Abstract

Social Care Management, Strategy and Business Planning is a comprehensive guide to strategic social care management, covering all the knowledge and skills that managers in the 21st century must have, and showing how to make theory a practical reality.

The book aims to make business planning a more accessible and user-friendly process, offering practical advice on how to tackle the everyday tasks which good social care management should involve. Topics covered include strategic planning, business development, commissioning and contracting, project management, decision-making, risk, and evaluation techniques. The book also acknowledges the challenges of working collaboratively within a complex legislative and policy framework and juggling different aspects of the management tasks whilst retaining professional identities and ethics. Also included are practical examples and lively tips and comments from practising managers on their experiences in different areas of business planning.

This book will be essential reading for anyone involved in managing or leading practice either in the front line or at a more strategic level. It will be useful to post-qualifying social work students and is particularly valuable to anyone following a management training programme.

This is a text grounded in social care policy and practice which provides the base for the discussion of social care leadership and management. The message is about participative management, the medium is engagement with people across the organisation, and the means are the tools and techniques introduced, described and made relevant with examples of their use within social care. It is wide-ranging and practical and is both an introductory text to read and a reference book to browse.
Dr. Ray Jones, Professor of Social Work, Kingston University and St George's, University of London, UK
Trish Hafford-Letchfield is Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Middlesex University. She has spent many years managing adult services in a local authority and has remained in practice through her continuing involvement with the voluntary sector as a Trustee and management mentor. Trish has been involved with leadership and management education for several years. She has published widely in this area and has a specific interest in older people and equality issues in both education and practice.
As we move towards the future with more emphasis on individual need and preference, the challenge for managers will be to deliver quality, efficiency and value in ways that are flexible and innovative, in an environment where policy, professional boundaries and resource levels are often conflicted. In this book, Trish Hafford-Letchfield gives managers and leaders the tools to navigate their way to solutions. At a time of rapid change within the social care sector, the organisations that innovate and manage well will be those that survive, and this book provides a very useful and practical route map to success.
Martin Green, Chief Executive, English Community Care Association
For social care managers and students, Hafford-Letchfield (Social Work, Middlesex U., UK) offers an accessible guide to strategic social care mangement and the knowledge and skills needed by managers in today's care sector. She covers the legislative and policy environment for social care in the UK, strategic planning, business development, resource and financial management, commissioning and contracting, project management, decision making, quality assurance and performance measurement, risk assessment and management, and evaluation techniques.
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