Negotiating quality in open youth work: Balancing standardisation and individualised support

Sandra Biewers Grimm

Children and Youth Services Review, 2024, vol. 163, issue C

Abstract: Formal quality assurance procedures in social service organisations are usually closely linked to issues of efficiency and effectiveness. However, there are often doubts as to whether such procedures can also be used profitably for the development of educational practice. In particular, tensions arise between the need for standardisation and comparability of output data on the one hand, and the often low-threshold and individualised support of young people on the other. Drawing on an empirical study in the field of youth work, the article addresses this problem of conflicting quality expectations in state-funded social and educational institutions. Based on expert interviews with youth work practitioners and drawing on neo-institutionalist theoretical concepts, it analyses which strategies and practices are used in open youth work to deal effectively with such contradictory quality expectations. Using a typology of different processing methods, the results show that an important aspect of professional quality action can be seen in the empowering behaviour of professionals and their context-specific interpretation and transformation of external requirements.

Keywords: Quality management; Professionalism; Agency; Neo-institutionalism; Youth research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:163:y:2024:i:c:s0190740924003724

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2024.107800

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