Managing Human Resources in the Human Services: Supervisory Challenges

Managerial supervisors are those persons who supervise direct service staff, who oversee human service programs, and who perform macro practice tasks in their agencies on a daily basis. They are not clinical supervisors who oversee the treatment aspects of direct practice, nor are they administrators at the executive level. Managing Human Resources in the Human Services is the first book to address the challenges facing the often under-appreciated managerial supervisors who oversee and provide a crucial organizational structure for work that occurs in human service across the country.
According to authors Perlmutter, Bailey, and Netting the successful managerial supervisor must be able to create and develop the organizational culture in which client-centered practice can occur, balance the demands of administrative leadership with those of workers who see clients, keep a client-centered focus amid the paradoxes that arise in the process, and maintain a healthy professional presence. Managing Human Resources in the Human Service provides valuable guidance to students of administration and to practitioners on the many difficult issues that arise for the managerial supervisor.
Special Features
· Identifies the paradoxical nature of today's human service environment
· Provides practical, readable chapters with immediate applications
· Focuses on how to be an effective supervisor and encourages independent thinking
· Includes an extensive reference list for additional reading
· Written by authors with years of experience in multiple settings

Felice Davidson Perlmutter is Professor at the School of Social Administration at Temple University. An active contributor to the literature, her books include Changing Hats: From Social Work Practice to Administration (1990) and From Welfare to Work (1997).
Darlyne Bailey is Dean and Professor at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. In addition to numerous articles Bailey is coauthor, with K. Koney, of Strategic Alliances Within Health and Human Service Organizations: From Affiliations to Consolidations (2000).
F. Ellen Netting is Professor of Social Work at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is coeditor, with D. Fauri and S. Wernet, of Cases in Social Work Macro Practice (2000) and coauthor, with P. Kettner and S. McMurtry, of Social Work Macro Practice, 2nd edition (1998).