There will be an argument for and against, and the advantages and disadvantages to both sides will be conversed to achieve an accurate conclusion. In addition this essay will start by. Introduction Social work is a service that provides 'universalist services outside the market on the principle of need' Titmuss, , p.
It maintains welfare of the public, and its basic role in adult social care is to focus on individuals, families and communities, and to ensure their well-being. By doing so, social workers improve quality of life, and serve for betterment of the whole community, thus enabling a social change.
Today, much of these social work services is guaranteed by social policies. Authority in the public services Authority means the right or power to enforce rules or give orders. To do this they need legislations to enforce their laws, to function properly the uniformed pubic services need to have legislations.
The extent of authority relates to the limit of control held by an individual or organisation. The limit of control is governed by the job description of the role, as well as the jurisdiction, with authority coming either from statute or company policy.
Position When we talk about someone being in a position of authority we usually mean that they hold a certain rank or status within society or within an organisation such as the public services. There are several ways in which a person could find himself or herself in a position of authority.
For example, a priest has the authority of the church while a mother or father has parental authority over children. In the uniformed public services, positions of authority come with promotion. Their main features include nature, taxing power, elected council members and the geographic boundaries. A province creates local governments through local elections that occur every 2, 3 or 4 years depending on the province that influence one mayor, city council members and often.
Therefore, it is not uncommon for an organization to use multiple theories when implementing strategies in the workplace. My department is. There are many different organisations that enforce discipline within the public services, which have the right to extend different levels of authority and enforce different levels of obedience within a service. It is completely independent, and is free of government influence. It is primary purpose is to increase the confidence that the public have within the police complaint system throughout England and Wales.
They investigate serious …show more content… Within the Prison Service they use the Consultative authority; this is the type of authority where the leader welcomes the opinions of the team when it comes to problems. This is often used when there is a change in procedures.
HM Inspectors of Fire Services; is also completely independent, and is free of government influence. Its primary purpose is to inspect and auditing all of the local fire services to ensure that they meet the criteria and targets that are given to them by the government. They offer advice on policy, procedures, and legislative changes that will affect the UK Fire Service, and also advise ministers and senior staff on structure, organisation and performance, including equality, of fire and rescue services.
They provide the government departments and ministers during major emergency. This was put in place to primary declare the duties and power of the fire authorities. Promoting fire safety and protecting the public from fires. The act makes sure that the Fire Officers are constantly updated with their skills, making sure that they are able to provide the public with the best help and support. They use the nature of authority through blind obedience. Can increase administrative costs: Creating additional layers of government is an expensive proposition, and while the central government - in the best of cases- might reduce its role and shed personnel in the context of decentralization, empirical evidence suggests that these workers are often reabsorbed by local governments.
There is thus no net change in public sector employment. In the worst of cases, central government employment remains unchanged, while local government employment grows. Civil Service Reform to Support Decentralization. The main questions in assessing the civil service reform priorities parallel those in more general decentralization policies: Under what conditions does one deconcentrate or devolve human resource management or organizational responsibilities to lower tiers of government?
What requisite capacity does one need at various levels to make a system work? The twin tasks of building local capacity and adjusting to the changes in intergovernmental coordination needs can be daunting even when budgets allow comprehensive training and all stake-holders support the reforms. The more frequent realities of budget constraints and mixed support, however, practically ensure that large-scale civil service reform will be a long drawn-out, expensive process that does not keep up with the pace of service or sector decentralization.
Building Local Capacity. Local or at least sub-national capacity is one of the most important factors creating a well-functioning decentralized civil service. In countries where local institutions already exist, the challenge will be to reinforce them institutionally and legally as well as to strengthen their personnel management capacities. In places where local government institutions are embryonic or exist only at an informal level, the institutional and legal framework will have to be created before any type of reform of the administration is undertaken.
