FBI agents interviewed a Boston man to see if he was a threat to society. They decided he wasn’t. He was. Prosecutors weighed the exceptionally sparse evidence against five young men in a high profile rape case. They decide they … Continue reading
The rush to blame someone or something for last week’s Boston Marathon blast is on. Depending on what you read, it is the fault of President Obama, Alex Jones, the U.S. government (I refuse to link to an Alex Jones … Continue reading
The current issue of Quality and Safety in Healthcare contains an incisive editorial by Kaveh Shojania and Eric Thomas about why the QI field has not been able to demonstrate widespread improvements in patient safety as a result of their efforts. … Continue reading
Lack of money and time. Lack of buy-in. Competing demands. Lack of training and skills. Lack of authority. Lack of research capacity. Ever-changing requirements from accreditors, funders and licensing bodies. These were the major challenges reported by 16 quality professionals … Continue reading
Some places are in need. Some places are in real need. Some places are in crises like we only see in war. The Englewood neighborhood of Chicago is one of these. The recent series on Harper High School in Englewood that … Continue reading
Accreditation is sold as a marker of quality social service, but amazingly little is known about the effects of accreditation on quality in any field, including the social services. A new paper by Madeline Lee of Tulane University sheds some light on … Continue reading
A recent post noted how little training in quality improvement appears to have made it to the quality improvement workforce in child welfare. Why is that? … Continue reading
Return on investment (ROI) is the holy grail of quality work, not just in the social services. It was heartening to read this week of a research study (also look here) showing ROI on providing quality mental health services in the … Continue reading
Rarely does the public get a glimpse into the working of quality improvement systems in place in a public social service. In 2012, the National (Child Welfare) Resource Center on Organizational Improvement (NRCOI), conducted semi-structured phone interviews with 31 state … Continue reading
Good ideas need champions and the New York Times is the champion of positive deviance. They followed up articles from 2008 and 2009 this week with a reminder on the power of the positive deviance approach. While some think of positive … Continue reading
