Quote of the Day

Traditional management theory is based on a lack of confidence in the line employee and the presumed need to control input and output. In group care this means, as we know, that direct care workers are not respected or even trusted. This is demonstrated by their limited input into treatment planning, their lack of decision-making authority, even about many minor details of program and day-to-day life, their limited access to resources, and the restriction of their opportunities to exercise interpersonal judgment. Although the two examples that follow may seem extreme, they actually occurred and dramatically illustrate the problem.

In one residence where there was a problem with flies, the child care worker was required to keep all of the flies she killed to prove that she was doing something about it. In another nationally known agency, child care workers are not allowed access to additional toilet paper for the bathroom without routing the request through the supervisor. These are not atypical examples of the routine distrust of the line worker that characterizes most group care settings.

Even more counterproductive is the conceptual and theoretical vacuum in which most child care workers are expected to operate. Because the worker has typically not received an adequate professional educational experience, there is little respect and the quality of care suffers. Quality of care is also related to working conditions, which themselves are partially determined by the organizational structure.

Thus, new management approaches that are replacing the traditional, control-oriented hierarchical model with collaborative effort, greater worker autonomy and more emphasis on education, have significant implications for the changes needed in group care programs. This model, sometimes called the “organizational development” (OD) approach, incorporates, among others, these key elements:

Reliance on group process to guide staff performance in contrast with formal structural properties.
Mobilization of an action-research model to inform performance in an ongoing way.
Recognition that the work team is the key unit for using action-research to generate more effective modes of organizational behavior.
Acknowledgement that collaborative, as opposed to top-down management, is essential to making the model work within the work team construct. (French & Bell, cited in Thomas, 1994, p. 87-88)

Authority and responsibility are given to the line workers, and the manager’s role is to educate and facilitate their development.

— DOUG MAGNUSON, HERB BARNES AND JERRY BEKER
Magnuson, D., Barnes, F.H., and Beker, J. (1996) Human development imperatives in the organization of group care programs: A practical approach. Residential Treatment for Children and Youth, Vol.13 (3) pp.91-92