The Architecture of Quality: The Case of the Specialist Care Organization

This paper describes an intervention within an organization providing residential care for men and women with mental health disabilities. The intervention was concerned with supporting changes in the way the quality of the work of the organization affected the lives of its residents. Three themes emerged from this work which are explored in the paper: firstly, the question of how the consultants practice meets the challenge of the case; secondly, the nature and complexity of the client system and its context; and thirdly, the question of the ethic of the consultants own relation to his or her practice.