Introducing the new editors

Abstract

3 10.5042/ijlps.2011.0088 NHS Trust, leading their spirituality research programme. A former Director of Social Services for Worcestershire, Peter is a Registered Social Worker with 13 years of direct practice. Between 2003 and 2006 he was NIMHE/Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) Fellow in Social Care with Professor Nick Gould, and is now a member of the National Mental Health Development Unit’s (NMHDU) Equalities Programme Board. Peter’s first career was in the Army. He was principal social worker in one of the old institutions; and has worked with, and managed services for, all user groups. He was very involved in partnership working in both Staffordshire as Director of Operations, and Worcestershire as Director, initiating service user, carer and advocacy groups. In the 1980s he specialised in learning disability and mental health, publishing several books on working with people with learning disabilities and their families (including Managing to Care, with Terry Scragg, Reed, 1992). Having experienced an episode of depression in 2000/01 Peter is very committed to an holistic and person-centred approach, and the integration of personal experience. Peter is signed up to ensuring the integration of theory with practice, and as such has served on several national groups such as the former Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) Mental Health Improvement Board, and the Social Perspectives Network (SPN). Peter is an associate member of Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) and Association of Directors for Social Services We are delighted to be taking on the role as editors of The International Journal of Leadership in Public Services. Steve Onyett and Mark Davison have done an excellent job and bequeathed us a publication with a strong track record of highquality and challenging articles – as is evident from the current edition. We come with a wide variety of backgrounds and experience in public sector leadership and a powerful belief that leadership in the public sector presents unique challenges, which are often not well understood. We want to draw on our varied backgrounds to further broaden the range of sectors and issues covered by the journal and, in particular, to explore the linkages between them. We are hoping to receive ideas for articles – practical, theoretical and experiential – from across the spectrum of public services. Do contact us with your thoughts.