Barbara Hearn - On Becoming a Manager in Social Work: A Set of Papers Based on Study and Managerial Experience

On Becoming a Manager in Social Work: A Set of Papers Based on Study and Managerial Experience — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "On Becoming a Manager in Social Work: A Set of Papers Based on Study and Managerial Experience" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...38

On Becoming A Manager In Social Work

A Set of Papers Based on Study and Managerial Experience by:

Giles Darvill
Amanda Edwards
Barbara Hearn
Joyce Moseley
Brian Thomson
Bernard Walker
Clare Walker
With help from Lucy Fermo, Clive Miller and Ian Rush

First published 1992 by Longman Group Limited

Published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright Taylor & Francis 1992

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 13: 978-0-582-09282-2 (pbk)

Contents

Guide

Giles Darvill is an independent trainer and consultant. Giles trains middle and senior managers having been a manager at the Volunteer Centre himself.

Amanda Edwards is a principal social work manager in a hospital setting. Amanda has worked as a manager in London based local authorities.

Barbara Hearn is a management development adviser and author at the National Institute for Social Work. She has been employed in the practice and management in statutory and voluntary sectors.

Joyce Moseley is a Director of Social Services in a London authority. Joyce has extensive experience of community-focused management.

Brian Thomson is an area manager in field social services having managed in both London and Scotland. Brian is co-author of Developing Community Social Work in Teams (with Barbara Hearn).

Bernard Walker is an assistant director in a north west local authority. Bernard has published articles on management practice.

Clare Walker is a head of assessment and care for young people in a central London authority. Clare has management experience in field, day care and residential settings.

The relationship between editors and authors in the writing of this guide book has been an excellent example of good practice in working together. The work went on uninhibited by different work settings or by the distances involved which ranged from residential to field and Liverpool to London. The critical readers, Rosie Boulton, a first-level manager from Stirling, along with Robert Wilson, an 'about to be' manager moving from probation into a hospital setting gave us the confidence to finalise the work. We thank them, Drew Clode and Alan Dearling for constructive comments. We would also thank Nancy Dunlop, Ann Vandersypen, Nnennaya Onyekwere, our production team at the National Institute for Social Work where the text was developed and co-ordinated. All the other typists who helped each individual author are not, of course, forgotten.

During the 1990s, social services managers are likely to specialise in either care management or in service delivery. Increasing numbers will find themselves working for voluntary organisations and some for not-for-profit businesses. A few will become involved in contracting or inspection units.

By the year 2000, social services management may be radically different. It is likely that polarisation will occur in the make-up of managers their value positions and aptitudes. Some will wrap themselves in three-piece suits behind barricades of computers, and operate the latest planning and audit methodologies. Others, reaping the benefit of the opportunities of the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act will put themselves at the disposal of different disadvantaged groups and help in the development of services run by, and for, people from ethnic minorities, single women with children, and differently abled people.

The articles included in this publication seek to avoid these polarisations. They were written in the immediate run up to, and beyond, the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 by managers who were struggling to develop a radical approach to community empowerment, but who, at the same time, were keen to understand and apply some of the widely accepted principles and methods of good management in public service, industry and commerce. They were therefore drawing on the two seams which, in a different stove, also fuelled the Griffiths Report on Community Care and the White Paper 'Caring for People'.

We can read here of a number of experiences where an attempt to de-mystify, and share with us, the assessment and service delivery work of welfare bureaucracies was combined with a professional managerial approach to planning, supervision, monitoring and so forth. This is a rich bonus at the end of a decade when the management of social services seemed in danger of developing the polarisations which are feared for the 1990s. Community social work managers have tended to become marginalised from the main stream of social services management. They have been seen as overgrown student radicals with little realism in some management circles. In the era of partnership and collaboration, many more managers have realised that community social work can teach them useful lessons. Community social work managers have abandoned a leaning towards existentialism for a new commitment to performance indicators (negotiated with users, of course) and open use of information technology.

Although most of these manager/authors were working in local government, the innovative style and culture of their teams had many similarities with the more radical professionally staffed voluntary organisations. They expressed lessons for contracted-out service delivery.

This publication is aimed primarily at those people who have been appointed recently to a social services management position. In addition, it will be helpful both to those who may be contemplating a career in management and to those managers of some years' experience who wish to reassess and revise their functioning.

One of the problems of reading about management particularly if you are about to become (or have just become) a manager is that it is quite possible to acquire an intellectual understanding of many of the relevant issues in isolation from the personal and emotional impact of the role. Obviously, one needs experience of actually doing the job in order to augment the 'theory' of what the job is about.

Nevertheless, in anticipation of gaining a management position, one might obtain a text by Handy, Moss-Kanter, Drucker, Peters and Waterman or whoever. Such authors can, indeed, make for very interesting and stimulating reading. But, because management is as much about the 'heart' as it is about the 'head', the reader is unlikely to be able to do real justice to the material, having to 'imagine' the situations, the tasks, the conflicts and the dilemmas. Personal experience of the role is either lacking or is too undeveloped to enable any perceptive insights and problem-solving techniques to be related fully, and effectively, to the job in hand.

Next page

1234567...38

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «On Becoming a Manager in Social Work: A Set of Papers Based on Study and Managerial Experience»

Look at similar books to On Becoming a Manager in Social Work: A Set of Papers Based on Study and Managerial Experience. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Jeff Hearn

Men, Masculinities and Social Theory

Frank Hearn

Moral Order and Social Disorder: American Search for Civil Society

Frank Hearn

Reason and Freedom in Sociological Thought (RLE Social Theory)

Lafcadio Hearn

Out of the East

Lafcadio Hearn

In Ghostly Japan - Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn

Two Years in the French West Indies

Jeff Hearn

Age at Work: Ambiguous Boundaries of Organizations, Organizing and Ageing

Lafcadio Hearn

Complete Works of Lafcadio Hearn

Hearn

Below stairs: domestic service remembered in Dublin and beyond 1880-1922

Graham

White papers for dummies®

Lisa Haneberg

10 steps to be a successful manager

Chester G. Hearn

When the Devil Came Down to Dixie: Ben Butler in New Orleans

Discussion, reviews of the book On Becoming a Manager in Social Work: A Set of Papers Based on Study and Managerial Experience and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.