ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that local public management, and likely others, fit the assumptions on which many reform proposals are based. It also shows that certain characteristics of successful managers, as well as where and how they dealt with the new problems they faced, have been ignored or underestimated and are likely to be more important than the strategic, structural, or procedural solutions that have been more widely featured in reform proposals. Large state-operated institutions have historically been major components at the core of service delivery for people with developmental disabilities. The movement of thousands of people from large state-operated institutions to day and residential programs in communities is one of the most important examples of social policy and organizational change in contemporary human services. A confounding element of the local administration of services for children with disabilities is that they do not fall neatly within traditional service system categories.
