Developing Good Practice (From Paying Back: Twenty Years of Community Service, P 103-119, 1993, Dick Whitfield and David Scott, eds. - See NCJ-170422)

• NCJ Number: 170428
• Author(s): I McNair
• Date Published: 1993
• Length: 17 pages
• Sale Source: Waterside Press
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This chapter examines the link between good practice and appropriate staffing and management in community service and the development of good practice guidelines.

Abstract

Good practice in community service has moved from a person-centered, value-based probation environment of the early 1970s, to the more mechanistic, process oriented, efficiency systems of the 1990s. Two themes inform a continuing debate both within and, increasingly, outside the probation service. This chapter focuses on one of them, represented by National Standards, the codification of systems, the new managerialism and value for money. It is also important to consider the other theme, that of the role of the professional social worker in the probation service. The two themes are linked by concepts of accountability and by the tension between public accountability and personal responsibility. The chapter examines aspects of National Standards and their effects on practice and considers recommendations in the Association of Chief Officers of Probation Action Plan. References