Applying efficiency concepts to management in the social services
Efficiency became established as a key concept in service management during the 1980s, yet its definition within the social services remains problematic. This article defines a ratio which equates inputs with costs, and outputs with measured quality of care as an efficiency indicator in residential care for the elderly. Such a conversion ratio (as constructed) revealed clear differences in efficiency between the local authority, voluntary and private sectors of residential care. The causes of these variations are analysed and their implications for the management of services are drawn out. The inherent difficulties in defining unambiguous efficiency measures in this area are also discussed.
Developing and implementing a local performance measurement system in older people?s services
3 Introduction The current performance agenda has generated enormous demands upon social services authorities to justify and monitor their practice in a manner unparalleled in previous periods. Since the social services reform programme set out the performance measurement approach in late 1998 (Cm 4169, 1998), there has been a proliferation of documents, requests for information and data definitions, all intended to assist in measuring performance. The Performance Assessment Framework (PAF), which was intended to provide an integrated source of data to judge the practice of social services authorities, has changed in the three years since its inception (Department of Health, 1999). New returns, such as those of the Referrals Assessments and Packages of Care (RAP), have been added (Department of Health, 2001a). The validity and reliability of much of the information collected have been increasingly questioned (Miller, 2002). All this activity and debate have created confusion locally. Social services departments are currently struggling with new demands for information as well as facing difficulties in implementing their own performance management systems. A number of problems characterise the current view of performance measurement within social services. Firstly, local management is so focussed upon collecting information for the purposes of central returns that attention is diverted from the kinds of information useful in monitoring local practice. Secondly, the information technology infrastructure available within social services authorities is often insufficient to support the development of reliable indicators. Thirdly, there are serious problems with the interpretation of some indicators and confusion over the measurement terms offered. Fourthly, the modernisation agenda has created so many overlapping areas of action that efforts at devising locally based performance systems are often diluted. There are also questions of ownership and utilisation of information and often, as a result, practitioner based resistance to the monitoring of performance. What is needed is a model of best practice that can guide the design of locally based systems within social care. This paper puts forward such an approach with reference to work conducted before the implementation of the current performance agenda. The approach is evaluated using information derived from interviews with senior staff who played key roles in the planning, development and implementation of a performance system in a social services department. From this, suggestions are offered more widely for the future implementation of performance systems within social services authorities. One concern within social services authorities is the extensive range of data currently …
Deviant Women: Female Crime and Criminology in Revolutionary Russia, 1880-1930
This title examines the position of women in early Soviet society through the lens of deviance. After seizing power in 1917, the Bolsheviks initiated reforms aimed at abolishing the old way of life in Russia. A new Family Code liberalized marriage procedures, promoted communal living arrangements, and abolished the concept of illegitimacy. Other decrees legalized abortion, deregulated prostitution, and emancipated women. The Bolsheviks' Marxist ideology that guided these reforms was also behind the assertion that crime, an artifact of bourgeois capitalist exploitation, would disappear under socialism. As crime persisted, Soviet criminologists - a cohort of jurists, doctors, sociologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, statisticians, and forensic experts - were charged with examining its causes and motives to determine the most effective methods to eliminate it. The problem of female crime occupied a prominent position in criminologists' studies. In explaining 'traditional' female crimes of the domestic sphere - infanticide, spouse murder, and petty theft, among others - criminologists pointed to the offenders' backwardness and ignorance, material circumstances, and even biology. Kowalsky examines the position of women in early Soviet society through the lens of deviance, exploring how Soviet criminologists understood female crime and how their attitudes helped shape the development of Soviet social and behavioral norms. "Deviant Women" looks at the emergence of criminology in early Soviet Russia, tracing the development of principles and theories - in particular of female deviance - and highlighting the ways in which criminologists were able to conduct innovative social science research under the constraints of Bolshevik ideology. Kowalsky then focuses on the analyses of female crime and criminologists' attitudes concerning sexuality, geography, and class. Concluding with a close study of infanticide, the most 'typical' crime committed by women, Kowalsky discusses the social attitudes that were revealed in the professional discussion of this crime. Historians of modern Russia and the USSR, scholars of gender studies, and those studying criminology will be fascinated by this original study.