Chapter 7 Leadership and direction
We found strategic leadership in North Ayrshire to be good, having important strengths with some areas for improvement.
Social services in North Ayrshire were part of a sound corporate structure and council services worked well together. We found evidence of good political, strategic and professional leadership. Social services had a positive profile within the council. Staff generally felt valued and supported.
Strategic planning between social services and health partners was mixed, with progress more evident in children and families services.
Vision, values and aims
The North Ayrshire 10 year Community Plan set out the strategic direction for North Ayrshire for 2006-2016.The vision, which underpinned the community plan, was North Ayrshire-A Better Life and the plan identified seven priorities for the Community Planning Partnership ( CPP) to address. There was an accompanying summary document and an annual review and action plan to keep people in touch with progress. The action plan sometimes stated specific actions and at other times signposted to activity elsewhere.
The council's vision and values were set by the political and corporate leadership and published in the council plan for 2006/09 Building a better North Ayrshire. There were 12 priorities, and key actions set out in the council plan, which was made widely available to the public.
Each service in the council prepared its service plan on a three year rolling basis. The service plan set out the role of the service, the context in which it operated and its priorities for the set period. The overall aim for social services as stated at the beginning of the 2004/07 Social Services Plan was 'to support and care for vulnerable children, adults and older people'. Operational and strategic managers developed the plan and reviewed it annually. Social services had published a strategic service statement for 2007/10 and we also saw a strategic service statement for 2006/07. There was also an annotated social services plan for 2007/10, which set out priorities, timescales, lead officers, desired outcomes and identified whether there were cost implications over and above the substantive budget for core issues.
Sixty-six percent of staff who responded to our survey agreed that North Ayrshire had a clear set of local social services priorities with only 6% disagreeing.
We found there was congruence between the community, council and the various social services plans but thought that they would benefit from being more aligned, streamlined and from greater consistency in style and presentation. We commented elsewhere that we think the service plans needed to be better linked to the available resources as identified in detailed financial plans. We were concerned that the 2007/10 Community Care Plan was still in draft with some sections incomplete and waiting to be signed off by health partners.
The corporate director of social services was a member of the council's corporate management team ( CMT) and was seen as "influential" because she positively engaged with delivering on the council's overall vision. She had successfully promoted a positive vision for social services with the CMT. We noted positive working relations between the corporate management team and good partnership working within the council.
At the start of each year, the chief executive agreed the performance objectives with the corporate director of social services. Elected members agreed the objectives. This plan in turn informed individual work plans agreed with each head of service and their managers.
The corporate director also met with the social services senior management team ( SMT) monthly. This provided a forum in which to take corporate issues further. Workforce planning, integrated services and performance information were all regular agenda items. The SMT had jointly agreed the decision to prioritise work on protecting children, which resulted in the current overspend on children and families within the budget. It was unclear how long this would continue.
Fifty-one percent of those who responded to our staff survey agreed that there was a clear vision for social services, while 17% disagreed. Managers were most likely to agree with this. In particular, residential staff we met had a clear understanding of their role in delivering on the vision and values of the council and social services.
We were told by the chief executive that the corporate director was respected by the elected members and that she had worked hard to make sure they that they had a positive view of social services and its contribution within the council. The leader of the council had a high regard for the director and demonstrated a clear understanding of the difficulties that social services faced. He had a clear vision of the role of social services within the council.
At the time of the inspection, the local elected members were getting ready for local elections. Some staff said they appreciated the active involvement from local elected members. Forty percent of respondents to our staff survey agreed that social services were highly valued by elected members whilst 16% disagreed.
Both the chief executive and elected members along with the corporate director had forged links with partners in the NHS. However, we have already commented that this partnership was underdeveloped and we thought that it should be strengthened. This was particularly relevant for the further development of community care services.
Leadership of people
A number of staff reported that the corporate director was visible, approachable and accessible. The corporate director had considerable professional credibility and a strong profile on the national scene.
Middle managers spoke of clear, firm leadership from the top and good communication from senior managers. Senior managers expressed commitment to the vision and to the service and spoke of their commitment to take agreed plans forward.
We saw strong professional leadership within social services. Fieldwork staff spoke of good support, direction and supervision from immediate line managers. However, fieldwork staff felt under pressure. They acknowledged a tremendous commitment from their front line team colleagues to do a good job, but said too that much bureaucracy, large caseloads, not enough workers, increasingly complicated work and cramped office space had all hampered them. The director told us that she had raised excessive bureaucracy before with staff and the trade unions but she had not been able to identify any substantial issues to address such as unnecessary or duplicate paperwork.
There was a communication team at corporate headquarters and the service had a part time communication officer working specifically for them. The self evaluation questionnaire noted there was a formal communication strategy for social services which had been prepared in consultation with staff and which was due to be evaluated. There was a quarterly staff bulletin.
