Making Sense of Indigenous Youth Night Patrols

In: Administration & society, Volume 51, Issue 4, p. 664-686

Abstract

We use Weick's sense-making and Lipsky's street-level bureaucracy to tease out understandings and perspectives about youth night patrol services in New South Wales, Australia. We examine synergies, tensions, and contradictions in the different ways participants make sense of the purpose of youth night patrols and their role in service delivery. Although all the service were based on the same model, used the same program logic, and reported against the same measureable outcomes, they all looked different on the ground. We explore these differences in the light of participants' sense-making efforts, demonstrating that a unitary policy does not necessarily result in similarity of program delivery.