Textbook of Social Administration: The Consumer-Centered Approach / Edition 1

by John Poertner, Charles A. Rapp

Overview

Textbook of Social Administration equips social programs managers with the skills they need to produce mutually desired outcomes for their consumers/clients and for their staff. This comprehensive resource is a how-to guide to developing the management abilities needed to maintain an effective client-centered approach by using a social programs framework that uses information, personnel, and additional resources to support and direct the interaction between social workers and their clients.

How does a social administrator structure an organization so that consumers achieve desired benefits and the work still gets done in an efficient manner? This hands-on, practical guide shows how, demonstrating both the basic principles of consumer/client-centered management through a micro-skills approach and effective personnel management that produces satisfied workers—and consumers. Textbook of Social Administration demystifies human services management with a simple but powerful approach that is both passionate and informed.

Textbook of Social Administration includes:

• frameworks for organizing social administration skills
• strategies for initiating change through persuasion
• principles of consumer-centered management
• the elements of the social program analytic framework
• framework requirements for goals, objectives, and expectations
• helping behaviors
• examples of program elements that enhance consumer benefits
• applying the wrap-around approach to school-based mental health services
• managing information
• selecting and measuring performance indicators
• personnel management
• fiscal management
• the inverted hierarchy
• and much more
  
  

Textbook of Social Administration is essential as a classroom resource for social work students interested in administration and as a professional resource for administrators in social service agencies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780789031778
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/18/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

John Poertner, Charles A. Rapp

Table of Contents

• Foreword (Tom Gregoire)
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Consumer-Centered Social Administration: What This Book Is About and How to Use It
• Assumptions, Principles, and Performance Expectations of Consumer-Centered Social Administration
• Frameworks for Organizing Social Administration Skills
• Structuring the Organization for Maximum Consumer Benefit: The Inverted Hierarchy
• A Note to Readers on How to Use This Book
• Chapter 1. Consumer-Centered Social Administration
• Social Administration and Outcomes for Consumers: What We Know
• Assumptions of Consumer-Centered Management
• Principles of Consumer/Client-Centered Practice
• Management as Performance
• Chapter 2. Initiating Change Through Persuasion: The Microskills Approach
• Persuasion: Some Basics
• Gender and Cultural Differences in Persuasion
• Strategies to Enhance Perceived Behavioral Control
• Strategies to Change the Attitude Toward a Behavior
• Strategies to Change the Normative Component
• Strategies to Help Move from Intention to Behavior
• Summary
• Chapter 3. An Analytic Framework for Social Program Management
• Principles of Consumer-Centered Management and Social Program Specifications
• Research That Supports the Social Program Analytic Framework
• What You Need to Know to Begin Program Analysis
• The Elements of the Program Framework
• Program Element: Social Problem Analysis
• Program Element: Identify the Direct Beneficiary of the Program
• Social Administrators’ Use of the Problem and Population Analysis
• Summary
• Chapter 4. Specifying and Managing the Social Work Theory of Helping
• What Is a Theory of Helping?
• Framework Requirements for Goals
• Framework Requirements for Objectives
• Framework Requirements for Expectations
• Social Administrators’ Use of the Theory of Helping
• Summary
• Chapter 5. Program Framework: The Rest of the Story
• Stages of Helping
• Key People Required for the Consumer to Benefit: Who Needs to Do What?
• The Helping Environment
• Emotional Responses
• The Actual Helping Behaviors
• Creating Attractive Programs
• Examples of Social Administrators’ Use of Program Elements to Enhance Consumer Benefits
• Example Program Specifications: The Application of the Wraparound Approach to School-Based Mental Health Services
• Summary
• Chapter 6. Managing Information: Determining If the Program Is Operating As Intended
• The Power of Measurement
• The Effects of Feedback on Performance
• The Learning Organization
• The Human Service Cockpit
• Piloting the Human Service Program: Establishing and Using a Performance-Improvement Strategy
• Chapter 7. Selection and Measurement of Performance Indicators
• Selecting Outcome Measures
• Measuring Consumer Outcomes
• Measuring Performance That Supports Consumer Outcomes
• Innovative and Powerful Report Designs
• Chapter 8. Personnel Management
• Principles of Consumer-Centered Social Administration and Personnel Management
• The Tasks of Managing People
• The Special Case of Volunteers
• The Environments of Personnel Management
• Overview of Related Research
• Task 1: Creating and Reinforcing a Consumer-Centered Unit Culture
• Task 2: Designing Jobs So That Consumers and Workers Achieve Desired Results
• Task 3: Recruitment and Selection to Match People to Jobs
• Task 4: Maintaining a System of Performance Appraisal, Feedback, and Rewards That Informs and Energizes Staff
• Task 5: Assisting Workers in Developing Skills and Enhancing Their Careers Through Supervision: Training
• Task 6: Using Standard Procedures, Specific to a Field of Practice, to Maintain Policies, Procedures, and Training That Focus on Worker and Consumer Safety
• Chapter 9. Fiscal Management
• The Principles of Consumer-Centered Management and Resource Management

What People are Saying About This

Tom Packard

As in their earlier book, Poertner and Rapp maintain A LASER FOCUS ON THE KEY ISSUES AND PRIORITIES IN SOCIAL WORK ADMINISTRATION, starting with an emphasis on achieving outcomes for the consumer. This consistent focus on purpose, consumer-centered administration, and getting results underlines the importance of these factors relative to all the administrative functions, from information systems to personnel and financial management. The authors give thorough and proper attention to the importance of program design, with an emphasis on the use of theory and research, which is especially important as evidence-based practice becomes more prominent. . . . Application exercises, built into the text, will be very useful in helping students apply the concepts. . . . A MOST WELCOME ADDITION TO THE HUMAN SERVICES ADMINISTRATION LITERATURE, and I am looking forward to using it as a text in my social work administration courses. (Tom Packard, DSW, Associate Professor, School of Social Work, San Diego State University, San Diego)

Leon Ginsberg

Poertner and Rapp provide a modern, updated approach to human services administration—with a focus on the consumers of services. Their models of management center on services to people, several steps beyond the emphasis on adapting business management approaches to social services. . . . Minimizes jargon and provides content on such current issues as contracting with government for the payment for services and evaluation methods for documenting effectiveness. . . . A welcome addition to the human services administration literature and one that is LIKELY TO BE WIDELY USED IN TEACHING AND SCHOLARSHIP. (Leon Ginsberg, PhD, Social Work Program Director, Appalachian State University and editor, Administration in Social Work)