A Study Of Project Management In Social Work Agencies

With the continuous development of our country’s social services, the government is more and more through the way of the project to purchase services from the social work agencies, social work agencies are therefore to operate in the form of the project. When providing the services, social work agencies should not only pay attention to their own professional ability, also should to attach importance to how to reach optimal management through the effective project management, and also improve service efficiency to achieve the objectives of the service. At present, the research of project management of social work agencies are relatively less, and the project management of social work agencies is a complex process, involving each link of the project from the project application, plan, implement, evaluate and summary. The systematic study of project management in social work agencies can provide some references for social work agencies of project management in our country, to promote the growth and development of social work agencies in China.Nanjing is the city that government start to purchase social services in the form of project very early, and social work agencies are mostly operate by undertake government’s social services project, how to operate a single project, and how to allocate manpower, material resources and financial resources in facing multiple projects is a problem that faced by current social work agencies. This study comprehensively considers the development of agencies, the situation of project undertaking, the nature of project source, select seven social work agencies to do research. This study uses the way of literature research, interviews and participatory observation to research the project operation of seven social work agencies, and combined with the theory of social work management, social work administration, project management to summarize the project management way of agencies, explore their experience in project management process, analysis the existing problems and gives some advice to improve.This paper mainly summarizes the present situation of the social work agencies of project management, including project financing management, project organization management, project service management, project human resource management, project evaluation management. In the financing management, the government is the main source of project funds, the government mainly through the way of bidding, entrusted, and venture philanthropy to purchase services, and social work agencies can also access financial support from foundation, social donations, charge a service fee, etc.; in the organization management, there are two project organization structure: equilibrium matrix and network, the agency will also separate the comprehensive project into components to operate, and on the basis of the it to apply for additional financial support to improve service quality; the service management of projects runs through in each link of project management, starting from the project plan and division of labor, especially the service object demand survey, they must centered on the service object and to provide services according to the requirements of service object, at the same time, build the agency’s own brand project, to explore their own characteristic service and development path; in human resource management of the project, the project team have diverse employees, social workers need to undertake various types of work, some agencies give social workers full authorization of the project, and their wage is composition by duty salary and performance bonus, most of the projects volunteers are recruited from college and community, it has a long service volunteers and temporary activity volunteers; the evaluation of project management is mainly composed of self-assessment, assessment of the buyer and the third party assessment.Through the research of project management of the seven agencies, found that the common problems in the process of project management in social work agencies are:lack of standardized project management system and have no clear service specification,this will affect the efficiency of service; low efficiency of human resource management, project social workers mobile fast, and their personnel structure is not stable, project social workers’ professional quality is not high because they lack the professional knowledge and experience, volunteer management is also not standard; the autonomy of project management is not strong, agency service is limited by the government and the community, project service workload is large because social workers’ work task is heavy and organization administration consumes a lot; project resource allocation face problems, for examples, short-term projects is difficult to continue, leading projects and professional short-term projects always face resource conflicts, agencies need to make a choice between them. Combined with the theory of social work management and project management, here are some improvement suggestions:First, in order to improve the efficiency of human resource management we should do human resources planning in advance, and pay attention to train project directors; secondly, social work agencies should establish the incentive system and arouse work enthusiasm of social workers by raise their pay, do scientific performance evaluation, improve the training system, create the ideal quality of working life etc.; thirdly, we should do effective financial management, strengthen the control over the use of funds and earn financial support from multiple sources; the fourth is to establish standardized project management system, form a standardized project management process; finally, to improve the external environment of project management, the government should strengthen the support of project management and increase their investment, to establish a unified project evaluation system, at the same time they also should do interaction communication with the community to understand their true needs.