Pia Rathje-Burton and Wendy Adams, Skills for Care locality managers, are back to host the podcast where you can listen to real-life insights into being a manager in social care.
Listen to real conversations with social care managers from across the sector and get practical advice to help in your day-to-day activities.
Episode 1: You are the manager – You set the quality
Series 5 of the care exchange has launched with a special live episode chatting to James Bullion from the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
James covers many different topics including talking about his role as Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care and Integrated Care at the CQC. Listen as he speaks about the CQC’s plans for making improvements, how it is important to learn from things going wrong and how to ensure consistency.
Episode 2: Is it a 'hell yes'?
We talk to Leah Smith, Chief People Officer at Berkley Care Group about their focus and strategy on neurodiversity. It’s estimated that 15-20% of the social care workforce identify as neurodivergent in some way.
She talks about some of the cost-effective changes they have made to their recruitment processes including providing interview questions in advance and offering video or audio application options and walking interviews. Leah also discusses how this focus has led to a positive impact on the culture of the organisation with improved employee engagement and retention.
Leah refers to a couple of resources which were a book called ‘NeuroTribes: The legacy of autism and how to think smarter about people who think differently’ and a website ‘Neurodiversity at work’.
Episode 3: The standard you walk past is the standard you accept
Here Lindsay Rees from Quality Compliance Systems (QCS) shares what she commonly sees in both Good and Outstanding services. She stresses the significance of first impressions and managerial presence in well-run services and gives some great tips on effectively auditing and making improvements.
Lindsay talks about her passion project around falls which is based on best practice research around falls risk assessment, and how a ‘falls huddle’ can make a real difference.