Managing Fragmentation: An Area Child Protection Committee in a Time of Change(Routledge Revivals)

This title was first published in 2002: The rise of New Public Management and the fragmentation of agencies that resulted, created unprecedented new tensions and problems in multi-agency work. This book provides a fascinating insight into the workings of a large multi-agency committee, exploring the manner in which different agencies brought their own agendas, organizational structures and world-views to a multi-agency forum and expected working relationships to be relatively problem free. Charting the development of child protection in the UK, it explores the problems and prospects of both multi-agency working and new public management, under the auspices of joint working initiatives. It offers a unique insight into how members of an area child protection committee viewed working with others, drawing on detailed comments and quotes from those directly involved.

Table of Contents:
Contents: A review of the changes to the structure of the child protection system of England and Wales since 1974; The contested nature of partnership working in welfare settings; A review of the development, growth and status of managerializm within the agencies comprizing the child protection system; The search for inconsistencies between partnership and NPM; A consideration of the methods employed in the empirical research; An introduction to the research setting, participating agencies and key factors; Greentown ACPC at work: environmental context; Greentown ACPC at work: comparative properties approach; Greentown ACPC at work - the collaborative linkages; Conclusions; Bibliography; Index.

Review :
’This study reported in this book centres on the interplay between two prominent organizational discourse - managerialism and partnership - in the field of child protection. The author examines the impact that new public management has had on the capacity of welfare organizations to work in partnership. Empirical research involves a case study of an area child protection committee and the collection of qualitative data. The book succeeds in demonstrating how externally imposed managerialism conflicts with the pre-requisites of partnership and how, as a consequence, neither approach is effectively implemented. The findings should be of interest to a wide range of readers, including social policy makers and analysts, those concerned with sociology of organizations and those with an interest in human services management. The study should also be of particular interest to those concerned with child welfare and protection.’ Professor Matthew Colton, University of Wales Swansea