ABSTRACT

According to SAMHSA (2014), 1 of the 10 domains of a trauma-informed approach to child welfare relates to universal screening; however, costs of installation and implementation models are often unclear. This paper provides administrators of human service organizations with a fiscal example of the estimated cost of implementing screening with children in the custody of a public child welfare system. Findings show that the cost of installation and start-up are estimated at 208 USD per child while ongoing implementation/sustainability costs are 130 USD per child when implementation is universal to all children in custody. Discussion includes implications for practice and future research. Practice Points

• There are challenges and successful practices associated with developing trauma-informed child welfare systems (Akin et al., 2018), and public child welfare administrators benefit when they can understand potential costs of implementing new trauma-informed practices, such as screening.

• Understanding cost analysis is important for leaders across multiple levels of non-profit and human service organizations in order to make informed choices about policies and practices that balance input, output, and outcomes.

• Human service leadership teams should consider utilizing justice-enhanced cost findings to prioritize and select policies and practices that incorporate fiscal data with intervention data to address individual and structural challenges that maintain disadvantage, inequity, and marginalization.

• Investing in a trauma/mental health screening tool with their child welfare population is a minimal cost…substantially less than the cost of out-of-home care.

摘要

根据 SAMHSA (2014)，创伤知情儿童福利方法的 10 个领域中有 1 个与普遍筛查有关；但是，安装和实施模型的成本通常不清楚。本文为人类服务组织的管理人员提供了一个财政示例，说明在公共儿童福利系统的监护下实施筛查的估计成本。调查结果表明，安装和启动成本估计为每位儿童 208 美元，而在所有被拘留儿童普遍实施的情况下，正在进行的实施/可持续性成本为每位儿童 130 美元。讨论包括对实践和未来研究的影响。练习点

• 开发创伤知情儿童福利系统存在挑战和成功实践（Akin 等人，2018 年），当公共儿童福利管理者能够了解实施新的创伤知情实践（例如筛查）的潜在成本时，他们会受益。

• 了解成本分析对于跨多个级别的非营利组织和人类服务组织的领导者来说非常重要，以便对平衡输入、输出和结果的政策和实践做出明智的选择。

• 人力服务领导团队应考虑利用正义增强的成本调查结果来优先考虑和选择将财政数据与干预数据相结合的政策和实践，以应对保持劣势、不平等和边缘化的个人和结构性挑战。

• 与儿童福利人群一起投资创伤/心理健康筛查工具是最低成本……大大低于户外护理的成本。