This book has grown from our consultancy in public services carried out over the past 25 years. It challenges the traditional view that consultants exist to be brought in as experts. Instead, it develops a new way of thinking about and doing consultancy with public services, which resonates with the current direction of policy and practice in that it empowers people already in the workforce and those patients, service users, carers and members of the public who work with them and want to engage in delivering high quality services.

While we admit unashamedly that this book is the unplanned outcome of our experiences, we would like to share with the reader our growing conviction that we have developed a systematic approach, which we call an empowerment approach to consultancy. In reaching this point, we have reflected on our practice and have delved into the literature on consultancy to help us to understand what has been happening as we have journeyed. We recognise, of course, that our approach is only one that has evolved from our practice and which suits us. It is only one of many possible approaches – it is an empowerment approach and not the empowerment approach.

We believe that this has not only produced this very practical handbook, well illustrated from our practice, but has stimulated us to reconsider our ideas and perspectives on public services in general and on organisations such as hospitals and social services in particular, as part of our search for understanding of our practice, working from practical experience through reflection to a consistent pattern of theories and ideas. However, the book is not just about ideas, but is also concerned with engagement in practice and, crucially, with practical implementation. It deals with all stages of consultancy, from thinking about doing it, to the early stages of negotiating and entering it, through implementation and out at the far end of disengagement. It is concerned not only with consultancy processes but also with outcomes. It is about theories and ideas that are grounded in and grow out of practice.

The book began as a conventional text, with the usual structure, leading from context, theories and perspectives in Part 1 through to Part 2 that engaged with actual practice.