Michael J. Austin – författare

"This book is well-written, well-organized, and presented in a rational and systematic manner. The subject matter of the book is well-grounded in theory and a superb analysis of the literature is presented. The literature review is comprehensive, well-integrated, and provides a substantive synthesis of a voluminous body of published material. It makes important contributions to professional supervision practice and research in human service organizations." —Roosevelt Wright, Jr., Ph.D., University of Oklahoma

"Graduate students, upper level undergraduate students, and college-educated practitioners would find this text both accessible and interesting. The discussion questions at the ends of the chapters are very helpful in further allowing immediate application of the ideas that were presented. It is  a well-designed and well-written text." —Miriam Johnson, University of South Carolina

Supervision as Collaboration in the Human Services: Building a Learning Culture integrates the latest thinking in the human services to provide supervisors and those preparing to become supervisors with a new approach to the important skills and knowledge needed for effective practice in the 21st century. While it builds upon past efforts to define the principles and practices of supervision in the human services, it seeks to chart new territory that reflects the changing nature of organizational life. Supervision as Collaboration in the Human Services uses a framework that features the key aspects of a learning culture, the process of organizational learning, and the roles that supervisors can play in transforming traditional human service organizations into learning organizations. Chapter authors are authorities in their respective areas of practice and have shaped their chapters around this framework. 

The editors have divided the experientially focused chapters into sections that feature the collaborative and interactional nature of supervision, the managerial nature of the supervisory role, the analytic nature of supervisory practice, and the unique practice settings that affect the nature of supervision. The chapters include case vignettes and discussion questions.

This book is ideally suited as an essential core text for graduate and undergraduate students of social work and counseling, as well as a much-needed reference for human services supervisors and practitioners.

Contains field-tested techniques to enhance the effectiveness of your local social services! Changing Welfare Services: Case Studies of Local Welfare Reform Programs describes promising programs and practices that have emerged in the United States since the enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Using case studies, this reference provides important lessons that will help social service directors and staff to develop strategies that will improve local welfare-to-work services. This casebook focuses on the agencies rather than the welfare population, emphasizing the guiding values of these agencies and the lessons they learned. Changing Welfare Services explores new approaches to service delivery, with emphasis on removing barriers to work force participation and promoting self-sufficiency through support services. The case studies involve programs focused on working with the community by developing partnerships with local organizations to provide better services. This text emphasizes the organizational changessuch as the development of new training programs, merging employment and social service agencies, and restructuring agency programs to foster collaboration between child welfare services and welfare-to-work programsthat were successful strategies used to implement welfare reform. In Changing Welfare Services, you will learn about:

Changing Welfare Services shows how these agencies discovered new ways to serve the needs of low-income residents and offers you a variety of inventive techniques for improving your own agency’s support for welfare recipients. Enhanced with tables, figures, and appendixes, this practitioner-oriented casebook is a much-needed complement to the many quantitative studies of the welfare population. This book is a valuable resource for state and local human service administrators and staff, policymakers, and university faculty and students of public policy.

Contains field-tested techniques to enhance the effectiveness of your local social services! Changing Welfare Services: Case Studies of Local Welfare Reform Programs describes promising programs and practices that have emerged in the United States since the enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Using case studies, this reference provides important lessons that will help social service directors and staff to develop strategies that will improve local welfare-to-work services. This casebook focuses on the agencies rather than the welfare population, emphasizing the guiding values of these agencies and the lessons they learned. Changing Welfare Services explores new approaches to service delivery, with emphasis on removing barriers to work force participation and promoting self-sufficiency through support services. The case studies involve programs focused on working with the community by developing partnerships with local organizations to provide better services. This text emphasizes the organizational changessuch as the development of new training programs, merging employment and social service agencies, and restructuring agency programs to foster collaboration between child welfare services and welfare-to-work programsthat were successful strategies used to implement welfare reform. In Changing Welfare Services, you will learn about:

Changing Welfare Services shows how these agencies discovered new ways to serve the needs of low-income residents and offers you a variety of inventive techniques for improving your own agency’s support for welfare recipients. Enhanced with tables, figures, and appendixes, this practitioner-oriented casebook is a much-needed complement to the many quantitative studies of the welfare population. This book is a valuable resource for state and local human service administrators and staff, policymakers, and university faculty and students of public policy.

