The buck stops where? Contracting, service delivery and the challenge to provide responsive services

This paper discusses the impact of contract-based purchasing on the delivery of social and health services to families in New Zealand. The paper arose out of research conducted by the authors into the effectiveness of certain human service interventions. It begins with an outline of the agency in which the research took place. It presents a brief overview of the development of contracting and then considers four key issues raised by this development from both the international literature and from the authors' experience of researching a social service agency. These issues are: defining what is to be purchased, accountability mechanisms, specificity/fragmentation and partial funding. The paper identifies that central components of the first two issues are informational, the third is about control and the fourth is about reducing government spending and extending state control over the activities of the not-for-profit sector.