The degree of local capacity determines the kind of human-resource management strategies that will be feasible and desirable. Decentralization of human resource management is more likely to succeed in cases where lower-level authorities have the financial and managerial ability to set competitive compensation packages and salary levels that will attract local talent.
In these cases, the flexibility advantages of allowing local governments the to set hiring levels might outweigh the risk of increasing inter-regional inequalities. Where talent and skills are lacking at the local level, a unitary hiring system might be preferred to ensure that the necessary skills are present locally in all regions. In these cases where the center retains more control over human resources, caution should be paid to ensure that the management options of local stake-holders are not curtailed.
The legal framework should clearly define responsibilities and standards. The creation of a strong legal framework- to address issues related to financing and reporting, to determine the type of control mechanisms especially financial that are necessary and who is accountable for them, to evaluate hiring practices and compensation schemes as well as address issues related to the procurement of public works - must be a priority in any reform effort to ensure sound utilization of public resources and minimize corruption.
Consistency and transparency gain support. On matters of staffing, compensation or oversight of local administration, and most importantly in the delivery of services, it is very important to ensure that there is transparency and that changes in the administration and therefore the civil service are not seen as an instrument to disenfranchise some groups or favor another.
Reporting mechanisms need to be clear and precise. In the medium and longer-term, audit courts can be a useful regulatory mechanism. Transitions from the existing system to new systems have to be carefully planned to avoid conflict between new reporting arrangements and enduring mechanisms. Channels for citizen-civil servant communication need to be created. By including more citizens in the process of monitoring civil service performance, decentralization creates more opportunities for friction between civil servants and citizens.
Harassment by private interest groups can prevent honest and dedicated civil servants from performing their duties, while civil servants can use their positions to threaten citizens. These tensions can be avoided by relatively quick and inexpensive methods and structures for redressing grievances, whether these come from civil servants or from the citizens. Training should contribute to the formation of new working relationships. In addition to building local capacity, training can be a tool for creating personal networks among various levels of government, regions, or types of government workers.
One recommendation, for example, might be to train career civil servants and local politicians together to insure that they better understand what is expected of them and what they can expect from each other. All levels of government should be encouraged to define and plan for the types of workers they will need in order to carry out new responsibilities. In the short term, these sorts of rough plans substitute for the computerized establishment management capacity and human resource management staff that so many countries lack and can help eliminate duplicate workers, unnecessary hires, and other expensive mistakes.
At the very least, they can be an exercise in longer-term planning and role definition. Decentralization can be a way of improving access to services, tailoring government actions to private needs, and increasing the opportunities for state-society interactions.
Subnational governments, however, will only be effective when they have access to the necessary human and financial resources to undertake the services they have been conferred. Civil service reform --both capacity building and adjusting to decentralization-- addresses the first of these requirements. There is fairly widespread agreement that capacity-building at all government levels is an essential component of decentralization.
The sequencing and priority levels of training --whether to train local or central governments first, for example-- depends on the country itself, although the subnational governments have generally been the first to be trained to accept their new responsibilities. There is less agreement over how to deliver the appropriate human resources package to the appropriate levels of government and how to coordinate human resource management across and between levels of government.
The decision to decentralize or retain central control over human resource management --recruiting, hiring, salary-setting, etc. The suggestions above outline some general coordination mechanisms, but the specific institutional arrangements for ensuring a consistent, efficient civil service must react to the kinds of institutional changes that decentralization has brought.
Information and Monitoring. Accountability is a prerequisite for improved public sector performance, and information is the key to accountability. The systematic collection, analysis, and reporting of information are critical elements of decentralization programs because that information can be used to verify compliance with policy goals, to analyze alternative outcomes, and to guide future decisions.
Information on financial flows i. Such information is essential both at the local level -- to inform local constituents and to encourage public participation in the political process -- and at the central level -- to monitor and supervise local activities funded at least partially by central sources.
Unless the local public is aware of what public goods and services are provided, how well they are provided, who the beneficiaries are, how much the goods and services cost, and who paid for them, local constituencies will not encourage effective government.
