Chapter 7: Leadership and direction
Overall we found performance in this area to be adequate, with strengths just outweighing weaknesses.
South Ayrshire Council had experienced weaknesses in corporate leadership over many years preceding this inspection. This had limited the council's progress in a number of areas. We considered that leadership within the council and social work services had improved substantially within the last year. A new chief executive had led political, organisational and managerial changes and a new executive director for children and community was modernising the delivery of social work services in the council. Together they were working hard to refresh the vision and future direction of the authority and to improve best value and strategic and service planning. Altogether across the council 12 new heads of service had been appointed. A new portfolio had been specifically created for social work services to give it a higher priority within the council. Both the chief executive and the director had made considerable efforts to communicate the changes to staff and to engage staff in taking forward service redesign.
The chief executive and director were clear that a great deal remained to be done. They acknowledged corporate working needed to become more effective and had identified improving leadership capacity as a priority. Community care services required significant reconfiguration to deliver sustainable services to meet the future needs of an ageing population. The level of overspend in children and families was indicative of a past lack of strategic focus on the modernisation of services within the council.
Because of the significant changes within and across the authority, immediate priority had been given to internal council business. Partnership working was recognised as important but would take time to be developed. The new CHP was in its infancy.
Vision, values and aims
South Ayrshire Council's vision for the future was "to establish South Ayrshire as the most dynamic, inclusive and sustainable community in Scotland". In Securing the Future for South Ayrshire published in December 2007 the council set out accompanying values, guiding principles and four key themes all of which contained strengths, challenges and priorities:
- Prosperous, learning and achieving
- Healthy, safe and caring
- Clean, attractive and sustainable
- Ambitious, forward-looking and responsive
The council's community plan A better future together had been published in 2005. It had five aims and three priority areas.
South Ayrshire's first single outcome agreement had only covered services provided by the council. The draft for 2009-10 was a full partnership agreement and the council had consulted on it widely. It had recently been submitted to the Scottish Government. The executive director for children and community had been closely involved in this process. Although it was generally considered to be on the right track, senior staff acknowledged it was still work in progress.
The council planned to review these documents in 2010 and to link them to a refreshed single vision consistent with a revised single outcome agreement.
The vision for social work services was "to deliver personalised services which are flexible to meet the changing needs of the people of South Ayrshire".
Fifty-six per cent of those who responded to our survey agreed that there was a clear vision for social work in South Ayrshire. Of those who responded, home helps/home carers were the most positive with 85% agreeing with this statement. Fieldwork staff were the least positive but, overall, South Ayrshire's result was comparable with other local authorities inspected so far.
We found varying degrees of ownership of the social work vision amongst different staff groups in the new directorate. The directorate team and senior managers were responsible for communicating the vision. Additional management capacity within the directorate and the council was tasked with improving the profile and public perception of council services.
The HMIE report in 2007 stated that whilst individual services had a clear vision to protect children, this vision was not shared amongst the partners involved in delivering child protection services and they evaluated this as weak. The follow-up inspection noted that good progress had been made.
Service plans were in draft. Managers were in the process of standardising these across the council to link them more coherently to corporate performance management systems but we heard that the existing corporate performance management system had become too detailed to be helpful. There had been errors and problems in data collection. Managers told us that the new directorate plan would be the means of monitoring and reporting on performance.
The council's self-evaluation questionnaire recognised that there was work to be done to refine and sharpen the links between the vision and service and team plans.
Cross-cutting approach within the council
The council's staff survey in 2008 which had a 100% response rate from senior officers, showed that only 26% thought that services worked together to deliver council objectives.
The Audit Scotland report published in April 2009 noted that "the absence of a corporate working within the council has resulted in inconsistent practices and a lack of joint working between departments". We agreed with this statement and saw the impact this had had left on social work services.
The chief executive was fully aware that the corporate management team had not been used to acting corporately and said they now needed to think and act differently. New executive directors had deliberately been given a more corporate role and the new heads of service were not just responsible for their own department but had a corporate responsibility regarding equality, diversity and performance. The council's improvement plan identified the need to improve corporate management. We considered that the new structure should support the council in taking these aims forward.
