What is Leadership in the Care Sector

Professor Jon Glasby, Professor of Health and Social Care and Head of School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham, talks about bringing people together from different backgrounds to co-create the vision for the future in health and social care.

He talks about the leadership required to collaborate and bring new services for those who need it. Leading across systems which weren’t designed with integration in mind, it can be a major challenge, and now having to lead during a time of austerity.

When you watch this video have a think about how you are leading in your organisation.

Are you co-creating with others and leading across fragmented areas, or are you looking to rise up and find new ways of working together for the benefit of the patient, customer or client?

Segment 1 (00:00):
“Historically, I think we’ve seen leadership as something that’s hierarchical and something that’s a heroic in terms of what it’s trying to achieve. When given the nature of the challenges and the opportunities we face in health and social care in the current context, I think it’s more about bringing people together from different backgrounds, from health and from social care and from the system and from people who use services on their families to really co-create a vision for a better future and then to help deliver that future.”

Segment 2 (00:29):
“I think the things that have helped me develop most have often been challenges from outside the mainstream health and social care system. I worked a lot with The Disabled People’s Movement who had very alternative and challenging perspectives that help to really reform the nature of social care and to develop a new way of thinking about services and of delivering those services and working with those broader allies and partners really helped to challenge my thinking and change the nature of what it was that we were trying to achieve.”

Segment 3 (01:01):
“We’ve got a system that’s based on very fragmented organisational silos, and we have to find ways of leading across whole systems in a system that wasn’t designed with integration or joined at working in mind. We’ve also got incredibly challenging financial circumstances, and that can be an opportunity to do something fundamentally different, but it’s also a major challenge and many of us became senior in an era of relative plenty and we’re having to learn how to also lead and be senior in an era of austerity.”

Try these web resources to find out more:

• Person Centred Care
• Developing People
• Leadership Styles for Care Managers

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