ABSTRACT
Recent surveys all emphasize the importance of shortage of staff and its relation to poor child management practices. However, in dealing with young or handicapped children, a high staff-child ratio may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for child-oriented management. This chapter describes three hypotheses concerned with staff numbers and their deployment. The first was that there would be no difference in the assigned staff-child ratios between institutions with child-oriented, and those with institutionally-oriented, child management practices. The second was that the effective staff ratios would differ—that is, the numbers of staff on duty at different times of the day would be different in the two types of institution. The third hypothesis was that there would be greater continuity of staff in units characterized by child-oriented management practices. Although the rank order correlation between effective staff ratios for the morning period and revised Child Management Scale scores was in the expected direction, this was not significant statistically.
