Trish Hafford-Letchfield is Senior Lecturer in Social Work and Teaching Fellow in Interprofessional Learning at Middlesex University, UK. She has substantial experience as a manager in social care and in management and social work education. She is author of Social Care Management, Strategy and Business Planning, published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Les Gallop is an independent consultant and trainer, and has many years experience in social work, social work management and training.

I found this book really valuable and expect to use it as a point of reference on a regular basis and would highly recommend its purchase to all social work and social care manager.

• Acknowledgements. Series editor's foreword. 1. Becoming and being an effective manager: Essential skills and more. 2. Managing yourself and managing others: Never enough time in the day. 3. Skills for managing change: Everything's changed but what's different? 4. Recruiting and selection: Getting the right colleagues and striving towards happiness. 5. Managing meetings: Being a smooth operator. 6. Skills in collaboration and networking: Building up successful partnerships for service user involvement. 7. Skilful negotiation and conflict management: What about the tricky bits? 8. Effective mentoring and coaching: Skills in developing others. Appendices. References. Contributors' information.