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Purpose: Young people who are looked after by the state face challenges as they make the transition from care to adulthood, with variation in support available. In the past decade, funding has been directed towards organisations to pilot innovations to support transition, with accompanying evaluations often conducted with a single disciplinary focus, in a context of short timescales and small budgets. Recognising the value and weight of the challenge involved in evaluation of innovations that aim to support the transitions of young people leaving care, this paper aims to provide a review of evaluation approaches and suggestions regarding how these might be developed. Design/methodology/approach: As part of a wider research programme to improve understanding of the innovation process for young people leaving care, the authors conducted a scoping review of grey literature (publications which are not peer reviewed) focusing on evaluation of innovations in the UK over the past 10 years. The authors critiqued the evaluation approaches in each of the 22 reports they identified with an inter-disciplinary perspective, representing social care, public health and organisation science. Findings: The authors identified challenges and opportunities for the development of evaluation approaches in three areas. Firstly, informed by social care, the authors suggest increased priority should be granted to participatory approaches to evaluation, within which involvement of young people leaving care should be central. Secondly, drawing on public health, there is potential for developing a common outcomes' framework, including methods of data collection, analysis and reporting, which aid comparative analysis. Thirdly, application of theoretical frameworks from organisation science regarding the process of innovation can drive transferable lessons from local innovations to aid its spread. Originality/value: By adopting the unique perspective of their multiple positions, the authors' goal is to contribute to the development of evaluation approaches. Further, the authors hope to help identify innovations that work, enhance their spread, leverage resources and influence policy to support care leavers in their transitions to adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Turbulent times are here to stay and public leadership needs to become less managerial, more adept at harnessing resources and transforming governance. While the media continues to search for heroic leaders there is a growing awareness that there is more to public leadership than charisma and that compliant leaders do little to nurture innovation. The purpose of this paper is to address the varying concepts of leadership within public services in the UK. Design/methodology/approach – This paper addresses the varying concepts of leadership within public services in the UK and offers a comparative discussion on these choices of types of leadership. Findings – Evidence shows that successful public leaders tend to motivated by social values rather than money and that in the UK, transformative leadership is stronger at the local level than in central government, where although embryonic, political and executive leaders are forging platforms for innovation and new governance systems that central governments could learn from. Originality/value – There are examples of exemplary public leadership in the UK and this paper attempts to unpack where these are, how they challenge existing leadership thinking and why new forms of leadership are critical at this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The paper's aim is to explain the development of the concept of personalisation and its dependence upon prior innovations such as independent living, person-centred planning and individual budgets and explore its meaning, limitations and future prospects. Design/methodology/approach -- The paper takes the form of an analytical and historical review of ideas that have been important in the recent history of public policy for people with learning disabilities. Findings -- People with learning disabilities, along with other disabled people, have been engaged in a struggle to achieve full citizenship. The recent reforms that go by the name of "personalisation" may mark an important stage in the development of a fairer system, but on their own they will be insufficient to achieve that objective. Originality/value -- Personalisation is placed, with all its strengths and limitations, within the wider context of the development of policies for people with learning disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to offer insights into the nature of the challenges leaders across local government face, the skills and personal qualities they need in the present environment and how to develop them. Local authorities, in common with other parts of the public sector, are facing drastic reductions in funding, rising demand for services and government expectations that individuals and communities will do more for themselves. This degree of change is unprecedented and it is helpful to understand more fully the emotional, intellectual and practical challenges that it poses. This paper arose out of work with leaders across local government. Design/methodology/approach -- Senior managers were helped to explore what sort of leadership they would need to give, in this context, in order to best serve service users, local citizens and communities. They could see the importance of innovation and collaboration but also recognised that cost pressures could easily create conflict and drive people back into their silos. Working with groups of managers, it was felt that they faced the connected challenges of managing themselves, leading and managing others in their organisation and the wider system. Findings -- The author found that to be effective, individual leaders needed cognitive and emotional skills and sensitivity, particularly: self-awareness and understanding of others; the ability to manage interpersonal relationships; and complexity and systems thinking. At the organisational or partnership level, leaders needed a shared understanding of the challenges they face, a shared language for describing them and some shared tools and approaches for tackling them. This was best developed through joint endeavour. Originality/value -- Language matters, it influences how we think and we can use it to build collective leadership or allow it to fracture our organisations and wider public sector systems. The more we need to work outside of our own professional groups, each of which has its own language, the more important it becomes to recognise this and to actively seek to create something that is shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines ongoing research (Blass & Carr, 2006) exploring the development of future leaders using new and innovative approaches. Research asking experienced leaders about what they wish they had known 10 years ago is used to provide an insight into the critical incidents that shaped these leaders' careers. These critical incidents were used as the basis for an innovative leadership development programme for the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) which is further examined in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]