Be Inspired! Shirley Ayres Consulting

“We have enough people who tell us the way it is – now we need a few more people who can tell us how it can be!”

A brief roundup of some of  the topics we will be featuring in 2010 

The Advanced Practitioner – managing your career

“Find It Here” – the launch of the first comprehensive Directory of online resources for people supporting children and young people in care

The Big Ideas survey – share your thoughts about how we can improve social work and social care 

Integrated Working – what stops care and health working together?

The e-Learning revolution and social media – a new approach to improve the skills and knowledge of staff in the care sector?

What makes a good employer? A simple audit tool which reveals whether your employer demonstrates that staff really are the most important resource in the organisation.

New Partnerships – Shirley Ayres Consulting will be joining up with a number of organisations who are committed to driving up standards in social work and social care.

Leadership and Management in Social Care – has the investment paid off?

An undervalued and unrecognised resource? - the launch of an exciting new website for grandparents.

Introducing Blastbeat Education UK a not for profit company that has developed a fun & exciting Music & Multimedia Business progamme offered to young people and schools around the world. Blastbeat promotes and encourages young original songwriters & musicians, supporting youth communities on a local & global level, empowering young people to create social enterprises creating community and social capital to help bring about change for the good of society.

Quality Assuring Training  – do the increasing number of quality marks and standards really make a difference to the unregulated training in the care sector?

Stress busters – See life from a different angle.

BASW and the new National College for Social Work

“The insurmountable difficulties of today are the solved problems of tomorrow.” ~ Cardinal Heenan

Tags: advanced social work practice, be inspired, care sector, elearning, encouraging innovation, integrated working, Leadership and Management, Learning and Development, quality assurance, Social Work, Stress busters, training

Related Posts:

• Leadership Learning for the 21st Century
• National Continuing Professional Development Conference for Social Workers~14th September 2010
• Launch of the Advanced Social Work Practice Network on LinkedIn
• Launch of the Final Report of the Social Work Task Force
• London Looked After Children’s Nurse wins top award

What is the greatest challenge confronting managers and leaders in the care sector? Possibly it is finding the time to attend management and leadership training at one of the numerous actual and “virtual” leadership academies established in recent years. 

Are the huge resources now being devoted to leadership and management training really making a difference to the quality of services being delivered? So many organisations are now involved in management and leadership training it would be difficult to calculate the total expenditure to date. But a crucial question remains – what quality indicators are in place to ensure that the rate of return justifies the current investment? How do we distinguish excellence from mediocrity, is there a relationship between star ratings and leadership, are leadership and management really the same?    

Paradoxically it is the law of unintended consequences which becomes apparent when there is a lack of focus and joined up thinking across the care sector especially within the critical area of leadership.   

Leaders and managers have a vital role in improving services especially in the critical area of developing and supporting staff to deliver a world class care service. But do we really need quite so many leadership academies, leadership programmes, new projects and initiatives?  Apart from the obvious cost and resource implications I believe that we now need to invest in qualitative research which demonstrates whether this investment is really making an impact on the front line. What makes an effective manager? Do effective managers attract and retain more highly qualified staff? Is the quality of management reflected in the experiences of people who use services?

There are a large number of different types of management and leadership programmes both accredited and non accredited, provided in-house or externally. Many programmes have identified outcomes which lead to nationally recognized awards such as DMS, MBA, MPA, RMA, and PQAASW. Some programmes seem more concerned with inputs (number of lectures delivered) and outputs (how many people attended). How is the aim of becoming a more effective manager translated into practice? With the growth in e-Learning and blended learning the plethora of toolkits and audits freely available is it too controversial to suggest that existing managers should already be able to evidence their competence in the key areas of management and leadership?

However, with everyone from SCIE, ID&EA, the Kings Fund, Open University, ADCS, CWDC, and Skills for Care offering or developing management programmes and Action Learning Sets there is the potential for considerable confusion for employers or students. How can employers identify the most appropriate and cost effective training available? Government targets and public expectations require managers to have a sophisticated set of skills and knowledge which will deliver quality services across an increasingly complex landscape which includes personalisation and direct payments.

In September we will be publishing an independent (and brief) guide to help you make sense of what is available in the area of leadership and management development. Keep in touch by signing up for our free monthly eLetter. In the meantime if you have any questions, comments or contributions please contact us.

