Leadership is often seen as a hierarchy, but I want to move towards a collective approach.
How can we, as leaders, enable people who draw on care and support to be part of that collective leadership?
The leader’s role is that of an architect, supporting the design of a health and social care system that is equitable and enables a meaningful life, while the operational or strategic roles make it happen.
The system currently looks from the perspective of interventions, needs, units of time – when it should be about supporting people to have a good, meaningful life.
So, how do we go about creating that meaningful life?
Care and support should be about connection and building relationships. It should explore ways that involve us as individuals in our communities, supporting us to make and maintain meaningful connections.
This support should be flexible and inclusive.
Inclusion requires us – the people drawing on care and support – to be involved in equal partnership in the conversations and decisions about us, our family, our care and our community.
The ‘system’ – and therefore us, as leaders – should be flexible, willing and able to adapt to people, not the other way around. We want care and support that is responsive and proportionate to what is needed.
For me, leadership is about understanding that your role as a leader is to develop a culture that values this.
We need to ingrain this approach, and there are good resources available for those wanting to learn how to start or improve this in their area of work.
Campaign movement Social Care Future’s vision is key: “We all want to live in the place we call home with the people and things that we love, in communities where we look out for one another, doing the things that matter to us.”
Think Local Act Personal’s ‘Making it Real’ framework for how to do personalised care and support can help people towards this goal.
Making it Real is built around six themes. These describe what good looks like from an individual’s perspective and what organisations should be doing to live up to those expectations.
The framework supports co-production between people, commissioners and providers. The role of leaders is massive, so we are going to add a ‘well led’ component to it.
Both Social Care Future’s vision and Making it Real have been co-produced, putting the words, needs, wants and aspirations of people with lived experience at the centre – working out from their lives, not starting with the system
That’s why I am pleased the Care Quality Commission is including Making it Real statements in its new single assessment framework for inspecting local authorities, integrated care systems, and providers.
Co-production is about having people in the same room to agree on a solution together.
As a former rugby player, I know our captain had an important role, but success depended on all members of the team performing to their best when on the pitch. Leadership needs to be collaborative, compassionate, and caring about each other.
Your role as a leader is to consider these issues and the opportunities in your area.
Use them to design out the inequalities, lack of choice and control, and non-person-centred ‘time and task’ approaches to care and support, so that people can have the support that helps them to live a meaningful life.