An Introductory Guide to Community Care

By Alan Goodenough.
Age Concern
£6.99
ISBN 0 86242 340 6

This guide to community care is written for
care workers with older people. It successfully translates some of
the complexities in legislation, service organisation and
vocabulary into clear and comprehensible language. The introduction
does a good job in setting the rapidly changing context (although
the National Care Standards Commission is both wrongly titled and
wrongly described as part of the Department of Health).

There are three chapters dealing respectively
with care management, planning and review, the roles of care team
members and employee rights. The chapter on care management is
pitched at the right level and will help care workers involved in
meetings to plan the care of their clients. Throughout the book
there are helpful glossaries of terms explaining the contributions
of different types of care staff. There are also activities to test
understanding, and lists of contact telephone numbers and useful
addresses.

The introduction makes it clear that the book
is an accompaniment to other learning and development, including
appropriate NVQ programmes. Good enough has drawn on his experience
as a training manager to produce a text that will be invaluable to
the new entrant to social care.

Terry Bamford is chairperson,
Kensington and Chelsea Primary Care Trust and a member of the
General Social Care Council.