Author: John Burton
To lead good care, social care managers must have professional and personal authority: a clear understanding of the core task and the emotional challenges of care, and the imagination to create an organisation or team dedicated to meeting people's needs.
Using the stories of four managers leading four different care services, John Burton explains the key issues and shows how, by focusing on the core task and taking the authority to lead, managers can transform social care.
"If you want to step up to leadership, and to lead good care, this book will help you do just that. It's borne of long experience and a passionate belief in the difference good leadership can make. So if you want to transform people's lives, start here."
From the foreword by Debbie Sorkin, National Director of Systems Leadership, the Leadership Centre
"This book wants reading for several reasons. It is a book from the heart and highly readable. It identifies straightforwardly, matter-of-factly and scathingly the mindless, blinkered and harmful bureaucracy which has infected and distorted the social and health care system. Yet, in the face of these identified evils, it cleaves to optimism and independence of thought throughout and a determination that things can, and must, change. It discusses systems and ideas, but is written by an author with a detailed practical knowledge of care and who uses, throughout the book, care settings to illustrate in depth the issues as played out in the real world. Above all, this book challenges managers to break out of the vicious circle within which they can all too easily become enmired and ultimately, to lead good care."
Michael Mandelstam, author of How We Treat the Sick: Neglect and Abuse in our Health Services
