Staff profile: Professor Ray Jones

Position: Professor of Social Work
School: Social Work
Telephone: +44 (0)20 8417 5143
Email: r.l.jones@sgul.kingston.ac.uk

• Biography
• Interests
• Publications
• Grants
• Consultancy
• Students supervised

Biography

Professor Ray Jones is a registered social worker with 40 years of practice and management experience in residential care and community social work within local authorities and a major national child care voluntary organisation. From 1992 to 2006 he was director of social services, and then director of adult and community services, in Wiltshire, leading a top three-star rated service with an annual spend of £126m and 3,200 employees.

He was the first chief executive of the Social Care Institute for Excellence, and has been deputy chair, and then chair, of the British Association of Social Workers. He is a visiting professor at the University of Bath, an honorary fellow at the University of Gloucestershire, an academician of the Academy for the Social Sciences, and a fellow of the Chartered Management Institute.

Ray has been an advisor to numerous government policy and research committees, and is a member of the Nuffield Foundation’s Children and Family Law Grants Committee, a trustee of Quarriers, a Scottish-based major social care voluntary organisation, and is the immediate past chair of the Marlborough Brandt Group (MBG), which has international linking and development programmes within The Gambia in West Africa.

He was also a European Community advisor to the (then new) Slovenian government on the development of welfare policies and has more recently been a consultant with the Russian-European Trust for Welfare Reform, working with senior policy makers and social services directors within Russia.

Ray is the author of five books and over 100 published papers, is a frequent media columnist and commentator, and has undertaken research on adolescents and social work, neighbourhood work, child protection decision-making, and direct payments for disabled people.

Interests

Social care and social work practice; (comparative) social policy; history of social services; engagement with, and outcomes for, service users and carers; interprofessional working; management and leadership; organisational development.

Publications

Grants

• Co-founded and chaired the Centre for Evidenced-Based Social Services at the University of Exeter, which from 1997 to 2005 achieved a grant income in excess of £1m from, amongst others, the Department of Health and 16 south west England councils with social services responsibilities.
• Founded and chaired the Bath University and Wiltshire Social Services Research Partnership, which from 1997 to 2006 was awarded research grants of £650,000, including from the NHS South West Regional research and development budget and from the Nuffield Foundation, and undertook 12 research studies, including two major studies on child protection and family group conferences and on the outcomes for older people of integrating health and social care community services.

Consultancy

Recent consultancies include:

• Member of Leonard Cheshire’s National Operations Committee (2006- continuing).
• ‘Expert witness’ and advisor to the police investigating an unlawful killing of a man with severe and multiple impairments (2008).
• Working with the Russian-European Trust for Welfare Reform with senior policy makers and social services directors across Russia on developing services for older people in rural areas (2006-2008).
• Undertaking a publicly-reported independent management review for Cornwall County Council following the murder of a man with a learning disability (2007).

Students supervised

• Averil Kathan