Leading Practice Improvement in Front Line Child Protection

Front line child protection managers are a vital conduit foreffective outcomes for children, young people and their families.However, little is known about the change processes that theyneed to implement to effectively intervene in such a complexcontext to support improved practice. This article describeshow organizational action research and Organizational LinkageTheory were used to establish an in-depth understanding of theinhibitors and facilitators of the implementation of an outcome-focusedmanagement model in three child protection offices. This analysisidentified that five interrelated compensatory processes actedto offset the impact of the implementation inhibitors. This,in turn, enabled direct service staff to experience an increasedcapacity to undertake effective service activities. This articleexplores each of these compensatory processes and makes a numberof suggestions for how child protection managers and their organizationsmight seek to embed them.