Russell House have recently published a book on children's services that is very critical of managerialism and its insidious effect on quality of practice and morale of staff (see the Book News section on the home page of this site). This adds to the critique of managerialism in my Practising Social Work: Meeting the Professional Challenge book (http://astore.amazon.co.uk/neilthomp-21/). Managerialism has clearly had a devastating effect not just on social work, but also on public services more broadly. There are signs that the new UK Government is moving away from managerialism (albeit with small, slow steps) and moving towards a 'big society' model of less regualtion. What impact this will have on standards of practice, professional morale and so on remains to be seen. We can but hope for a more positive approach to professionalism.