Theme four - our leadership

Our strengths

• Feedback from stakeholders that we have knowledgeable and committed staff who are enthusiastic and dedicated to providing services which have an immediate and tangible effect of those with a lived experience.
• A new leadership team bringing stability, ambition, and a focus on continuous improvement. The LGA Adult Social Care Peer Challenge recognised the clear political support for Adult Social Care and:
  

  “The senior staff changes …are seen as positive by staff and partners”…

• Our Transformation Programme provides focus on transformation of delivery and a foundation for future improvement.
• Strength in system working, our positive partnership arrangements in a coterminous system.
• Our Staff are clear what the expectations of them are, are motivated and rated the leadership of their team and service highly (Staff survey 2023)
• Our Portfolio Holders are engaged and supportive and have assumed a more substantial role to help us set priorities, give direction, monitor and challenge progress towards goals.

Priorities for improvement

• Our approach to management and alignment of strategy, policy and procedure and guidance across the whole of the directorate and our multiagency approach should be strengthened.
• Ability to meet savings targets. Financial strategy allows for use of reserves as impact of slippage and emerging ability to meet targets are addressed and new areas of savings identified.
• Access to and use of data and intelligence limits strategic visibility, planning and decision making. Including further developing our governance of the use of nationally reported datasets
• Developing and evolving the role of the Principal Social Worker and Principal Occupational Therapist to take a strategic lead for co-production and prevention.
• Dependency on modernisation of the Council’s ICT infrastructure.

Key statistics

Political support

Political leadership is shared between two Cabinet members, whose portfolios cover Commissioning and Operations respectively.  The Cabinet Member for Commissioning has held that role since January 2020, and has provided political direction and leadership for reshaping of the care market, including the closure of a number of residential homes that were no longer fit for purpose in order to free up resources for more community-based care and specialist residential and nursing provision. The Cabinet Member for Operations was appointed in Q1 2023 following the retirement of the portfolio holder but previously held the position of chair of the scrutiny committee with responsibility for oversight of Adult Social Care.  As a result, he brings an understanding of the issues facing the council and the sector. He also brings a wealth of experience related to Transformation and Data and Intelligence and has recently started to chair our Transformation Board.

Our corporate Finance Performance and Risk process is a quarterly process whereby the Directors assurance report and our management information is provided for support and challenge by the Leader and Chief Executive. This gives the Directorate leadership team face to face time and space with the Council’s leadership. As a result of these, there is a good understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the Council about Adult Social Care, and a strong commitment to supporting the changes required.

Staff views

We have mechanisms for collating staff views on their ability to provide the right level of support to promote independence; qualitative feedback is received as part of team meetings or through supervision, which are acted upon, for example feedback from staff has resulted in an improved pathway for in-house service provision. Overall engagement from the Adults directorate is good with a 73.6% response rate to the last staff survey (November 2023). The thematic feedback can be viewed in Table 1. GCC and NHS staff surveys are run separately and the data is shared via the HR and OD teams within the ICB at various meetings and have contributed to the creation of the ICB One People Strategy and associated action plans and interventions.  Our numbers of staff whistleblowing are very small therefore we are unable to share details.

GCC has a widely publicised Speak Up If It’s Not Right[i] campaign which includes both internal and external mechanism for Whistleblowing.  The Whistleblowing Steering group meet every other month to consider any new disclosures and will have extraordinary meetings if and when required.  

Employee voice groups have been operational corporately since 2017. In 2021 the staff survey identified the need to improve visibility of leadership, management of change and communication within the department. We implemented our “Adults in Focus” newsletter, all staff Q&A sessions plus an EDI focussed Directorate group. We are keen to build on this and are developing a refreshed communication strategy which has been published July 2023, which has been developed directly from feedback from our employee voice group. The 2023 staff survey results are now being discussed with teams and via our Employee Voice Group with the aim of creating team and directorate level action plans to address areas of improvement from April 2024.

We hold regular Safe to Speak Out events, where staff with protected characteristics meet with directors and share their experiences of working for GCC in a confidential safe space. Our Practice Development team have also been widely promoting the ED&I awareness and competency within our workforce to strengthen practice, some examples include the teams work around the Ally Group, which is aimed at supported those on Social Work Programmes and new to the profession, engaged our Black Workers Network to participate in the moderation process of newly qualified social workers and jointly hosted with Children's Social Work Academy an annual anti-racist practice conference.

