Exploring a role for performance management in residential child care

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Sutherland, Russell (2007) Exploring a role for performance management in residential child care. Scottish Journal of Residential Child Care, 6 (2). ISSN 1478-1840

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Abstract

Residential child care has a history which has been marked in recent times by a series of public inquiries (Levy & Kahan, 1991; Marshall, Jamieson & Finlayson, 1999; Waterhouse, 2000). The demand from inquiries for services to learn from their 'mistakes' echoes time after time. Inquiry recommendations place pressure on services to improve their way of working and their management practices. While agencies such as the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care and the Scottish Social Services Council have a role in setting and monitoring standards, it is argued that their activities are not focused enough to ensure that the mistakes highlighted in inquiries will not be repeated. Whilst it is possible to identify factors that indicate good practice, it is harder to evidence their operation in the day-to-day work of residential child care. Children and young people who require residential care are entitled to an experience that will enable them to fulfil their potential safely. It will be argued in this paper that performance management has a role to play in delivering a safe service. Performance management, as it relates to residential child care, is a means of measuring the performance of an organisation and its employees. It is a subjective process that involves seeking to measure both qualitative and quantitative factors. Two frameworks for helping to embed performance management in residential child care will be examined. These are Best Value and the National Standards. This paper seeks to explore the features of performance management and will evaluate Best Value and the National Standards as frameworks on which to base performance management. It will argue for a more realistic monitoring process for residential child care. Finally, it will suggest that unit managers should be skilled in management models and theories to enable them to achieve better integration between organisational objectives and delivery of services at unit level.

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https://doi.org/10.17868/strath.00086177
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