At My Home Life England, we’re now moving into our 18th year working alongside care leaders including those participating in our professional support and development programmes. It remains a real privilege to be supporting the workforce who continue to manage care homes and care settings every day.
These care leaders work in an incredibly important, complex and socially significant job. It’s a role that can also be mentally, physically and emotionally demanding. People often feel undervalued and overburdened with a multitude of different responsibilities. We owe it to our care leaders to support them to best navigate this. The question is – how do we do this?
We spoke to over 200 care leaders who had recently completed a My Home Life England programme. We wanted to hear from individuals themselves about the challenges they were facing and the support they found most valuable.
These individuals came from a range of ethnic backgrounds and levels of care experience. Length of service varied and so did the size and type of care service they represented. Despite the differences, key themes emerged.
Supporting leadership
Understandably, effective leadership is a key theme that emerged from the professional development programme.
Care leaders have to balance authority and manage a whole range of issues, whilst simultaneously building and maintaining good relationships with their teams. We know this is not easy.
We heard from those on our programmes that an ‘appreciative’ approach was hugely impactful when thinking about their leadership style. Many agreed that their natural instinct was to focus on ‘problems’. However, through appreciative inquiry – a core aspect of our My Home Life England approach – they were instead able to identify the benefits of focusing on what was already working well in the service and valuing one another, as well as giving and receiving encouragement and praise.
People spoke about positively changing their management behaviours to be more effective. They learnt new ways of thinking about situations and developed a more facilitative style of leadership. This improved communication and supported accountability and delegation. It also led to an increased number of junior staff taking up the initiative. By the end of the programme, 98% of those we spoke to reported an increase in the quality of their management and leadership, which was fantastic to hear.
Developing resilience
Maintaining personal resilience was another challenge we heard. Time-poor individuals described themselves as ‘running on empty’ somewhat unsurprising given their far-ranging responsibilities. They were simultaneously endeavouring to lead their teams and maintain quality, whilst balancing commercial interests and dealing with other ongoing factors, including building maintenance, changes in ownership or even closure.
This was taking its toll, affecting sleep, levels of self-care and personal relationships. One said, ‘I’m drowning and don’t know how to get up again.’ Some individuals told us that they were seriously contemplating leaving social care altogether.
Having access to a safe space where they could share their challenges and feel less alone and more supported was crucial for these care leaders. It helped people explore the extent to which they could ‘let go’ of some of the pressure they were under. As a result, individuals described taking more care of themselves and building resilience: 91% said that, over the last 12 months, their confidence as a professional had increased.
People believed in themselves as leaders and some felt more able to apply for promotions. Others talked of developing the resilience to respond head-on to issues of staff poor performance when previously they might have overlooked shortfalls in practice because of anxiety around staffing levels. One said, ‘I now have the confidence to tackle difficult conversations with staff.’
It wasn’t just the care leaders who reaped the benefits. This increased confidence and enhanced resilience, which also had a knock-on effect on teams, relatives and service users. Programme participants were more likely to be modelling relationship-centred care and making time for team members and relatives, who then felt more listened to and more supported. In turn, this created a stronger culture of engagement and trust, which ultimately improved the culture of the care setting and the outcomes for service users – something we all want to see.
Improving external relationships
Looking at relationships outside of the service, we frequently heard about difficulties regarding relationships with external professionals from health and local authority social care teams. Unrealistic expectations from these individuals were sources of considerable pressure for care leaders. A lack of trust, poor processes and communication around assessment, review, access to services and discharge created significant challenges. Care leaders often felt undervalued, underpaid and misunderstood.
One said, ‘We want to be prepared when we take an admission, making sure we have the right staffing ratio and support, for example, but we are often taken for granted, like “it’s over to you now”!’
Provider take-homes
- There is an ever-increasing need for the wider health and social care system to recognise the expertise of the sector and engage with care services as equal trusted partners who have important perspectives to share regarding solutions to problems within the system. The care leaders in our programmes developed their confidence and assertiveness to communicate more effectively and work more collaboratively with others, but this needs to be an open, two-way process.
- At a time when we are struggling to both attract and retain staff within the sector, it’s more important than ever to be nurturing the leadership and professional development of our current social care workforce, as well as supporting and integrating overseas workers.
- We need greater access to regular professional development and independent supervision for care practitioners at all levels. This will help individuals feel valued and give them dedicated space to step back and process the emotional content of their complex work. In turn, this will support quality, resilience and emotional wellbeing.
The full My Home Life England research report and executive summary with insights and data from 200+ care leaders is available on the My Home Life website.
Tom Owen is the Chief Executive of My Home Life England. Email: [email protected] X:@MyHomeLifeUK