Results from the first two years of a statewide survey conducted by the Cabinet indicate caseworkers are meeting clients’ needs more comprehensively by coordinating their work with other service providers, many of them community-based.

The survey results show sharp, statistically significant increases in the numbers of clients who expressed agreement or strong agreement with two statements dealing with outside sources of aid:

• "When this agency could not provide for my needs, they told me about other resources"; and
• "My family is safer and more secure with help from this agency or with referrals by this agency."

Those who registered agreement or strong agreement with the first statement increased from 47.7 percent of clients surveyed in 2002 to 55.6 percent in 2003. Clients agreeing or strongly agreeing with the second statement increased from 57 percent of the survey group in the first year to 65.5 percent in the second.

In addition, 65.7 percent of clients surveyed agreed or strongly agreed with a statement added to the survey in 2003: "The caseworker considers my family strengths and my family’s needs."

Dr. Ruth Huebner, who helped design the survey and analyzed the results, said these findings indicate the Cabinet’s model of service delivery, Comprehensive Family Services (CFS), is working as intended. CFS assumes that clients, Cabinet staff and other providers in the community will jointly set goals with the family and work together to achieve them. CFS focuses on building the strengths of a family and the community to keep children safe and families self-sufficient.Under CFS, which the Cabinet has phased in over several years, "we would expect . . . gradual but steady improvement in customer satisfaction," said Huebner, the Cabinet’s researcher. In the survey results, she said, "we saw that trend."

The survey, intended to help the Cabinet improve its services, utilized randomized sampling to ensure reliability and representative responses. The survey forms were mailed, and 43 percent were returned in 2003.

Responses consist of ratings on a five-point scale, with higher scores indicating greater satisfaction.

Results of the 2003 survey are reported on the Cabinet’s Web site for the state as a whole and for each of the Cabinet’s 16 service regions. They can be viewed at http://cfc.ky.gov/research/survey2003/home.asp

In each year of the survey, four-fifths of the clients who responded said they had been helped by the Cabinet’s services, and three-fourths said Cabinet staff were professional and polite and treated them with respect.

Responses to other survey items revealed a continued desire among many clients for more resources to help meet family needs, as well as some dissatisfaction with caseworkers’ failure to return phone calls promptly

Overall client satisfaction with Cabinet services increased slightly from 2002 to 2003 among child support recipients and decreased slightly among families of children receiving protective services. These changes were likely due to chance variation, but satisfaction among family support clients (those needing welfare, food stamps and other aid) improved significantly and was the highest among all client groups.

Community partners—agencies and organizations, many of them locally based, that work with the Cabinet to meet clients’ needs—were also surveyed, and their overall satisfaction with the Cabinet’s services remained stable at slightly less than 78 percent.

In 2003, both clients and community partners were also asked to rate services provided by Family Resource and Youth Services (FRYSCs). Established by the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990, FRYSCs remove barriers to children’s school success by helping their families get needed services.

Among respondents to the item on FRYSCs, 79.7 percent of clients and 77.5 percent of community partners said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the help FRYSCs provide.

The regional results on the survey show wide variation, and each region has responded with a plan to improve its results, Huebner said. Several of these action plans stress the importance of responding promptly to telephone calls and finding creative ways to expand resources for clients.

For regional staff, "customer satisfaction is an important outcome that is pretty easy to understand," Huebner said. "It is very personal—it’s about the people that you serve. And so they do use the data to improve service