CHAPTER 7 Leadership
We found strategic leadership to be adequate - with strengths just outweighing weaknesses.
There was evidence of some good political, strategic and professional leadership. Social work services had a positive profile in the council and had delivered some high quality services. They had taken steps to improve their services including implementing the fieldwork review. They had developed integrated services and moved into five CHCPs. The council had plans for further changes including streamlining the number of its departments and bringing together education and social work services.
However, there were some critical problems. Staff morale was poor. Staff lacked confidence in senior management and did not believe that elected members valued the work they did. They did not feel that leaders involved them sufficiently in the change agenda.
Vision, values and aims
Social work services set out its aims and values in the service plan (2004/07) and annual performance report (2005/06). Both stated that:
"Social work services care for, protect and support people who need our services, helping them to take responsibility for and control over their lives."
The service plan had 11 strategic priorities. The annual performance report ( APR) charted progress against the council plan, service plan and care section commitments. The services regarded the APR as an important part of their public reporting strategy.
Senior managers had consulted widely on the service plan and staff had been involved in planning workshops including a seminar involving 3000 staff in 2003. As we have highlighted earlier the services' 2005 survey found that the majority of staff were aware of the service plan though less than half believed they were able to apply it in their day-to-day work.
Elected members we spoke to said that they were "baffled" by the result of the staff survey that indicated that few staff believed that elected members valued social work. They said that they were supportive of social work and as an example of this highlighted the role they played in CHCPs where they chair all CHCP committees. Although there were already some elected members on the NHS board they believed that this step had helped strengthen public accountability in the new CHCPs.
Senior managers also thought that political support for social work would grow further as members of the new committees were exposed to the social work agenda over time and got a sense of the important issues.
The chief executive of Glasgow City expressed strong support for social work services and said they had been expected to deal with all of the social problems in the city for far too long. The vision behind the CHCPs was that no one organisation could or should be expected to deal with all these problems. The aim was for people and professionals from different organisations to work together more closely. There were plans to get decision-making devolved to five CHCP boundaries and to take a city-wide joined-up approach to service delivery to break down boundaries and devolve decision making.
Leadership of People
We have highlighted that staff morale was a continuing cause for concern and that there were issues around staff confidence in senior management and in the extent of support from elected members for the work staff did.
Elected members suggested that 'something was going wrong somewhere between the director and front line staff in terms of communication'.
Senior managers expressed the view that there had been a long legacy of distrust of senior management in Glasgow and that they faced particular challenges in engaging staff in such a large organisation. They commented that the pay and benefits review and the move to CHCPs had added to these challenges. For example they recognised that during the review there had been some very formal communications with staff that had been far from ideal. There was also a recognition that some staff saw CHCPs as a NHSGGC takeover.
In their self-evaluation questionnaire the services stated that they were committed to continuing to improve performance in this area. Senior managers told us they intended "to drive communication from the centre and embed it into the CHCPs". In addition to the services' city-wide communications team each CHCP had its own web site, one had appointed a communication officer and others were about to nominate a staff member with a specific role for handling communication,
These are positive steps. However, we have suggested that the services need to take a fundamental look at all the different strands of their communication strategy. We have proposed that senior managers and elected members examine more fully the reasons for their staff's apparent lack of trust in them and we have suggested some ways in which they might improve staff morale.
Professional leadership
Senior managers said they were confident in the steps they had taken to ensure strong professional leadership. During their last re-structuring (2006) they had decided to combine the role of chief social work officer ( CSWO) with that of head of performance - below the level of depute director but above that of other heads of service. The CSWO reported directly to the director and could make a direct link with elected members and the chief executive. The decision to combine the role of professional leadership of the service with performance management is an interesting one. It was too early to say whether this had strengthened professional leadership of the services.
The approach had not yet reassured all staff. Some first line managers and staff we met in focus groups were of the view that their professional leadership was weak. They believed that some senior managers at the centre lacked understanding of the role, purpose and task of social work and of its statutory responsibilities.
