Costing for social work services

This paper discusses the potential for the development of a cost accounting procedure that monitors both output of service and costs while allowing for though not insuring quality of output. Such a system of costing out can help answer questions of cost effectiveness of social work services. One possible model is utilized to express the process and demonstrate potential benefits to social work services. It offers way of defining and evaluating services with respect to standards of productivity. Necessary components of such a system are defined. It is suggested as a tool for the social work Administrator to consider as a way of clearly and effectively defining needs and defining and "marketing" the services to be provided by the department. It is presented here to encourage further exploration and refinement.