MANAGEMENT OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PURPOSE OF CHILDREN’S SOCIALISATION CENTRES

Abstract

Children’s socialisation centres that have been operating since 2008 execute a double mission, i.e. they provide comprehensive education and ensure supervision as well as re-socialisation of delinquent juveniles. High-quality implementation of the integrated mission of children’s socialisation centres is mostly determined by strategic management of these institutions. Results of the survey of administration representatives and other staff of chil-dren’s socialisation centres carried out from November 2012 through February 2013 re-vealed that all groups’ employees of children’s socialisation centres positively assessed stra-tegic management of their institutions and also acknowledged the demand for its perfection. Statistically significant differences in assessment of strategic management of children’s so-cialisation centres and the need for its improvement in separate groups of respondents have been found out. The most visible differences concerning assessment of strategic manage-ment of children’s socialisation centres have been estimated among representatives of ad-ministrative staff and class tutors that took part in the survey. Respondents’ opinions mostly differed concerning the need to improve the incentive system for staff, the changes in the objective policy concerning staff selection and constant care of the administration about social and psychological safety of employees. It has been found out that respondents’ so-cio-demographic variables (sex, age, duration of employment, work experience in other insti-tutions) make a low statistically significant impact on assessment of the need for strategic management of children’s socialisation centres and its improvement. When assessing strate-gic management of children’s socialisation centres, administrative staff are mostly sure that they promote and implement changes in culture of children’s socialisation centres, give prior-ity to high-quality implementation of the purpose of children’s socialisation centres, ensure accessibility to information necessary for employees, maintain matter-of-fact relationships and constant dialogue with staff, regard their opinions when making decisions; however, they agree that these areas of strategic management of children’s socialisation centres should be perfected. It is proved by participated administrative staff who are focused on constant improvement of management processes, even though they are not completely convinced that they constantly develop their managerial competences which are a very im-portant precondition for qualitative changes in management processes. It has been found out that class tutors at children’s socialisation centres, even though positively assessing strategic management of their institutions, are more critical about such areas of strategic management, in comparison to another group of respondents: human re-sources management, complex planning of performance of children’s socialisation centre and involvement of employees into planning processes, distribution of functions and re-sponsibilities of staff, assessment of quality of activities of employees and the making of important decisions concerning its improvement, etc. First of all, class tutors relate the changes in quality of strategic management of children’s socialisation centres with the area of human resources management. Some one fifth of class tutors that took part in the survey agree that administration of their institutions have a clear strategy of development of the children’s socialisation centre and treat high-quality implementation of the purpose of chil-dren’s socialisation centres as the major aim. Pedagogues of children’s socialisation centres who took part in the research positively assess strategic management of their institutions; nevertheless, they are more sure about effectiveness of some of strategic management areas than their colleagues do, and more tend to suppose that there is no need to improve such areas of institutional management as creation of positive psychological climate, stimulation of collaboration among employees, strategic planning of performance of the centre, involvement of employees into such pro-cesses, orientation towards the priority aim, i.e. quality of performance of the children’s so-cialisation centre, stimulation of changes in culture of children’s socialisation centres, as-sessment of quality of activities of employees, etc. It is likely that pedagogues do not treat quality of various activities, processes, management of children’s socialisation centres as a finite process. Expression of assessment of strategic management of children’s socialisation centres and the demand for its expression demonstrates that managerial potential is not maximally used to implement qualitative changes in the purpose of children’s socialisation centres. Key words: children’s socialisation centre, strategic management, assessment of strategic management.