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Footnotes
1. Noisy neighbours, vandalism, rubbish, neighbour disputes, harassing, drugs, rowdy behaviour and setting fires/burnt out cars.
2. This Project is also being evaluated over two years by Brodies (formerly known as Bishops Solicitors and Consulting). Their first monitoring and evaluation report was published in August 2006.
3. The economic components of Jones et al. (2006) and Nixon et al. (2006) were undertaken by Diana Sanderson, the author of this economic evaluation for the Scottish Executive.
4. This is one of three matrices that make up the California Matrix Model. The Family Development Matrix is a tool to help the caseworker or family support or advocate worker with case management and their ability to measure the progress of the family with whom they are working. It encourages skill building in parents and the development of outcomes that enable family progress to be measured.
5. This is calculated by dividing the costs of the project during a financial year by the total number of months of support provided to client families during the period.
6. When a case is closed, the numbers of months of contact with the family is known. These may fall within one or more financial years. The number of contact months in each financial year is multiplied by the relevant average cost per client month to give the total cost of each closed case. These totals are then averaged for all of the families whose cases were closed during the year to give the average total cost per closed case.
7. Given that some of the families are very large, this gives an estimate of the cost for each family member. It is derived by calculating the total number of family members that the project could work with each month, assuming it works with all members of its caseload of families for that month. These values are then summed to give the total number of family member months provided over the financial year. The total cost for the financial year is then divided by the total number of family member months to give the average cost per month of each family member. Although this is a relatively crude measure, as it assumes that all family members are actively engaged with the project, it nevertheless provides a useful indication of the value for money provided by the project.
8. This estimate is not unreasonable, given that some families have already been in contact with the project for considerably more than 12 months. Furthermore, contact durations are likely to increase over time as project staff become better at accepting families who will engage with the project for the necessary period of time rather than leave after two to three months.
9. There may also be some (relatively small) increases in costs for some services if family members are referred to them ( e.g. for mental health or drug and alcohol problems). However, in many cases the project has only helped them to access services which their needs suggest they should already have been receiving.
10. The mean individual total cumulative cost of public services was £70,019 for those with 'conduct disorder' problems, compared with £7,423 for the 'no problem' group.
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