The use of a participatory approach to develop a framework for assessing quality of care in children's mental health services.

The purpose of this study was to develop a framework for assessing the quality of children's mental health services that reflects the primary concerns and perspectives of diverse stakeholders. A participatory research approach was adopted in order to incorporate caregivers of children with mental health problems, mental health service providers, and managed care administrators in identifying and developing quality of care indicators and methods for assessment. This research occurred in three phases that moved from very qualitative and exploratory to more quantitative as we sought to refine and verify the resulting Quality of Care Framework.

Child welfare privatization: quantitative indicators and policy issues.

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the development of safety, permanency, and child well-being indicators by using administrative data sets as well as by using these indicators as tools for evaluating Florida's Community-Based Care (CBC) initiative. Longitudinal data from 37 counties including 4 counties that implemented community-based care were examined in this study. The results of the study indicated that the overall performance of CBC counties is at least as good as the performance of their comparison run by the state counties.