Central monitoring and evaluation of local performance, has much the same effect, except that national interests replace particular local interests. Without some central monitoring, there can be no assurance that functions of national importance are adequately performed once they have been decentralized, that the macroeconomic implications of decentralization are understood, or that the effects of proposed changes in intergovernmental fiscal or administrative relations are adequately analyzed.
The task of monitoring and assessing subnational finances can be strengthened considerably through improvements in financial accounting and reporting, and the establishment of analytical capabilities for monitoring and evaluation. But the need for careful monitoring goes beyond finance.
Depending on the service delivery objective, the need for monitoring will differ. For example, different aspects of decentralization may have different effects on the construction and maintenance of various types of infrastructure, or health care programs, or education. If the objective is for safety nets to reach the poor, information is required regarding who the poor are and where they are located, and how much of the benefits from the program are reaching this target group.
In the vast majority of cases, countries spend significant resources on safety nets but fail to collect data and monitor who receives the benefits and how they were affected. A notable exception to this is the valuable evaluation of the poverty targeting of an Argentina safety net program, see Ravallion, To improve financial accounting and reporting, detailed fiscal data should be regularly collected and reported for subnational governments.
Ideally these data would be derived from uniform financial and reporting systems. At a minimum, these data should be collected and processed on a regular and timely basis. The data should exhibit the following characteristics:. The development and implementation of financial reporting and information systems often requires substantial technical assistance, training, time and resources.
Implementation of these systems may also require that central institutions be established to develop and maintain the reporting systems, to train and support local officials, and to monitor and analyze developments in subnational finance.
Establishing a census of governments -- similar in coverage to the censuses of population, industry and employment existing in many countries -- and publishing subnational financial data would establish the foundation for a monitoring system and also provide important inputs for revenue estimating, economic research and the assessment of creditworthiness.
Historically, the U. Lamentably, reductions in federal funding for the ACIR led to discontinuation of this publication in It is very difficult to monitor decentralization consistently across countries. For example, fiscal information, such as that reported in the IMF's Government Finance Statistics, is often used to track international trends in decentralization among various countries.
The problem with these data however, is that analysts often use the percentage of total public expenditures undertaken at the local level as an indicator of decentralization. In reality, in some countries, local governments decide on the allocation of these resources, while in others, much of these expenditures are mandated at the central level and only undertaken at the local level.
The former is consistent with decentralization, while the latter is not. Nevertheless, for now these are often the best data available for cross-country comparisons. The Decentralization Thematic Group at the World Bank is in the process of coordinating several data collection efforts across the Bank to form one comprehensive, detailed database of fiscal and institutional variables across countries.
Local Technical and Managerial Capacity. Can local governments and communities manage their new responsibilities? The recent international trend toward decentralization has provoked a lively debate about the capacity of local governments and communities to plan, finance and manage their new responsibilities.
Assessing, improving, and accommodating varying degrees of local capacity has become more and more important as decentralization policies transfer larger responsibilities as well as budgets from national governments to local governments and communities.
Inexperienced, small local governments may not have the technical capacity to implement and maintain projects and they may not have the training to effectively manage larger budgets. This note discusses the two main branches of the "local capacity" debate: first, the question of what local capacity is; and second, the issue of what to do about varying degrees of local capacity once it has been identified.
Assessing Local Capacity. Decentralization planners have used the general guideline that central agencies should focus on creating and sustaining the enabling environment and overall strategic issues, while local organizations should concentrate on tailoring the specific mechanisms of service delivery and public expenditure packages to fit local needs and circumstances. In most cases, decentralization of basic services does not mean the wholesale transfer to local agencies of all tasks associated with those services.
An assessment of local capacity is an integral part of designing decentralization. What is "Capacity? Widner, Central governments have used "lack of capacity" excuse for refusing to transfer their authority, financial resources, and the accompanying privileges to local units.
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