This Reader includes material relevant to everyone involved in developing new relationships in health and social care. Alongside articles on social care as traditionally conceived, it offers articles from a wide variety of settings, including those in health and education. It brings together classic management texts and material with a management focus, providing a stimulating range of perspectives on the manager's role. In the management of something as complex as care, this must involve:
* listening to service users
* maintaining professional values
* enabling participation
* facilitating learning.
The Managing Care Reader reflects these imperatives as it focuses in on the experience of being in the front line. In four parts, it looks at how managers experience what they do, their managerial responsibilities, the key professional issues, and the importance of the organisational environment. It offers a rich resource for all those undertaking management courses or moving into frontline management roles in the new world of social care.

Contents:
Part One: Managers in the Frontline 1. Days in the Life Managers' Diaries 2. Mental Health Service Users as Managers 3. Involving Service Users in Management: Citizenship, Access and Support 4. Consultation: Plan of Action or Management Exercise? 5. Reflections on Team and Management Consultation 6. Working With and Being Managed by the Larger Organisation 7. Managing Unpaid Workers 8. Whistleblowing: Public Concern at Work 9. Managing Loss in Care Homes 10. Managers Talk 11. What Do We Want form Social Care Managers? Aspirations and Realities 12. Messages for Mangers: The Dilemmas of Means-Testing Part Two: Managing to Care 13. The Quest for Quality: Reflecting on the Modernising Agenda 14. Participatory Management in a Public Child Welfare Agency: A Key to Effective Change 15. Remember My Messages: The Experiences and Views of 2000 Children in Public Care in the UK 16. Child Poverty, Opportunities and Quality of Life 17. Community Care and Independence: Self-Sufficiency or Empowerment 18. Virtues and Values 19. We Mustn't Judge People But': Staff Dilemmas in Dealing with Racial Harassment Amongst Hospice Service Users 20. The Contribution of Research Findings to Practice Change 21. Towards Ecological Understanding of Occupational Stress Part Three: Managing in Changing Contexts 22. The Last Years of the Workhouse, 1930-1965 23. Doing the Right Thing? Managerialism and Social Welfare 24. Whither Welfare Professionalism? 25. Professionals as Managers Across the Public Sector 26. Supervising Professional Work under New Public Management: Evidence from an 'Invisible Trade' 27. In Pursuit of Inter-Agency Collaboration in the Public Sector: What is the Contribution of Theory and Research? 28. The Environment of Collaborative Care 29. Contributing as a Manager 30. Identifying and Implementing Pathways for Organizational Change - Using the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families as a Case Example 31. Social Work Management - A Systems Case Study Part Four: Managing for a Learning and Developing Organisation 32. Extract from 'Handling the Wicked Issues' 33. Managing Social Anxieties in Public Sector Organisations 34. The Managers' Job: Folklore and Fact 35. The Role of Leadership in the Modernization and Improvement of Public Services 36. The Supervision Partnership: A Whole Greater than the Sum of its Parts 37. Child Protection and the Media: Lessons for the Last Three Decades 38 An Evaluation of the Use of Information Technology in Child Care Services and its Implications for the Education and Training of Social Workers 39. Becoming a Learning Organisation: A Social Work Example

Practitioners across the caring professions increasingly need to know where evidence can be found and to evaluate different forms of evidence with a critical eye. This invaluable collection includes exemplars of a wide range of research techniques and provides a critical commentary for each. The commentary is designed to tackle jargon and demystify the text, highlighting the compromises that need to be made in real world research designs and the complexity of controlling relevant variables. The book seeks to underline the challenges of interpreting and generalising results both for the researchers and for those who fund their work. This is a set book for the Open University course K302 Critical Practice in Health and Social Care.

`This is an ambitious book attemping to be relevant to a wide range of professionals in the health and welfare fields and to move from the macro policy context for change to the micro concerns of individual professional client relationships... There is much that will be of use and/or interest to both practitioners and researchers alike' - Social Policy Designed to lay sound foundations for continuing professional development in a world of rapid change, this Reader draws together key articles exploring the recent challenges facing professionals across the spectrum of health and social care. Topics examined include: accountability to service users, funders and communities; the skills needed for teamwork and collaboration; and ethical dilemmas of working in conditions of resource constraint, and engaging in questions of quality and performance review. The chapters reflect the similarities and differences between the NHS and social services. This a set book for the Open University course K302 Critical Practice in Health and Social Care.