Providing and Managing the Rehabilitation Service Two Stage (Qualitative and Quantitative) Research Fieldwork by Saar Poll OÜ Financed by European Social Fund Tiina Linno Ministry of Social Affairs of Estonia, department of social policy information and analysis April 23, 2009

Objectives of Research to analyse present situation and needs of R-system by collecting information from R-specialists of different professions to contribute for developing R-service as a state social service

Data Collection and Respondents Population: all R-team members of Estonia 1) administrative heads, 2) team leaders 3) social workers, 4) physical therapists 5) occupational therapists 6) speech therapists, pedagogues 7) psychologists 8) doctors, 9) nurses Stage 1 – 9 focus groups (June 2008) – 67 members of R-teams Stage 2 – web survey (Sept 2008) – 53 R-team leaders (of the whole 72 at that time)

Main Messages introduce long-term contracts for R-teams as the sign of consistent state rehabilitation policy define the target group (clients) proceeding from the main idea of R-service as a labour market measure change the service based R-system to the program and case management based system better integrate different sectors (social, health) and their services to achieve the mutual goals improve documentation and its management, introduce e-forms and modern databases introduce R-courses for different R-specialists as well as other client network members (incl. family)

Satisfaction with Tools and Work Conditions 72% rated their tools to be good or very good (average rating 3,77 on the scale of 1-5) 59% rated their work conditions to be good or very good (3,57) 64% rated their accessibility and environment for the disabled to be good or very good (3,79)

30% of R-teams had worked out their own quality criteria to provide R-services 77% rated their R-team work to be good or very good – average rating 3,91 59% of respondents agreed that working full time might enable a R-specialist to provide the better quality R-service As for Quality…

Summary Estonian R-teams have no universal quality evaluation framework yet, some have developed their own standards to provide R-service already now state conducts basic control over some principal aspects such as qualification of R-specialist, document management etc R-teams seem to be very interested in creating common understanding about quality thus, there might be a set of universal indicators provided by the state that might get input from different quality evaluation methods to monitor R-service