ABSTRACT
Much has been written about leadership in organisations over the past decades. A plethora of theories and models of leadership have emerged, many of which were developed in the profit-making sector, although they increasingly have also come from public sector organisations and professions (see, for instance, Northouse 2013 for a comprehensive review of theoretical perspectives on leadership). More recently, these ideas have received attention in the social work literature (Lawler 2007, Gray, Field and Brown 2010, Hafford-Letchfield et al. 2014). However, these texts tend to be positioned with the field of leadership and management with an implicit assumption that leaders are usually those in formal management positions. The same stance is reproduced in the new standards for practice supervisors and leaders in children’s social work, where practice leaders are equated with those in senior management positions (Department for Education
2015). There also tends to be limited discussion about professional leadership in texts aimed at practice educators (although see Hafford-Letchfield et al. 2008). Conversely, introductory texts to social work such as Lishman et al. (2014) do not include professional leadership as a key topic such as ‘reflective practice’ or ‘research-mindedness’.
