Thought leader

Some time ago, the Social Work Taskforce called for a strategy to support the development of frontline social work managers, in part as a response to the tragic death of Peter Connelly. More recently, I have been working with Learn to Care, which represents heads of social care learning, to look at the development of these managers using a variety of pilot sites.

The findings from these pilot projects suggest that much of the leadership and management development for social work managers has been undertaken via generalist management programmes at university-based business schools, with programmes such as the MBA (Masters in Business Administration) and DMS (Diploma in Management Studies). The other main area of support appears to have been via generalist leadership programmes usually run in-house by local authorities. It is notable that the General Social Care Council post-qualifying leadership and management pathway has had the least uptake of all post-qualifying pathways. Nevertheless, the attempt to bring all the various leadership and management standards together within a single qualification for social work managers is an admirable one.

What is urgently needed now is a leadership and management development pathway that considers the specific needs of frontline social work managers. They face the daily pressure of managing highly complex caseloads under great budgetary constraints, with the consequence of failings being extreme, for example, the death of a child. They deserve and require the best leadership development opportunities, but this will involve considerable investment.

Frontline social work managers require development around: professional supervision of staff; managing themselves within a highly pressurised environment; coaching skills to help improve performance; development of resilience for themselves and their teams; and management skills in budgeting, planning and commissioning within the context of social work.

These skills and abilities should also be assessed against national standards. For example, there is no real value in simply training a line manager in supervision skills unless you also assess that they have assimilated the learning and it has had an actual impact on their practice. Too much of our current thinking is based on looking at the input and not the output of development provision. Effective assessment strategies will ensure that any learning has an impact and has changed practice.

For too long we have failed to offer development specific to these key frontline managerial roles. So it was welcome to see Education Secretary Michael Gove's announcement in March of additional social work improvement funding for 2011/12, which will be able to be used to support the development of these managers.

Learn to Care is committed to working with others including the CWDC to develop specific guidelines and advice with respect to the leadership and management development of social work managers. We anticipate being able to launch this material in the early summer. At its heart, it will have a clear commitment to provide learning opportunities for managers with an emphasis on output measures via assessment.

We want to offer a pathway and framework that will help build strong, effective and resilient leaders, who can demonstrate the ability and capacity to make often difficult leadership decisions in ways that set the highest standards for our profession in order to deliver the very best social work for the people we serve.

Professor Keith Brown is director of the Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work at Bournemouth University