Book review

Title: Public Services Inspection in the UK
Editors: Howard Davis and Steve Martin
Year: 2008
Edition: 1
Number of pages: 160
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley
ISBN: 9781843105275
Price: £18.99

Reviewer: Trish Hafford-Letchfield, Senior Lecturer in Social Work, Middlesex University 
Review date: 10/01/2009

Further information about this book 

This is an edited collection of chapters written by a number of academics and experts in the field of public service regulation and inspection coming from different disciplines. It is published at a time when the purpose of performance orientated inspection comes under increasing scrutiny particularly in light of serious failures within the care system having been through independent regulation and inspection reviews. Whilst regulation and inspection is firmly enshrined in legislation, policy and our daily experiences of working in organisations, questions have been raised about its evidential base with attention drawn to the lack of academic analysis from which public service inspection claims to drive service improvement. This book should be welcomed in this respect.  It provides both an historical and contemporary overview of the different theoretical approaches to inspection methodology. The tone is broadly supportive but provides a realistic insight into some of the challenges faced by the different people involved in delivering quality public services.  Inevitable tensions are addressed; between government needing to demonstrate their ability to meet rising public expectations; leaders of public sector agencies and their capacity to improve; managers and their ability to innovate or turn around poor quality services within limited resources; and frontline professionals unable to move beyond compliance mentality in order to set their own local standards for a number of reasons. 

There are five sector-specific chapters looking at children’s services, education and skills, health, criminal justice and local government services. The last two chapters provide more contrasting and critical views of the ability of evaluation to lead to improved services.  The chapter by John Clarke was particularly excellent in which he discusses the concept of a ‘performance paradoxes’. These refer to the very mechanisms deployed to reform and improve public services but which also contribute to an atmosphere of mistrust by those delivering services breeding a potential battleground between managerial and professional interests.  The current separation of separate bodies for regulating adult and children’s services, and the integration of these with other disciplines has resulted in a very dispersed and complex field of fragmented public services. These pose problems for co-ordination and control by central government with a marked shift towards an overt managerialist approach.  At a local level, motivation to co-operate with delivering personalised services and outcomes for service users need to be sustained by improved external and internal relationships.  I found a gap within the text relating to the vital contribution of service users in this regard and would have liked to have seen a greater focus on public service users’ different roles in this agenda. 

You would not read this book from cover to cover as it covers a very specialist area. Regulation and inspection professionals or pubic sector managers would find it essential.  It is useful to a number of different audiences; those teaching on PQ in Social Work at higher specialist level; those following Leadership and Management awards and certainly all students studying social policy at post graduate level given its specialist focus. I would included it as recommended reading on relevant modules for these awards. Relevant chapters could be used as stimulus material for engaging and debating this contentious agenda within both lectures and seminars in social policy and management.  There are no particular pedagogical features so one would need to identify some of the key concepts and design learning activities around these.