Worker Participation and the Social Service Agency

Summary Is there real sharing of decision-making responsibility withinsocial service agencies? What hope is there for participationby the consumer of services if the agency worker nearest andmost relevant to him has little voice or leverage within theorganization? This paper examines the notion of worker participationwithin the context of the social services department and theprobation service, noting the imperfections of the ‘publicmandate’ behind the authority structure of these organizations.Above all it looks for continuity between the values socialservice agencies publicly represent and the values in theirday-to-day dealings with their own staff and clients. Currenttrade union proposals for worker representation at committeelevel are considered, and Dutch experience in extending theworkers' council from the industrial to the social welfare sphereis presented as one alternative model.     

EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR ADAPTIVE CONFIDENCE INTERVALS AND IDENTIFICATION OF OUTLDSRS USING METHODS OF TRIMMING

In an attempt to apply robust procedures, conventional t-tables are used to approximate critical values of a Studentized t-statistic which is formed from the ratio of a trimmed mean to the square root of a suitably normed Winsorized sum of squared deviations. It is shown here that the approximation is poor if the proportion of trimming is chosen to depend on the data. Instead a data dependent alternative is given which uses adaptive trimming proportions and confidence intervals based on trimmed likelihood statistics. Resulting statistics have high efficiency at the normal model, proper coverage for confidence intervals, yet retain breakdown point one half. Average lengths of confidence intervals are competitive with those of recent Studentized confidence intervals based on the biweight over a range of underlying distributions. In addition, the adaptive trimming is used to identify potential outliers. Evidence in the form of simulations and data analysis support the new adaptive trimming approach.