Social and Rehabilitation Services: A Challenge to Operations Research

This paper examines the characteristics of our social and rehabilitation programs, and discusses some of the more pronounced factors affecting their susceptibility to quantification, measurement, and analysis. As an illustration of the potential role of OR, it describes the child-welfare-services program, a small but influential one having many of the attributes and characteristics prototypal of the social and rehabilitation field. The paper describes the program comprehensively: its legal authority, objectives, funding arrangements, state-plan requirements, Federal and state organizations, private service agencies, staffing of state agencies, juvenile facilities, the nature of child and family services, the characteristics of the clientele, unmet program needs, information requirements, evaluative research efforts and unresolved program questions for OR study. Finally, the paper discusses the analytical methods and problems in model building, program data collection, and costs-and-benefits analysis. The challenge to the operations-research profession is to contribute effectively to solving problems in this field, and, to this end, to succeed in convincing policy officials and administrators of the social- and rehabilitation-service programs that OR has the capability and desire to participate meaningfully in this sphere of American life.