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The expected effectiveness of the approach of multi-problem families through the eyes of project partners : the case of the ‘Neighborhood Coach Project’ in the Velve-Lindenhof area in Enschede

Boer, M. de (2012) The expected effectiveness of the approach of multi-problem families through the eyes of project partners : the case of the ‘Neighborhood Coach Project’ in the Velve-Lindenhof area in Enschede.

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Abstract:In recent years there has been a rise of criticism on the organization of care and social support to families facing many complex and interrelated socioeconomic and psychosocial problems at different areas - the so-called multi-problem families. This criticism is mainly related to an oversupply of organizations providing services in a too specialized and differentiated way. Due to the presence of a wide variety of professionals at the domains of housing, education, care and income, families might get confused about their situation. Even for professionals the situation is not always clear. They are often unaware of each other’s interventions. Since these professionals only treat the problems in which they are specialized, no integrated support is established. Furthermore, there is a lack of coordination and mutual alignment of this support. The city of Enschede and professionals of care and service organizations started to look for practical and innovative ways to provide integrated support for multi-problem households. This has led to the introduction of the ‘Neighborhood Coach Project’ in the deprived Velve-Lindenhof area in 2008. In this project, the care and service delivery is being coordinated through an integrated problem approach that emerges from the cooperation between neighborhood coaches and professionals from 25 community and governmental organizations. These institutions created a network of project partners and agreed all on transferring informal decision-making power to the neighborhood coaches. This problem approach must contribute to both an integrated and coordinated plan of action. The purpose of this research is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to give insight in how the neighborhood coaches and project partners cooperate in the context of the problem approach and what project partners expect from the effectiveness of the problem approach. On the other hand, it aims to explain the individual differences in the expectations of this effectiveness by means of actor characteristics and the quality of the cooperation. The theoretical framework for this research is based on a combination of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework of Ostrom, Gardner and Walker (1994) and different network theories. From this framework it can be expected that project partners have influence on the cooperation which in turn affects the expected effectiveness of the problem approach. Since the project partners have different characteristics (i.e. level of support for the idea of introducing neighborhood coaches, amount of trust, extent of differences of opinion and level of goal consensus), it can be expected that these four actor characteristics have a direct influence on the expected effectiveness of the problem approach and how project partners assess the quality of the cooperation. Furthermore, it can be expected that the quality of the cooperation influences the way in which project partners assess the effectiveness of the problem approach. The data for this research were obtained through conducting a survey questionnaire among the project partners in the ‘Neighborhood Coach Project’. In the analysis of these data three main strategies were used. First, the respondents’ scores on the different variables were described by means of univariate analysis. Second, bivariate correlations were calculated in order to discover relationships between the different variables. Furthermore, the technique of multivariate regression analysis was used to test the formulated hypotheses and to explain the variance in the expected effectiveness of the problem approach and the quality of the cooperation. Based on the results it can be concluded that variations in the quality of the cooperation can be explained by both the independent variables amount of trust in (the expertise of) the neighborhood coaches and the amount of support for the idea of introducing neighborhood coaches. Both the amount of trust and support for the idea of the introduction of neighborhood coaches have a significant positive relation on the quality of the cooperation. Furthermore, it can be concluded that variations in the expected effectiveness of the problem approach can be explained by both the independent variables quality of the cooperation and the amount of trust in (the expertise of) the neighborhood coaches. The quality of the cooperation as well as the amount of trust have a significant positive influence on the expectations of the effectiveness of the problem approach by project partners.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:88 social and public administration
Programme:Public Administration MSc (60020)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/62794
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