The council intended that the service director for social work services under the planned new structure (of an executive director supported by service directors for education and social work services) would be the CSWO.
At locality level the services had taken measures to establish professional leadership within the CHCP structure. All of the heads of children's services in the CHCPs were social workers and senior managers described these as "mini chief social work officers". They were working together with the CSWO to look at raising performance standards for example through reviewing the PTL model.
Leadership of change and improvement
There was an ambitious change agenda underway in Glasgow City Council aimed at improving their public services. The Scottish Executive was promoting Glasgow as a public service reform pathfinder. The council had set up a shadow pathfinder board and were working closely with the Executive to make sure that the changes fitted with the public services reform agenda. Some political leaders were keen to speed up the pace of change, - "The mood in the Council right now is one of optimism and ambition; there is a need to do more and do it more quickly".
The council's social work services had already delivered major changes in recent years in response to the challenges they faced in coping with high demands on their services and with an acute staffing crisis. This had included implementing the fieldwork review and introducing the PTL model, the development of integrated partnerships and the introduction of the five CHCPs with a slimmed-down centre. Changes were set to continue with proposals to make a closer fit between education and social work services.
All CHCP directors were in post at the time of the inspection fieldwork. They were clearly committed to the CHCP structure with a realistic view of the challenges ahead and a determination to meet these. Senior managers acknowledged that they had some human resource issues to rationalise but were adamant that this would not prevent progress and pointed out that this had not prevented progress in the addiction and learning disability partnerships.
The services' quarterly performance reports indicated that overall they had managed to make the transition to CHCPs without disrupting services. They had begun to take steps to try to ensure that the change would not result in too many inconsistencies in practice across the city. For example, they had established a number of forums where senior managers in the CHCPs and strategic managers at the centre met on a regular basis.
CHCP development plans required the approval both of CHCP committees and the new social care services and policy development scrutiny committee ( PDS committees). The council intended that the development of PDS committees would mean that members would be more closely involved in key social work policy and the scrutiny of performance and delivery.
Overall there was strong support for the CHCP model from political leaders, senior social work managers and from senior staff in other departments across the Council as well as from NHSGGC service senior staff. Along with a determination to proceed there was an acknowledgement that there were still things to be resolved. Many staff also acknowledged they did not want to 'turn the clock back'.
However many staff had little confidence that there was effective leadership of change. Less than one in five of those who responded to the 2003 and 2005 MORI polls and to our survey agreed that change was well-managed. Many of those we spoke to echoed this view.
Senior managers commented that "transformational change takes time" and that "strategy is always ahead of practice". We agree but think that managers needed to do more to help staff own the reasons for change and the strategies intended to address these. We found some examples where the services seemed to have done this well. For instance in forming proposals to improve children's services, managers had worked alongside staff to identify issues and potential solutions. There are other examples, in particular the shift to CHCPs, where this had not been managed as well as it might.
Senior managers stated that they had decided to take the opportunity afforded by the requirement on the NHS to establish community health partnerships to form those in Glasgow into health and social care partnerships. This had created tight timescales that had impacted on their ability to communicate with staff. At the time the services wrote the last service plan in 2004 they had outlined an intention to further develop joint models of care and integrated service delivery. By the time they had produced an update of the plan in 2005 they stated that they would be moving into community health and social care partnerships.
The staff panel that took place shortly after the establishment of CHCPs stated that there was a 'general feeling of lack of involvement in such major change, isolation and uncertainty and few felt confident of having a clear overview of what the agenda was and how the pieces fitted together'. A panel held six months later reinforced the need for 'effective communications at time of change' and for 'meaningful and influential consultation with staff'.
Recommendation 15
Senior managers in Glasgow have had, and continue to have, an ambitious change agenda. It is important that whenever possible they support and involve staff more in owning and driving through changes to the organisation.