Foreword by Debbie Sorkin. Preface. Introduction. Stories of Leading Good Care. 1. Context and integration. 2. Care, the core task. 3. Beneath the surface.: The permanent underside of care. 4. Boundary: where your service interacts with its environment (outside it) and the uses of boundaries in leading care. 5. Manager as leader. 6. Changing places: turning barriers to leadership into enablers and supporters of leadership. 7. Stepping up to leadership: And leading your social care service with courage, vision and integrity. Appendix 1. Action learning. Appendix 2. Humpty Dumpty's social care words and phrases. Books and other resources. Index.
A must-have for social care managers to inspire and establish better practice
John Burton has worked in social care since 1965 as a practitioner at all levels, and as a manager, writer, trainer, researcher, inspector and consultant. He has campaigned to raise standards of care and has made such campaigning practical by leading the transformation of several care homes and of a voluntary organisation running homes. He is currently a member of the steering group based at the National Skills Academy (Social Care) for advancing the professional status and practice of Registered Managers. He is well known as a writer of books, chapters and hundreds of articles and columns in the social care press, and as a consultant supervising, mentoring and supporting managers to develop their services.
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
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
Leaving bureaucracy and compliance in its wake, John Burton takes
the book's reader on a journey to leadership both as a role and as
an aspiration... With sobering references to the health and social
care scandals of Cornwall, Staffordshire and Winterbourne View, and
more recently the Savile debacle, John exposes the myth that
managers were principally to blame by showing how there are wider
systemic failings that leave most managers believing that they are
powerless to take a stand and simply doing as they are told... With
compassion entering the social care vocabulary again, John's book
is a timely inspiration for managers to return to humanity and core
tasks with confidence and to lead their services to real and
meaningful excellence. -- Philip Nightingale, Registered Social
Care Manager
John Burton is one of a very few qualified to make the statement
cited above. Since 1965, he has had a distinguished career as a
practitioner, manager, consultant, teacher, and trainer in
residential child care. He is also a respected journalist, author
and commentator on all aspects of 'care.'... Each chapter explores,
discusses and illustrates an aspect of care... The author's ideas
are imaginatively and effectively delivered and developed
throughout the book by a series of stories from four different
services, led by four different managers... At the end of each
chapter the content is reinforced by suggestions for discussion,
and, throughout the text - unusually in my experience - there are
helpful illustrations and diagrams which actually look organic and
have a connection to human endeavour... It should be read by
leaders and managers, by students and teachers of leadership and
managers, but most importantly by all practitioners in care
settings who are interested in what is at the heart of care. --
Charles Sharpe * goodenoughcaring.com *
Leading Good Care: the task, heart and art of managing social
care (2015) by John Burton is an interesting read and one that
I enjoyed. It is by no means a typical textbook and many readers
may enjoy it all the more for that fact... It will be impossible
for anyone working in residential child care to read this text and
not make connections of some sort with their own work setting and
these themes. The book will most likely prove useful for those
already in leadership and management positions... Indeed, this last
group are as likely to be engaged with one of the recurring
messages that runs throughout the book, the need to rally against
systems and drivers, which pull us further from our core task - the
provision of high quality care tailored to the needs of our
clients. It is this message which most engaged me... In a climate
of unremitting financial constraints and pressure to conform to
regulation, underpinned by humanity and concentrates on the core
task of providing quality care. If leaders and managers across the
range services associated with residential child care read and take
heed of these messages we will move closer to the 'good care'
mentioned in the title. -- Graham McPheat, Senior Teaching Fellow,
School of Social Work and Social Policy, University of Strathclyde
* Scottish Journal of Residential Child Care *
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