The role of managers in promoting child and adolescent care services performance. A multidimensional model from practice

High quality internal management is one of the most important drivers for ensuring positive outcomes for people who benefit from children’s and teen’s care services. It also plays a crucial role in the management, development and motivation of the workforce (social workers staff team) and in establishing network relationships with the environment and the institutions. According to Leslie Hicks’ conceptualization of leadership, the work of internal managers implies three main components: the developmental nature of the manager’s role; the inter-relationship between what occurs in the service and what occurs in the external context; the way the role is carried out (2007). All the findings are represented in a dynamic multidimensional model, introduced in a previous publication (Premoli, 2008), that highlights the evolutional nature of the managers role. In this model attention is paid to the role of internal managers in heeding, managing and synthesizing the extreme complexity of internal and external processes, dynamics and issues, present in any single care service. Our findings indicate that how managers work may influence service outcomes. So agencies must invest in organizational support resources as a clear task, such as comprehensive communication, appraisal processes, positive atmosphere among the company staff, belonging promotion and training. The Internal Management Multidimensional Model can represent an important tool in planning the manager’s role and her/his activities.