You may also wish to refer to our jargon busters section for further explanations of acronyms etc and navigating the social care landscape to understand the different roles and purpose of the organizations listed above.

Tags: care sector, development, dms, education, effective critical area, leadership, leadership academies, management, mba, mpa, pqaasw, research, toolkits, training

Related Posts:

• 2010 – new decade, new challenges – what needs to change in social work and social care?
• Improving social work practice through post qualifying education and training
• Shape the new College and build a strong voice for social work
• Social Care TV now online
• 50,000 social workers join the Advanced Social Work Practice Network on LinkedIn in 2010

Sometimes, we can get so hung up on jargon, acronyms and professional speak that we lose sight of the fact that they fail to bring understanding or enlightenment to people outside of our world. Creating more jargon is not the answer. Changing the words we use might work better and possibly glossaries of terms and jargon busters are a step on the way.

Our sector desperately needs to communicate effectively to so many different stakeholders. Why is it such a major challenge keeping up to date with the latest acronyms, initials and jargon, especially in the areas of workforce development, education and training?

We are currently identifying useful resources and compiling a glossary of the most common terms and acronyms used across the care sector. You can then ask the GSCC about your PRTL (gaining information from our website may qualify!) and request a TNA from your employer who may refer to the PQ and seek guidance from the SSC about the relevant NOS.

GSCC – General Social Care Council

The General Social Care Council is responsible for setting standards of conduct and practice for social care workers and their employers, for regulating the workforce, and for regulating social work education and training.

PRTL – Post-Registration Training and Learning

Every social worker registered with the GSCC shall, within the period of registration, complete either 90 hours or 15 days of study, training, courses, seminars, reading, teaching or other activities which could reasonably be expected to advance the social worker’s professional development, or contribute to the development of the profession as a whole.

TNA – Training Needs Analysis

An analysis of training needs to identify any skill gaps for organizations and individuals.

PQ-  Post Qualifying

Education and training undertaken by qualified social workers and other professionals. Social workers need to evidence their PQ training and CPD when submitting their PRTL to maintain their  registration with the GSCC Social Care Register..

SSC – Sector Skills Council

Each SSC works to agree priorities and targets with its employers and partners to address four key goals:

• reducing skills gaps and shortages

• improving productivity, business and public service performance

• increasing opportunities to boost the skills and productivity of everyone in the sector’s workforce, including action on equal opportunities

• improving the supply of learning opportunities, including apprenticeships, higher education and national occupational standards

Skills for Care and Development are the Sector Skills Council for social care, children and young people’s workforces in the UK. It is an Alliance of 5 organisations:

Care Council for Wales, Children’s Workforce Development Council, Northern Ireland Social Care Council, Scottish Social Services Council, and Skills for Care

NOS – National Occupational Standards

National Occupational Standards (NOS) have been developed to assist employers, businesses, employees and individuals. They contain descriptions of good practice and can be a benchmark for rewarding experience, knowledge and competence.

NOS Directory

All the NOS developed by Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) and Standard Setting Bodies (SSBs) are available to download on the NOS Directory managed by the Sector Skills Development Agency (SSDA). The NOS Directory is available on the UK Standards website. http://www.ukstandards.org

In the meantime we would like to introduce you to Jargonbuster, a resource drafted by Kevin Ashby and Colin Nee (Charities Evaluation Services), with input from a steering group containing representatives from a number of charitable foundations, grant awarding bodies and national umbrella bodies.

This book defines and explains key terms used in evaluating and monitoring services. Definitions range from milestones to benchmarking and the differences between an output and an outcome are explained in plain english with examples and case studies.

An invaluable resource available to download here or on the Charity Evaluation Services website

Tags: acronyms, care sector, ces, charity evaluation services, glossary of terms, gscc, jargonbuster, nos, outcomes, ssc

Related Posts:

• General Social Care Council to be abolished
• BASW warns that financial independence for GSCC will see costs passed onto social workers
• 2010 – new decade, new challenges – what needs to change in social work and social care?
• The GSCC launches Grow Your Own Social Workers: a Toolkit
• How radical are the recommendations from the Social Work Task Force?