Role of elected members
The executive director for community and children was intent on developing member support and understanding of the vision and direction for the new directorate which covered some 70% of the council's functions. Following the changes to the council's main political decision making and scrutiny structures in November 2008 the new directorate contained four portfolio holders. A new portfolio for social services on the leadership panel was to make sure that elected members understood key social work priorities. Another member acted as a children's champion for young people. The director met monthly with all four portfolio holders in advance of the leadership panel to discuss leadership panel reports and he also met weekly with the portfolio holder for social services to enlist her support for his future vision. She had a visiting programme for all social work teams.
Portfolio holders had arranged away days to discuss cross-cutting issues and priorities. Further away days were planned for CMT and portfolio holders to establish agreed priorities.
Elected members told us that since 2007 they were less focused on maintaining rigid party lines and more on achieving consensus. Recently some members from different parties had started to meet before the leadership panel to ensure they were fully briefed on the papers. The leader thought this was making a difference.
Relationships between officers and members were described as good but staff told us that members were still occasionally appeared to overstep the boundaries. We heard that the communication protocol for elected members/officers had been implemented better with the arrival of the new director.
Managers had held a seminar for members on corporate parenting in December 2008 and further information and a report was ready to go to members. However we considered there was more managers needed to do to help elected members develop their understanding of their responsibilities here. The concept of acting as any parent would in nurturing, supporting or giving help to looked after children was not yet well understood by all the members we met.
A lunch and learn event had recently helped members and young people have structured discussions around the need to promote and value young people more.
Leadership of people
Leadership culture
A new chief executive in April 2008 and a newly appointed director of social work, housing and health in May 2008 had brought significant leadership changes for South Ayrshire Council. The chief executive had restructured the council in Nov 2008. The new structure comprised three executive directors for corporate services, development and the environment, and children and community. A new post of head of policy, performance and communication was also created reporting directly to the chief executive. The previous executive director of social work, housing and health became the executive director for children and community. Operational management of the social work functions was delegated to head of service level.
The chief executive was clear that South Ayrshire needed to become a different, more innovative and creative organisation. The new director for children and community shared this view. He considered his new directorate presented opportunities to "sweep away previous conflicts with other departments and leave it free to focus on outcomes". Both the chief executive and director regarded the need to re-energise the workforce as a priority. The leader of the council expressed confidence in the new leadership but commented that the present culture within the council was still fragmented with some areas needing to become much more pro-active and solution focussed. There was still "too much talking and not enough action".
The new structure was bedding in at the time of our inspection. We interviewed some heads of service in the new children and community directorate who had only been in post a few weeks. The scale of the changes had caused disquiet and uncertainty for some staff. Some staff did not feel valued and others were worried that some established good practice might be overlooked.
The new directorate was responsible for some 70% of the council's business. Whilst we agreed with the views we heard about the enormous potential this presented to improve cross cutting working, we had some concerns as to whether the director would be able to manage this and still deliver the strong professional leadership required to drive forward the necessary changes for social work services within the council. As a qualified social worker, the director held the responsibilities for chief social work officer ( CSWO). We considered he would need to keep this under review. The director told us he planned to produce his first report to council as CSWO following the publication of this inspection report.
The chief executive had led a number of management engagement events throughout 2008 to engage managers in the change process and a series of similar events for employees was planned for 2009.
The CMT met fortnightly and the executive director of community and children met with his management team (heads of service and business and performance manager) every two weeks to review performance against objectives and discuss key issues.
The chief executive and the director were keen to improve the profile of South Ayrshire nationally. South Ayrshire had made nine submissions for the Cosla excellence awards, two had been short listed. One - a multi-agency approach to child protection training had achieved a silver award and the other - a Care and Share project offering support for people who were homeless and those at risk from homelessness - won the gold.
The council held an annual awards ceremony for all council employees. We noted the council website had photographs from the last ceremony in September 2008 when awards were given for long service and achievement to a number of staff members including social work staff.
Involvement of staff
The council's employee opinion survey in March 2008 found that 42% felt involved in making decisions that affected their job and the services they provided.
Both the chief executive and the director had made communicating with staff a priority and had gone to great lengths to make sure they were as open and transparent about the changes as possible.
The chief executive had commenced a series of bulletins to staff to make sure that news of proposed changes reached them as soon as possible. He had encouraged staff to email any questions they might have directly to him and had promised to reply as soon as possible. He made it clear in his communications to staff that the way of doing business had changed at a corporate level. The director had also commenced a series of regular newsletters to staff in his directorate to make sure they were all as informed as speedily as possible about important developments in the council and the directorate such as the council re-structuring and the inspection. Both the bulletins and the newsletters gave strong messages about the need for a shift in culture.
