How I plan for new leaders to support the future of the team

Debbie Davison, Registered Manager at Brampton Lodge spoke to us about how she identifies and develops leaders in her team as part of her succession planning.

Debbie first went into social care after leaving school, working her way up to be a senior care team leader. She then completed her degree in nursing and worked in a hospital setting after graduating before deciding to move back into social care.

She’s now been the Registered Manager at Brampton Lodge nursing home for seven and a half years.

An important part of Debbie’s role leading the team, is helping her team to develop and grow, and identifying the leaders of the future. She tells us that she believes that being a good leader helps to promote leadership within the workplace.

She also told us about the importance of leading by example and delegating, saying:

Debbie has also put more formal processes in place which develop her team members, as well as ensuring she has the right people in the right roles with the right skills to meet the needs of the organisation and the people who they support.

A key element of this is their nursing associate programme. Debbie put this scheme into place as a solution to a decrease in people applying for nursing roles. In order to cover the gap Debbie decided to grow these roles from within her own team, by putting care workers onto the nursing associate programme developing them to become nursing associates, and in some cases, to progress on to be registered nurses.

The initiative has been a big success, and Debbie tells us she now has a list of team members who want to take on the nursing associate programme and progress to become qualified registered nurses.

Uptake of the programme has been popular with staff at all levels, and Debbie says she has team members who are new to care telling her that they want to progress on to the nursing associate role.

Debbie also highlighted the importance of raising awareness of a career in care with younger people leaving school and college, who will be the workforce of the future.

This has included team members who are part of Skills for Care’s I Care…Ambassador programme attending events at schools to showcase what a career in care looks like and promoting the variety of roles available, such as activity coordinator. This has led to students from the event undertaking a placement at Brampton Lodge.

Developing the deputy manager role has also been a focus for Debbie when supporting her team.

She explains that their deputy manager has been with the organisation since around the time they opened, starting in a different role initially. It was immediately apparent that they had many of the practical skills to be a good deputy manager, but they did lack some of the relevant people management experience and communication skills required for the role.

So, to help them to progress into this role they were provided with a variety of training focused on people and communication skills and have now been able to develop into this important role which supports the management and future of the organisation.

Talking about how planning progression for your team supports everyone, Debbie says:

Find out more about workforce planning and succession planning with our #PlanningForSuccess spotlight.

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