Addressing the multiple meanings of service integration, Human Services Integration analyzes how motivations and expectations for social service integration differ significantly among different players in the service system. In a period of major budget cutbacks and welfare reform, however, it is important that service providers collaborate to reduce or eliminate boundaries between categorically defined and provided services. This book tells you about the efforts being made to provide existing services more efficiently while avoiding duplication and waste. As you will quickly see, developing consensus for service integration efforts at the administrative, community, and staff levels will result in the ability to set achievable goals and objectives and secure cooperation at all levels.Human Services Integration covers practice principles for managing organizational and community change and offers strategies for organizing human service agencies and overcoming fragmented service integration in communities with complex problems and needs. To also help you identify specific service intergration activities that are relevant in the context of unique communities, it discusses:

Addressing the multiple meanings of service integration, Human Services Integration analyzes how motivations and expectations for social service integration differ significantly among different players in the service system. In a period of major budget cutbacks and welfare reform, however, it is important that service providers collaborate to reduce or eliminate boundaries between categorically defined and provided services. This book tells you about the efforts being made to provide existing services more efficiently while avoiding duplication and waste. As you will quickly see, developing consensus for service integration efforts at the administrative, community, and staff levels will result in the ability to set achievable goals and objectives and secure cooperation at all levels.Human Services Integration covers practice principles for managing organizational and community change and offers strategies for organizing human service agencies and overcoming fragmented service integration in communities with complex problems and needs. To also help you identify specific service intergration activities that are relevant in the context of unique communities, it discusses:

This book provides a "work-in-progress" that seeks to capture the micro (direct service) and macro (managerial) perspectives related to identifying evidence for practice within the practice domain of public child welfare. It is divided into two categories; namely, evidence for direct practice and evidence for management practice. In Part I, the articles are categorized in the areas of child welfare assessment and child welfare outcomes. Expanded versions of the chapters can be accessed at www.bassc.net.

In Part II, the focus is on organizational issues that relate to evidence for management practice. This section includes an overview of evidence-based practice from an organizational perspective along with evidence related to the experiences of others in implementing evidence-based practice.

This book pushes the discussion of evidence-based practice in several new directions regarding: 1) the use of structured reviews to complement the systematic reviews of the Cochrane and Campbell Collaboratives, 2) the process of viewing the call for evidence-based practice as a goal or future vision of practice and evidence for practice provides a more immediate approach to promote evidence-informed practice, and 3) a recognition that evidence-informed practice is part of building agency-based knowledge sharing systems that involve the tacit and explicit knowledge needed to improve the outcomes of social services.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal Of Evidence-Based Social Work.

This book provides a "work-in-progress" that seeks to capture the micro (direct service) and macro (managerial) perspectives related to identifying evidence for practice within the practice domain of public child welfare. It is divided into two categories; namely, evidence for direct practice and evidence for management practice. In Part I, the articles are categorized in the areas of child welfare assessment and child welfare outcomes. Expanded versions of the chapters can be accessed at www.bassc.net.

In Part II, the focus is on organizational issues that relate to evidence for management practice. This section includes an overview of evidence-based practice from an organizational perspective along with evidence related to the experiences of others in implementing evidence-based practice.

This book pushes the discussion of evidence-based practice in several new directions regarding: 1) the use of structured reviews to complement the systematic reviews of the Cochrane and Campbell Collaboratives, 2) the process of viewing the call for evidence-based practice as a goal or future vision of practice and evidence for practice provides a more immediate approach to promote evidence-informed practice, and 3) a recognition that evidence-informed practice is part of building agency-based knowledge sharing systems that involve the tacit and explicit knowledge needed to improve the outcomes of social services.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal Of Evidence-Based Social Work.