childrens homes? Does this differ from other situations/contexts? - PDF document

11/20/2016 LEARNING TO FLY: Building a Resilient and Reflective Therapeutic Child Care Workforce 15 November 2016 Expectations Perspectives Potential Implications Dr Leslie Hicks Reader in Social Work Research School of Health and Social Care lhicks@lincoln.ac.uk 2  Why bother about leadership?  What does leadership look like in children’s homes?  Does this differ from other situations/contexts? 3 4 In children’s homes where the manager had clear well - worked out strategies for working with behaviour and education – and which they could transmit to their staff – staff had higher morale, felt that they received clearer and better guidance, and felt that the young people behaved better. Young people were less likely to be excluded from school and were less likely to be convicted or cautioned while in the home. Young people expressed more favourable views about the social climate of the home, were happier on some measures, and were seen as doing better by their social workers. 5 6 1

11/20/2016 Apologies for the gendered vocabulary! 7 8  Reliably supportive enablers of practice  Dependable  Patient and kind  Alert to the value of autonomy  Open and fair  Consistent in their approach  A conduit to ‘external worlds’  A conduit to opportunities  Insightful and experienced advisors 9 10 Examined and linked together:  Administer bureaucratic systems  the role of managers  Enable goal-oriented practice  the different forms of leadership in operation  Share roles and responsibilities  the ways resources were used  Establish collaborative cultures  the care and outcomes experienced by young  Create, develop, maintain, and influence their staff people teams 11 12 2

11/20/2016 Enabling others to develop, communicate, manage  Consistency across the group while focusing and model requires: on individual needs  Collaboration  Knowing and understanding needs and  Sharing of tasks and responsibilities characteristics  Interdependency in relationships  Building relationships – internally and externally These are essential components of both leadership and management in children’s homes 13 14 COLLABORATIVE APPROACH high levels of motivation manager’s authority accepted shared goals high levels of synergy all staff contribute WORKING CONSENSUS ACHIEVED 15 16  The manager’s role is highly influential – and this can play out either positively or negatively  Knowing and understanding the extent of  But the way leadership works and is held within the home is not solely a matter for the manager/deputy individual abilities and strengths  Positive leadership in children’s homes can be  Developing coherence: shared goals, subverted or enhanced by individual and/or collective expectations and approaches contributions  Establishing and maintaining good leadership is an  Establishing and maintaining collaborative ongoing process cultures  Good leadership is a shared responsibility 17 18 3

11/20/2016 I expect my staff to professionally challenge each other and professionally criticise each other, and I’ve worked a long time now, for about two years on [this], when we professionally criticise each other, it’s not personal. Don’t  All of the above relies on developing meaningful relationships run off and boo-hoo in the loos, it’s not a personal attack, it’s a professional  challenge. And it’s taken them some time to learn… And building that, you Routes to this will be both formal and informal know, it’s all about trust and respect for each other and consistency among  Formal support needs to be routinely delivered for both staff the team. They’re the things I’m trying to nurture and foster with the adults and managers, including the views of young people because I think they transfer beautifully into the work for service users.  Supervision: needs to enable learning, development and critical reflection, making use of meaningful supervision models and without falling off the end of the list of priorities  Robust communication opportunities, e.g. young people’s meetings, team meetings, meetings with external managers 19 20 Emond, R., Steckley, L. and Roesch-Marsh, A. (2016) A Guide to Therapeutic Child Care: What You Need to Know to Create a Healing Home . London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers Hicks, L., Gibbs, I., Weatherly, H. and Byford, S. (2009). Management, leadership and resources in children's homes: What influences outcomes in residential child-care settings? British Journal of Social Work , 39(5), 828-845 Scottish Journal of Residential Child Care 14 (2): special issue on leadership and management in children’s homes, available at: Dr Leslie Hicks https://www.celcis.org/knowledge-bank/search-bank/journal/scottish-journal- residential-child-care-vol-14-no-2/ lhicks@lincoln.ac.uk Ward, A. (2014) Leadership in residential child care: A relationship – based approach . http://staff.lincoln.ac.uk/lhicks Norwich: The Smokehouse Press. 21 22 4