Self-Leadership in Social Work: Reflections from Practice

✍ Scribed by Bill Mckitterick

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 218
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book is a call for confident, skilled and knowledgeable practice in social work. The current managerialist agenda has restricted judgement and the exercise of discretion in the profession, and, more damagingly, has played down the social justice components of social work, as well as the responsibilities for therapeutic and change-orientated interventions. This book explores how, through strong self-leadership, social workers can both explain and demonstrate how social work can achieve positive change. Offering a fresh and innovative view on leadership for social workers, managers of social services and social work students at all levels, the book identifies tactics and strategies to provide leadership both within a team and in senior positions.

✦ Table of Contents

SELF-LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL WORK
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Outline of the book
1. What leadership means in practice in social work
Introduction
Description and purpose of leadership
Different descriptions of leadership
Servant and citizen leadership
Leader as a gardener
Citizen leadership
Self-leadership and leadership with peers
Spectrum of traditional leadership theories and styles
Discretion and autonomy
Pause for a wider view
Leadership in other services and professions
2. Leadership vacuum
Introduction
Public policy context
Examples of externally driven agendas
Social work with adults
Challenge of social work education, knowledge and continuing professional development
Taking the lead
3. Sources of leadership in the profession
Introduction
Self-leadership and distributed leadership
Organisations and institutions
Combining social justice and the personal, with evidence-informed practice
Knowledge, evidence-informed practice and purposeful interventions
4. Clarity of purpose in social work practice
Introduction
Complexity or confusion
Social work, personalisation and personal budgets in adult social care
Child protection and safeguarding
Claiming and offering to do too much
Model of ‘reserved duties’
Affliction of uncertainty
5. The social worker manager as leader, colleague and champion
Introduction
Supervision practice and standards
The social worker manager
The overwhelming management agenda
Autonomy and discretion
The manager as educator
6. Leadership within direct practice
Introduction
Using leadership in direct social work practice
Working with children and families
Social pedagogy
Empowerment
Guiding and navigating
Leadership with colleagues and across other services
7. Leadership within a multi-disciplinary environment
Introduction
Integrated, multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary working
Social worker as lead professional
Promoting independence, empowerment and re-ablement
Promoting the psychosocial
Conclusions
8. Optimism, filling the vacuum and taking the lead
Introduction
Renewed focus on relationship-based and therapeutic practice
Followership
Rising above the bombardment of ‘the case’
Self-leadership of professional development
Shifting and taking responsibility for leadership
What to do and what to change
References
Index
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