In order to maximise the use of new technology and to communicate with staff in fresh ways the director had set up a blog and a specific email address so staff could contact him directly. He had asked for volunteers to work with him on improving communication within the department. He had visited almost every unit, attended practitioner's forums and personally signed off all SSSC registrations which gave him the opportunity to meet frontline staff every week. He had met the masters' graduates within the authority to encourage them to champion a modernised approach within their individual teams.
Both the chief executive and director had "walked the patch" to see and meet people in the community as well as staff running services at first hand to discuss the proposed changes with as many people as possible. Many in the community were very appreciative of this and their expectations of change for the better were running high. Some staff, whilst appreciative of the interest, had found the experience discomfiting and said they had not received any feedback.
Leadership of change and improvement
Political leadership and capacity
A wide range of training courses was on offer to members. The uptake had been good. All members had participated in induction training. A member training and development policy was approved in January 2008. By the end of June 2008 all members had agreed a personal development plan. During the course of 2008, the council had participated at a national level with the improvement service in the pilot continuing professional development project.
Forty-five per cent of staff who responded to our survey agreed that the social work service was highly valued by elected members. Home care staff were the most positive about this statement with 79% agreeing with it. South Ayrshire's result was comparable with other local authorities inspected so far.
Political decision making
The council moved to a cabinet model in May 2007 with a leadership panel, five standing scrutiny panels, a number of other decision making panels, a scrutiny review process and a call in process. When the system was reviewed in 2008 the leadership panel was expanded from five to seven portfolio holders, the number of scrutiny panels reduced from five to three and the number of elected members on each panel was increased by four to eight.
The directorate reported to a number of panels including the leadership panel, and the community services standing scrutiny panel.
Some members we spoke to had more to learn about social work services and the main challenges and priorities for the future.
A survey of members in 2008 revealed that only 40% agreed they received good quality information on which to base decisions. Some members told us they received little performance data. The chief executive acknowledged they needed to develop better guidance about scrutiny and provide members with better information.
Leadership of change
Previous scrutiny reports have commented on weaknesses in the political and managerial leadership in South Ayrshire. 13 The council's own Leadership Panel's Annual report for 2007-08 stated that "political mismanagement over many years had eroded its strengths, left it with no clear direction and created a backlog of neglect that has left it with many challenges".
However, the Audit Scotland April 2009 report noted that "leadership has been improving during the last two years along with a stronger appetite for change and a greater level of self awareness. More effective leadership has been demonstrated by effective cross-party working among members, the impact of a new chief executive and other senior staff and revised political and managerial structures".
Elected members told us they were confident in the new senior management appointments and more confident in the leadership, strategic decisions and advice about difficult decisions. The new regime was considered more inclusive and consultative although many in the new management team were as yet untried and untested.
The chief executive appreciated the enormous change the council was experiencing but considered they were still some way off where they needed to be. Immediate challenges included implementation of single status, modernising the approach to budget processes and modernising services and agreeing the best value improvement plan. All of this required to be taken forward at a time when the council faced severe financial pressures. The absence of clear plans and strategy had in the past meant that spending tended to be reactive.
The union representatives we met were highly critical of the way single status had been taken forward to date. They said the exercise had been going on since 1995 and there were still a few posts to be evaluated.
In social work services, the director was confident that he knew what needed to be done, nonetheless children's services were facing considerable financial difficulties. There was a pressing need to reduce the number of costly out of authority placements not just to reduce the level of spend but to allow investment in local options which were also likely to deliver better outcomes. The director was in the process of agreeing a process with the leadership panel. Information submitted by managers following the inspection indicated the numbers of young people in residential placements was reducing.
The director had championed the "Changing Lives" agenda within the council.
Both the chief executive and director were aware that as a council South Ayrshire did not have a good track record of delivering change. They were keen to identify some quick wins but it was not yet apparent what, or where, these would be.
The CHP was very new at the time of the inspection. Essentially a partnership committee it was chaired by a local authority representative who was also on the NHS board. A facilitator had been appointed and had been in post seven weeks at the time of the inspection.
The chief officers group met regularly. The chief executive said that relationships were good but that there were capacity issues.
Forty-two per cent of those staff who responded to our survey agreed there was effective leadership of change of the social work service.