title: Assessing the local need for family and child care services: a small area utilization analysis.
abstract: This article reports the findings of a study to develop a new method for allocating resources to family and child care services within Northern Ireland. Downloads from financial and client databases, together with a survey of social worker case activity, were used to estimate utilization costs across 500 local areas. Regression techniques were then used to account for variations in these costs in terms of local socioeconomic conditions. The resultant needs index represents a fair and equitable means of allocating central family and child care budgets to local units of management and service delivery.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Child Care Research, Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Percy
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Carr-Hill
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dixon
authors.forename: J Q
authors.initials: JQ
authors.lastname: Jamison
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002017:Budgets; D002648:Child; D002669:Child Welfare / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003625:Data Collection; D005190:Family; D006078:Government Programs / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D020380:Needs Assessment / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D009660:Northern Ireland; D017062:Small-Area Analysis; D012947:Social Work / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014505:Urban Population; D014600:Utilization Review