1 Leading and managing in adult social care

This standard is about being a leader within adult social care, managing your staff and leading your organisation’s vision within your practice.

The standard applies leadership and management understanding to effective team management. The size of the service and how people are supported to access the service will impact on how staff are managed and how the service should be lead. Your team could be small and internal, or it could be a wider group with external members. Understanding what management skills are needed within these environments is key to ensuring that you can effectively work and manage within these environments.

You need to understand your organisation’s vision. What your organisation sees as its purpose, what it is striving for and how it wants to achieve it, and how you as a leader can support your team to understand and achieve that vision. New managers may find that people are resistant to the vision so you will need to understand how to manage these barriers and how to build support for the vision within your service and amongst your team. You’ll need to know how to communicate your own vision for your own service along with the vision of the wider organisation and how you can align them both to be able to best support people using your service.

Finally, a new manager will need to be aware of what is happening within the sector, both locally and nationally, including the drive for better integration between adult social care and the health service. As the sector develops and changes, it’s important that you as a manager are aware of these changes and that you position yourself and your service to be able to support and accept those changes, supporting your staff to do the same.

1.1 Leadership and management styles

• 1.1.1 Define the terms ‘leadership’ and ‘management’
• 1.1.2 Explain why, as a manager in adult social care, you need both leadership and management skills
• 1.1.3 Explain why you may need to use different leadership and management skills in different situations or environments

1.2 Leading the vision

• 1.2.1 Define your organisation’s vision

• 1.2.2 Explain the importance of everyone in your team understanding the service’s vision

• 1.2.3 Describe how you can build support for the vision within your team

• 1.2.4 Explain how your work and your relationships with key influencers, including people who need care and support and their relatives, can influence your organisation’s or service’s vision

• 1.2.5 Describe how you can challenge views, actions, systems and routines that do not match the vision

1.3 Market provision

• 1.3.1 Describe how your service is commissioned, procured and funded

• 1.3.2 Describe the social care market in your area*

• 1.3.3 Describe how your service meets the needs of your local community

• 1.3.4 Identify data, information and working practices that could help you to see trends and find ways to sustain or grow your service

1.4 Integrated approaches

• 1.4.1 Define what is meant by an ‘integrated health and social care system’

• 1.4.2 Identify examples of how local leaders are better integrating your local health and social care services and systems

1.5 Systems Leadership

• 1.5.1 Describe what is meant by the term systems leadership

* Social care market: the potential sources of demand for care within your area i.e. the local authority commissioning support on behalf of people needing support, private clients, the Health service etc along with the system of organisations that supply this care and support.

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