Improving productivity in child welfare programs

The project met its objective of finding ways to improve the efficiency of a child welfare program. The agency will continue an intensive evaluation of the program to reassess the procedures' impact on productivity. The project found that, with adaptation, work-methods techniques developed in industry can be useful to child welfare programs. Critical elements in the success of a productivity improvement project include full, visible support by the agency's policy makers and top management; early intensive involvement of affected personnel; wide implementation of recommended improvements; and continued review of their effectiveness. Although no single work-methods project can solve all problems connected with an agency's way of carrying out its work, the process developed by the Texas Department of Human Resources can be applied usefully by both public and private child welfare agencies as they seek ways to improve the efficiency of their programs.