Measuring Social Work

Measuring for results in social service organizations is a controversial subject (Lindgren, 2014). Currently, the discussions in terms of obtaining quality in social work, are primarily focused on hard data, such as indicators, metrics, numbers and costs (Lindgren, 2014). Soft values as purely human transformation processes, which is the result that social workers achieve when vulnerable people move from being vulnerable to being able to cope with themselves are not as common to talk about in this context (Lindgren, 2014). Measuring social work is complex and the results are not always easy to translate into numbers and statistics. According to Modell (2005), it is therefore not entirely unproblematic to introduce methods of management and

Agerberg (2014) states that mixing social work with economic and industrial logic has led to fragmentation, micromanagement and over reporting. Van Berkel and Knies (2016) mean that NPM as a concept is defined by a rather vague term that covers a number of ways to manage for results. According to Model (2005), NPM has its origin in a common belief that public organizations are less effective compared with the growing number of private entrepreneurs contracted in the public sector. NPM focus on economic indicators, which means a very limited focus on improved results for those who applied for support and help from the social services (Modell, 2005). Oh, and Blanchard Bush (2015) states that managing for results has led to an attempt to capture the citizens´ perception through the use of purely factual information and quantitative variables. According to Oh, and Blanchard Bush (2015) it is naive to assume that everything in a governmental organization can be measured therefore qualitative aspects may be lost and this can lead to sub-optimized

Poertner, Moore, and McDonald (2008) withhold that a variety of indicators are available and voluminous data material is collected both locally and nationally. Despite this, there is still a lack of guidelines and support considering how all the collected data should be used to make sense in the organization. Consequently, it becomes more difficult for key people such as managers, investigators, analysts and controllers to use the aggregate data in ways that benefit the organization (Poertner et al., 2008). According to Van Berkel and Knies (2016), there is a risk that things that are highly valuable to the organization, is not measured therefore it is difficult to know how and if it can be measured. Managing for results can, in other words, affect quality aspects negatively, which means that care and support provided by social services to customers does not give expected results (Van Berkel and Knies,