Strategic Supervision: A Brief Guide for Managing Social Service Organizations

Offering social service agency leaders the necessary skills for
day-to-day supervision practice

This guide presents readers with a practical overview to the most important aspects of supervisory leadership and personnel management within the social work environment. Strategic Supervision serves as a primer for new or soon-to-be supervisors on the types of knowledge, skills and abilities necessary for effective supervisory practice. It also offers more seasoned practitioners a concise compendium of checklists and tools that can be utilized selectively.

Key Features

• Concrete examples of how excellent supervisors problem-solve, lead teams, and support multicultural and other forms of diverse staffing
• Practical strategies for working with employees that have performance difficulties
• Management tools specifically tailored to the application of Equal Employment Opportunity, Affirmative Action, and other nondiscriminatory practices in hiring and promotion activities

Peter J. Pecora, M.S.W., Ph.D. has a joint appointment as the Managing Director of Research Services for Casey Family Programs, and Professor, School of Social Work, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. Casey Family Programs is the largest operating foundation in the U.S. dedicated to focus on foster care and improving the child welfare system. Dr. Pecora was a line worker and later a program coordinator in a number of child welfare service agencies. He has worked to implement intensive home-based services, child welfare training, and risk assessment systems for child protective services. He also has served as an expert witness for the states of Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, Washington and Wisconsin. His co-authored books and articles focus on child welfare program design, administration, and research, including:

· What works in family foster care? Identifying key components of success from an alumni follow-up study. New York City: Oxford University Press (2010)

· The Child Welfare Challenge (New Jersey: Transaction de Gruyter, 1992, 2000, 2009)

· Enhancing the Well Being of Children and Families Through Effective Interventions- UK and USA Evidence for Practice. (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006)

· Quality Improvement and Program Evaluation in Child Welfare Agencies: Managing Into the Next Century (Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America, 1996)

Currently, Dr. Pecora is co-leading family support and group care reform projects in California and improving youth access to evidence-based mental health services. He also coordinates a data work group as part of a national effort to reduce racial disproportionally in the child welfare system.

Affiliations:

-Casey Family Programs and University of Washington

Dr. David A. Cherin, Professor, Department Chair & Social Work Program Director Cal State Fullerton, B.S., M.S.W., California State University at Long Beach Ph.D., Social Work, University of Southern California

Prior to returning to work on his MSW and PH.D., Doctor Cherin was an administrator and corporate vice president for over two decades with a large, multi-national health care management company. In this arena he was a Vice President with responsibilities in acute hospital operations and mergers and acquisitions. Since entering the field of social work, Dr. Cherin has held faculty positions at California State University Long Beach, California State University Bakersfield, the University of Southern California and University of Washington School’s of Social Work. He was the administrator of the Hamovitch Research Center at USC and Director and Chair of the Social Work Program at Cal State Bakersfield. He currently holds the position of the founding Director of the social work program at California State University, Fullerton. He has done extensive research, evaluation work and publishing in the areas of health care service delivery, organizations, evaluation and child welfare. His work in health services focuses on service delivery systems in end-of-life care. He has received the Soros Project Death in America’s Social Work Leadership Award for his work on end­-of –life issues with AIDS patients.

Emily J. Bruce, Ph.D., LCSW began her career in social work by receiving a BS in Applied Behavioral Science from UC, Davis in 1981, and then receiving an MSW from the University of Washington in 1983. After working for ten years in public child welfare, first as a child welfare social worker and then as a child welfare supervisor, she began a Ph.D. program at UC, Berkeley. She completed her Ph.D. in Social Welfare in 2002.
Dr. Bruce began at teaching at San José State University (SJSU), School of Social Work as a part-time lecturer in 1998, and became a full-time member of the faculty in 2002. Currently Dr. Bruce is an Associate Professor at the SJSU.

Dr. Bruce teaches social welfare policy, child welfare policy, and research. In addition, Dr. Bruce continues to design and implement research in the area of child welfare services, and child welfare administration.

Finally, Dr. Bruce is one of the co-founders of the Connect, Motivate, and Educate (CME) Society, a program at SJSU that functions to provide support for former foster youth enrolled at San José State University. In Academic Year 2008/09, Dr. Bruce will be working to help implement a research institute at SJSU: The Research Institute for Foster Youth Initiatives (RIFYI).

Dr. Bruce is married and lives in Stockton, California.

Trinidad de jesus Arguello, R.N., L.I.S.W.,M.S.W., Ph.D., born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, has a 32 year history working in mental health. Professional experience has included work both as a psychiatric nurse and as a psychiatric social worker. She has been able to integrate her direct practice experience with management of clinical teams and supervision of master level students in social work.

Dr.de jesus Arguello′s management work has involved development and directorship of a home health program, supervisor for mental health team providing services to the mentally challenged, Supervisor of a batterer’s domestic violence program, Children and Family Program Coordinator for Hispanics at Centro de Bienestar, San Jose, California, and Director of Children and Family Out-Patient Services in Taos, New Mexico. She has developed a batterer intervention program and provided direct services for Hispanic men in Taos, New Mexico. 

Dr.de jesus Arguello′s has held adjunct faculty positions in various colleges and universities. She has also presented her work about cultural issues related Hispanic families and mental health and domestic violence in many conferences and workshops across the United States. She also serves on the New Mexico Mental Health/Behavioral Health Planning Council. Finally, Dr.de jesus Arguello has served as the Taos County Coordinator for the American Red Cross, as well as being a First Disaster Responder for the ARC nationwide. At present, Dr.de jesus Arguello was funded a grant by the NM Behavioral Health Service Department to implement an Assertive Community Treatment Program for the severe and persistently mentally ill population in her community.