 We acknowledge the importance of training staff to collect information in a culturally sensitive manner and approach potentially difficult conversations about sensitive topics. There are established staff networks which are sponsored by some of our Directorate leadership team, Staff networks include; the Black Workers Network, Carers Network, Dignity at Work Network, Disability Network, Prism LGBTQ+ staff network, and Young Employees Network, to promote equalities, diversity, and inclusion.

Table 1 - summary of 2023 staff survey key category areas and average

Our governance approach

We have clear responsibilities, roles, systems of accountability and good governance (see governance structure in appendix 5).  We use this structure to manage and deliver good quality, sustainable care, treatment and support. Our leadership team at Director level have been in appointed in the last three and half years. This has provided the directorate with stability following a period of interim support after a series of retirements. The LGA Peer Challenge team said:

“The recent changes in the adult social care leadership team where all senior staff are new appointments over the last eighteen months are seen as positive by staff and partners. There is a shared understanding that there is a real opportunity for transformation of the service by this new team.”

Adults Performance Board

We monitor through quarterly reporting to management and our performance board; establishment, vacancy levels, turnover, sickness absence, PDR completion, training for operations and in-house services. Corporately these dashboards are then reported through Corporate Leadership Team and to Councillors.   In addition, we have Knowledge, skills and resources as a pillar of improvement within our Adults Data and Intelligence Strategy (2023).

Finance

Our financial position has been stable in the past three years due to a significant savings programme, this is overseen by a Savings and Investment Board.

Governance of Adult Process and Systems (GAPS)

Governance of our processes and systems is through our Adult Social Care Processes and Systems Change Board (also referenced as GAPS), this forum ensures operational decision implementation including IT system functionality, performance information is captured correctly following process changes, supporting on data quality and improvement initiatives etc.

Our Organisational Development (OD) approach

The development of the wider leadership team across Integrated Commissioning, Operations and Public Health is continuing through a series of dedicated organisational development sessions that meet quarterly, where we have focused on our mission and values, our communications and our leadership style using the Insight Discovery model. Our organisational development lead supports our leadership and management programme of work and following a skills and competency audit we have commissioned a provider to deliver a programme of CPD for our senior leaders, and each has an individual learning plan to support their own development.  The LGA Peer Challenge said this about our Operational Leadership 

“Staff demonstrated frontline operational leadership that is instrumental in prioritising and successfully executing critical functions such as assessments, reviews, safeguarding responses and risk management. Through such strong guidance and management of frontline teams, effective responses can be provided for those with a lived experience with diverse needs.”

Our Adult Social Care Operational Staff have access to CCInform and we can evidence strong use of this resource to support practice

HR support

HR business partners liaise directly with relevant Head of Service at regular meetings and highlight teams/cases that require additional HR support. There are clear transparent procedures for managing informal and formal capability, conduct, sickness, and grievance procedures available on the intranet with HR and Occupational Health advice available daily in office hours.

Management training is available via a yearly calendar of events. A new HR system is being implemented in 2024 which will include improved modules for performance management and PDRs.

LGA Annual Health Check of Social Workers

LGA Annual Health Check (IR 36.3) – across all of the 8 employer standards we were graded the highest category (good), this represents an overall improvement since 2021-2022 where we achieved good in 7 out of 8 standards. The Survey asked Social Workers what the biggest challenges of Social Work were, our Social Workers commented:

“lack of care agency and care home capacity . . . increased demand for services . . . pressures on NHS affecting Social Care . . . shortage of care and shortage of Social Workers . . . change fatigue . . . increasing number of long-serving professionals leaving the sector . . . lack of consistency and unfairness in roles/rotas . . . slow recruitment into our team”. 

When asked for their reasons for working in Social Work as part of this health check; comments from our social workers included: 

• “Supportive team and shared values focussed on improving outcomes for vulnerable people in the community"
• "Feel valued by the team I work with"
• "Leadership willing to work with us to problem solve, “can do” attitude"
• "They care about the well-being of their staff"
• "They care about the outcomes in individuals and their families"
• "A direct line management team who are supportive, who challenge respectfully when the challenge can benefit the people I work with"