Who will lead the social care sector of the future? An increasing number of leaders – such as Sharon Allen, chief executive of Skills for Care – started on the frontline, as care workers or cleaners, and have worked their way up to the highest levels.
With social care facing great and increasing challenges, from budget cuts to an ageing population, it is essential that the next generation of directors and managers are talented and resilient. Yet it can be hard to climb the ladder in social care organisations, and many frontline staff do not see care as a long-term career. So how can employers spot future leaders and encourage them to stay in the sector, and are there any other routes into social care management?
Janet Gilder, registered manager at care home Mary Feilding Guild, started as a nurse before working her way up the ranks in older people’s care. She believes that her career has been “a vocation rather than a job”.
Gilder recommends starting in frontline work before becoming a manager: “If you’re progressing somebody through the ranks then they remain familiar to the resident.”
By retaining staff and helping them move up in the organisation, the consistency of care is upheld. But retention of staff is a problem for many social care employers. In 2012, a Skills for Care report found that, of the more than 7000 establishments surveyed, 84% had a medium or high rate of annual staff turnover.
To try to combat this, many organisations are trying to develop clear career pathways to encourage frontline staff to pursue a career in the sector. Domiciliary care company Bluebird Care has improved its training programme and allows care workers to specialise or become mentors.
“We look for leaders who demonstrate the personal values that align with our business and sector,” says Fiona Williams, director of operations.
“One of the issues the sector faces is that far too often staff can progress into a leadership role without having specific leadership and people management training.” As a result, the company is working to provide bespoke leadership courses for its managers.
Similarly, ClarkeCare – a homecare company run by Lorraine Clarke – offers training for its future leaders.
“We offer development opportunities [for frontline staff] to come into the office and shadow what we do and then start to build their skills in management and leadership activities,” Clarke explains. She looks for people who show initiative and are keen to learn new skills, but also thinks it important that managers have the ability to do frontline work when needed.
Christine Fogg, temporary senior programme manager at the National Skills Academy, says that “if you’re a leader or manager in social care, the variety of tasks is incredible […] and I think it’s growing”. Fogg runs a programme called emerging leaders, aimed at helping managers improve their leadership skills. She argues that good managers must be “very flexible, very creative with very stretched resources, obviously compassionate [and] really be able to motivate people when actually you’re not able to give them huge salaries or other benefits”.
Managers who have worked on the frontline of social care have the advantage of knowledge from experience, but there are other routes into leadership positions. Hannah Morgan has a degree in French and politics, and on graduating moved to London and worked for a translation company. She was living with her grandmother, who had dementia, and saw first-hand the effect of rushed 15-minute homecare visits.
“I now know that it’s probably because [the care workers] were under incredible pressure, but at the time they would come in, give her a glass of water and leave – there was no person-centred approach.” After her grandmother died, she applied for the National Skills Academy graduate management training scheme, a fast-track programme to get graduates into adult social care. After the year-long programme, she now works as a regional care co-ordinator at the Good Care Group.
“If I hadn’t been on that scheme it would have taken me years and years to get to the position where I am now,” Morgan says. For many graduates, starting as a care worker wouldn’t be a viable option, when they could get better paid and valued jobs in other sectors.
Natalie Crisp also completed the graduate scheme, and now is the manager of a day service in Bexley for charity MCCH. Crisp manages a staff team of around 30; last year they won “top team” at the Great British care home awards. After doing a degree in theology at Durham, Crisp had worked in frontline care for a year but found herself unable to progress, as she didn’t have any relevant social care qualifications.
“For me personally [the graduate scheme] was brilliant because it was a way of being able to try out management and see different areas of the sector,” she says, “but it also meant I was able to get some care qualifications which no one was willing to fund me [to get] when I was working in frontline care.”
With the graduate training scheme now only taking on 10 people a year – down from 20 – there is a need for more investment in non-traditional routes into social care. The success of the Frontline scheme, which gets graduates into children’s social work, shows that there is a demand for careers in social care. “When I speak to my peers about what we’re all doing a lot of them are quite amazed that there are jobs like this around,” says Morgan.
With investment in current staff, and better awareness of the benefits of careers in social care, there is no reason why both graduates who develop an interest in the sector slightly later on, and today’s care assistants, shouldn’t be tomorrow’s leaders.
“It never harms to have people coming from other sectors,” says Fogg. “But there’s something about homegrown [staff] where people really get it into their heart and into their core, that keeps them in the sector.”