Thirty-nine percent of those who responded to our questionnaire agreed that senior managers communicated well with staff, while 36% of staff disagreed. Residential care workers were the most positive with 56% agreeing, while administrative and support staff were the least positive - 24% agreed. They were almost equally divided on whether staff morale had been good in their team for at least 6 months, with 43% agreeing and 42% disagreeing.
Action taken to address the shortages of qualified staff had been effective. Retention rates were now also good. However, the influx of new workers meant there were numbers of inexperienced staff now working in children and families teams. The staff group generally was described as "settled". Whilst this was positive because it meant people built up experience it could also sometimes mean they needed additional help to remain open to new ideas. Making sure that staff who were settled in the area had career opportunities had been a factor in developing the current service management structure. The investment in staff training had also been a direct result of the perceived need to keep staff up to date and provide them with the skills they needed to do the job. Staff told us they received regular supervision and said the investment in their training and development made them feel valued. The corporate director had made a significant personal investment in leading a workforce-planning group on a monthly basis because she attached importance to this area of work.
Leadership of change and improvement
Political scrutiny was provided through social services submitting performance reports twice a year to the standing subcommittee for scrutiny and direction, and it could, if it wished, raise issues at a full social services committee. These reports covered progress towards agreed priorities. We were told that members had been using the scrutiny panels well but tended to focus on specific issues rather than strategic policy. Reports to the committee were within the public domain.
The current chief executive, taking up post at the end of 2005, had focused on building a stronger corporate approach and the big corporate issues that needed to be taken forward. His perception was that social services were delivering well in coping with "a double whammy" - an increasing demand for children and families services and increasing demand for services for older people. He was confident that the corporate director had identified the priorities and was clear about the role social services had to play in the corporate agenda.
The corporate director had fundamentally restructured the service. She had instigated a review of children and families services, although improving residential childcare services was still acknowledged as a major challenge. Community care services had remained unchanged until fairly recently. The recent restructuring of the service was designed to begin to address some of the issues that had been identified, and this had not been without its own challenges. The move to set up a more flexible home care service had not been easy. Home care contracts had changed before the recent pay review, and some staff had left. The new head of service for community care had been in post about six months at the time of our fieldwork and a clear strategic direction had yet to emerge. However, the leadership of key changes and improvements needed to be addressed by the corporate director and by partners in the NHS.
Thirty-eight percent of those who responded to our staff survey agreed that there was effective leadership of change in social services, while 29% disagreed. This was comparable with other authorities that we had inspected. Residential care workers were the most positive with 71% of those replying to our survey agreeing. Generally, the residential care staff we met were upbeat and positive about the review and the future direction for their services.
At the time of our fieldwork, the political complexion of the new council was unclear and the chief executive was putting together an induction pack for new councillors. Although we have already highlighted the issue of unallocated cases with statutory orders in children and families teams, we were pleased to note that corporate parenting of looked after children was seen as a key responsibility for the council, and was included as part of the induction material for new councillors. It also featured as an agenda item under corporate issues and was not just taken as part of the social services agenda. The chief executive said that the corporate management team had been cross-linking in respect of shared agendas, but more cross cutting portfolios were a possibility. The timing of the inspection made it difficult to predict what the future would bring.
The immediate priority for the council was resolution of the single status issue. There was a Human Resource Strategy in draft, but the main and immediate focus for HR was to get the new pay and conditions of service enacted. Once achieved, the council intended to progress their plans for personnel development, recruitment and selection, appraisal and workforce and succession planning.
The relationship between social services and NHS Ayrshire and Arran was working differently - both at different levels and in respect of different care groups. The corporate director was a member of the CHP advisory group and the heads of service from social services and education were members of the CHP committee. There were no elected members on either, and only one North Ayrshire elected member on the NHS Board. We heard relationships and local working practices with the CHP were generally good, but a number of people we spoke to queried whether the CHP had sufficient delegated powers or resources to be as actively involved in local joint or integrated working practices as it would have liked.
Mental health services were now managed centrally as a direct result of operational difficulties. The NHS chief executive told us that it had been agreed to review the working of the CHP at its inception, and that this was currently in progress. The review was due to be presented to the NHS Board in June 2007.
Recommendation 15
The council should encourage the active involvement of elected members in the wider agenda of social services and the community health partnership.
The NHS chief executive told us she was committed to partnership working with North Ayrshire and social services, but she was also accountable to the Scottish Executive Health Department to meet targets set by them. Actions taken by the Scottish Executive Education Department to secure commitment at the highest levels from all the relevant agencies to protect children seemed to have been helpful in driving child protection up the health agenda. As a result, we thought health partners were more pro-actively engaged in childcare, but they were prioritising meeting ministerial directives in respect of community care and Scottish Executive Health Department targets at the expense of moving forward on local community care initiatives. The NHS chief executive said she was faced with competing demands between acute and primary care. Overall, it appeared that the two agencies were operating in parallel rather than in partnership, and this clearly required to be addressed with some degree of urgency if joint objectives in community care were to be achieved.