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By Yvonne Nolan.
Heinemann 
ISBN 0435401416
£12.99

Star rating: 3/5.

This textbook for the Technical Certificate in Care, Level 2, provides "all the underpinning knowledge" required for the course, giving the reader "the opportunity to enable, empower and support those who use social care and health services", writes John Burton.

The course covers four units: equality, communication and relationships, maintaining a safe and secure working environment, and protecting people from abuse. Such a book can be fairly judged only in conjunction with the course that it accompanies, but it gives an indication of what's expected from those who have gained the certificate.

I find the approach comprehensive but worryingly limited and comformist. As a manager, I would certainly want to recruit staff who had learned these important elements of care practice, but I'd also look for people who could think their way through problems and issues - people who question and challenge.

As with the whole of social care, by standardising and codifying practice, by making it neat and formulaic, by providing "answers" to issues that have no simple solutions, we avoid the messy essence of care work.

We need people who can think and engage with the issues, rather than reach for ready-made answers.

John Burton is an independent consultant in social care.