			Home About us Contact

Single Agency (single + agency)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	75%

Selected Abstracts

The responsibility to care for single homeless people

HEALTH & SOCIAL CARE IN THE COMMUNITY, Issue 6 2001
Maureen Crane RGN RMN MSc PhD
Abstract This paper examines the reasons why in contemporary Britain many single homeless people with severe physical and mental health problems and welfare needs do not receive the treatment, care and financial support that they manifestly need, and in particular considers the interaction between their personal characteristics and the organisation and the obligations of services. Homelessness is a complex concept associated with problems of housing, health, social care and income. The greatest weaknesses of the service system are that no single agency has a statutory responsibility to ensure that vulnerable homeless people are served, and none of the generalist welfare agencies have a duty to seek out those who do not present. As a result, single homeless people fall between the housing, health and social services and amass exceptional unmet needs. The paper appraises the approaches to single homeless people's problems that have recently been introduced by the Rough Sleepers' Unit (RSU), and discusses the ways in which current reforms of the welfare services may impact on the situation of homeless people. With the possibility that the RSU's prime responsibility for commissioning single homeless people's services will transfer to local authorities in 2002, the paper concludes by specifying the implications for voluntary and statutory providers and makes recommendations about the attribution of the responsibility to care for this vulnerable group. [source]

The Politics of Food Regulation and Reform in Ireland

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 3 2004
George Taylor
Amid a period of increasing political anxiety generated by the BSE crisis, the Irish Government sought to replace a confusing medley of food regulations with a single agency responsible for regulating food from the ,farm to the fork'. Presented as a radical departure from a regime previously discredited, its remit would be to redefine the relationship between risk assessment, management and communication. In this context, the paper puts forward three principal arguments. First, that while the Minister for Health and Children was keen to extol both the scientific credentials of the agency, and the importance of shifting regulatory responsibility from the Department of Agriculture and Food (DAF) to the Department of Health and Children (DOHC), what remains novel is the manner in which reform has managed to retain political access for influential agri-business interests. Second, that any reform undertaken should be fully cognisant of the international agreements between the European Union and the World Trade Organisation which extended further a free market in food trade. The agency's institutional architecture therefore was framed with the intention of restoring market confidence without threatening the habitat of those multi-national companies that occupy this arena. Finally, that the role of science (and risk) in food regulation has altered. Rather than perform the task of sustaining order through responsible government, science now participates in (re)constituting order through the market. [source]

Reinvention As Reform: Assessing the National Performance Review

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 6 2000
James R. Thompson
The conclusion of the Clinton Administration presents an opportune time to investigate the outcomes of the National Performance Review (NPR). Any such evaluation, however, is complicated by the nature of the objectives sought, many of which relate to subtle and elusive elements of organizational life: empowering employees, inducing a less risk-adverse culture, and enhancing the quality of service delivery. The strategy employed here as a means of gaining insight into such phenomena was to couple a broad review of government-wide survey results with an in-depth investigation into the impact of NPR on a single agency, the Social Security Administration. A conclusion is that many of the NPR's "higher-order" objectives have not been met on a systemic basis. While a variety of proximate explanations for this finding can be identified, a more fundamental explanation relates to a failure by the sponsors to adjust their strategy to account for basic differences between NPR and past reforms. [source]

Institutional design and the closure of public facilities in transition economies

THE ECONOMICS OF TRANSITION, Issue 3 2002
William Jack
As part of the reforms of their systems for financing and delivering health care, many transition economies, particularly in central and eastern Europe, have adopted national insurance funds that are institutionally separate from ministries of health. Most of these countries have also grappled with the problem of restructuring the delivery system, especially the need to reduce hospital capacity. Although improving the performance of medical care providers through a shift from passive budgeting to explicitly incentive mechanisms is important, why this change in financial relations between the government and providers could not be implemented simply by reforming the role of health ministries is not obvious. This paper presents an explicit rationale for the separation of powers between the regulator (the ministry of health) and the financing body (the insurance fund), based on the inability of a single agency to commit to closing hospitals. JEL classification: L51, P20, P35, I18. [source]