Quality Assurance in Social Work

Abstract

Concern about delivering quality in social work has moved from a marginal to a central position during the final quarter of the twentieth century. The widespread adoption of methods of quality assurance in social work since the 1980s has taken place in the context of major changes in policies, structures, organisational and managerial arrangements for delivering personal social services. This chapter examines those ideas about quality which accompany these trends and maps some of the main contributors to the processes by which quality has assumed prominence on the social work agenda.