I will discuss the relevant managerial and organisational theoretical concepts that I observed whilst working on placement at the Knowsley Leaving Care Team.

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For this assignment I will discuss the relevant managerial and organisational theoretical concepts that I observed whilst working on placement at the Knowsley Leaving Care Team. Within this assignment I will show an understanding of: organisational structure, organisational goals and the culture of the organisation. I will also look at the level of service user involvement within the organisation. For the last part of the assignment I will address, through reflection, whether the organisation helped or hindered my attempts to apply social work knowledge, skills and values.

The term organisation can be described as "structuring activities into operational groups each of which contain employees who are allocated roles and duties and given varying degrees of authority and responsibility" (Bets 1993 p25).

The Leaving Care Team is located within the Children and Families Division of Knowsley Borough Council's Social Services Department. The agency's structure (Appendix B) clearly shows that the Children and Families Division is structured into operational groups or divisions. Max Weber (1864 - 1920), a German sociologist, defined this structure as a hierarchy of offices or posts. Weber describes the hierarchical structure as a pyramid with the head of the organisation at the top, middle managers in between and the frontline workers and their assistants at the base. This can be related to the Children and Families Division, as the Assistant Director is at the top, the Service Managers are the middle managers, the Social Workers are the frontline workers and the administration staff are their assistants.

The levels of authority are well defined in the hierarchal structure. The higher up the pyramid you are the more power and influence you have on your subordinates.

For example the Assistant Director of the Children and Families Division holds the most control over the movement of employees within that division. Directly below sits the Service Managers who plan operations and below them sits the Team Manager who is responsible for overlooking the day to day work of all team members.

The Leaving Care Team had only one team manager whom the team reported to and used as a mediator to higher management. This could be seen as Fayol's unity-of-command principle. Hatch (1997) describes this principle by stating that "managers believed that every member of the organisation should report to only one person so that each member had one clear path through the hierarchy stretching from themselves to their boss, to their bosses boss, all the way to the top of the organisation" (p165).

The management positions within the Children and Families Division where occupied by ex-social workers who had been in the organisation for several years. The managers that had the most experience occupied positions further up the structure. Coulshed and Mullender cite Weber (1947) by stating "each office carries specific responsibilities for which the person occupying it should have the relevant skills" (2001 p29).

Although the Children and Families Division of Social Services has a bureaucratic hierarchal structure it could be argued that the Leaving Care Team has a community approach. Rose and Lawton state "a community approach may require that the organisation be structured on matrix lines where programme teams rather than departments deliver services which cut across departmental or geographical boundaries" (1999 p104). This could be related to the Leaving Care Team as it is a multi-disciplinary team that is made up of Leaving Care Social Workers, Looked after Children Social Workers, Support Workers and Employability Officers.
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The multi-disciplinary team has several organisational goals. Mullins (1996) describes a goal as a future expectation: something that organisations strive to accomplish. Mullins also states that "the goals of an organisation can be obtained via its underlying ideologies, based on values, beliefs and attitudes. In return this may determine the organisations culture, providing a set of policies and principles to govern its operation. Policies and principles may be recognized and implemented informally as accepted conventions of the organisation or they may be stated formally in writing" (1996 p298).

This can relate to the Children and Families Division ...

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