid Society of Metropolitan Toronto has a Managed Care page. It had an extensive article entitled Outcome Management: Principles, Pointers and Pitfalls, which was written by a Dr. Davis Doty. Since Dr. Doty is a Ph.D, the article tends to use terms and develop theorems that may be way over the head of most of us. One problem exceedingly educated people have is that they are incapable of writing or talking without showing us their ’learned’ vocabulary. In spite of that, if one is able to unravel the concept, it comes down to: Measure the worth of your efforts so that changes can be made which will make the efforts in foster care more effective. It will also allow us to learn from our mistakes. Sounds just a little like the concept used in business.
Dr. Doty uses the parable of "The Seven Blind Men and the Elephant" as an example of the intention of Outcome Management. Coming upon and touching different parts of an elephant, the seven blind men had very different impressions of what an elephant is. The one who grabbed the tail felt it was like a rope. The one who felt a leg perceived the elephant to be like a tree trunk. The one who touched the trunk thought that he held a very large snake, etc., etc. Only by integrating their different perspectives and perception did they begin to understand the complexity of the elephant.
Measuring and evaluating the different approaches, complexities of the children, the different foster home environments, etc. can provide some real insights into the ever changing environment of foster care. The variables are so complex, it may appear impossible to evaluate and gather data. The complexity is certainly true, that does not make it an impossible task. It does make it difficult but not impossible. We have computers that can search through tremendous amounts of data and come to conclusions in minutes that would take us centuries without computers. The main task is not the evaluation of data, the main task is the gathering of the data and finding a central archive for it until processing can begin. Dr. Doty’s article is difficult reading and has many difficult concepts because of the language. If one can wade through that, there are good suggestions on how to approach such a concept.
Parenting is the only profession in the world where there is no training. That is not true for foster parents. Not only is there a great deal of training before placements begin but the training continues for what seems forever. I feel it is essential that we in foster care develop such a data base. This would provide a tool so that we can be more effective not only in our approach to caring for foster children but to realize a larger percentage of successes. IT IS A SHAME THAT PARENTS CANNOT RAISE THEIR OWN CHILDREN, RATHER THAN RELYING ON THE ’VILLAGE.’ Until we can return to the concept of family, we need to do something to make our efforts more effective.
© Chuck Slate
California
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