NEW
Online training course
An essential training and development course for frontline health and social care staff to become effective leaders through a simple but powerful framework.
This course will develop your skills on how best to increase the positive influence that frontline staff can have on their teams and work environment and quality of care. Well-known trainer and author of this course, Paul Whitby, provides you with the path to good care leadership.
Available now
“The training is very engaging with good use of exercises/ activities.
Course includes handouts and case studies which provides opportunities for learners
to gain greater understanding of the subject and increase knowledge retention.”
Assessor, CPD Certification Service
Group discounts for 3 or more participants are available. Please enquire and provide us with further details.
Timing
Five sessions, each takes about 3 hours
Good frontline leadership is vital to improving morale and care quality in health and social care teams. This is never more important than at a time when services are so stretched and having to adapt quickly to changes in procedures and practice. Good leadership promotes effective response and guards against poor care, neglect and abuse that may occur within inpatient and residential health and social care settings. Most leadership training approaches stress having good clinical skills but pay little heed to how best to increase the positive influence that frontline staff can have on their teams and work environment. This essential training and development course addresses that need through a straightforward and powerful leadership framework.
The simplicity and effectiveness of the approach comes from careful analysis of poor care and ways to prevent it happening, and a distillation of the theories of good care leadership, based on psychology, psychotherapy and nursing studies. Its flexibility means that it can be used for group training or for individual leadership development.
The content of Good Care Leadership covers aspects of the following SfC modules:
- Leadership Qualities Framework: Demonstrating personal qualities; Working
- with others; Managing services (Managing people and managing performance);
- Improving services (Encouraging improvement, facilitating transformation)
- Managing People: Building resilience; Code of Conduct; Developing your staff;
- People performance; Supervision
- Transforming Care: Set the right culture and values; Workforce development
- Leadership Starts With Me – entire unit
1. Respect for frontline care staff
The whole course is based on the notion that the people best placed to improve care in hospitals, homes and other service settings are already working in them. These are the people with the knowledge, skills and values who have the potential to really make things happen. Their hard work and dedication are rarely recognised. Also, they have great potential for development if only they are given the right environment to flourish.
2. Attending to solutions and strengths
is far more helpful than focussing on weaknesses and mistakes. Frontline care professionals are always trying their best and much of the time they are doing well. Criticising them for being less than perfect is likely to lead to demoralisation and resentment. Instead, on this course we look at people’s strengths and what they are doing right. Paying attention to what works and doing more of it is a very practical approach.
3. Culture matters at least as much as personality
Whilst ‘character’ is important in caring it is also essential that all professionals are surrounded by an environment, a ‘culture’, that nurtures their good practice and makes it natural for them to perform at their best. Fortunately, part of the situation is directly under the influence of frontline staff, especially the leader. This is the emotional and psychological culture of the workplace. All staff in a care home, on a ward or other service setting contribute to their workplace culture and can help make it more positive and supportive. Whilst it is usual for the more senior staff to have the most influence it is clear that junior staff can also be important influencers too.
See “Course content” for the complete syllabus.
CPD accredited, the course will enable frontline leaders in all service settings to:
- demonstrate increased self-confidence and competence in the exercise of leadership
- promote the articulation and practice of caring values
- use authority and power in an appropriate and effective way
- motivate others in their team.
This is a course about developing ‘soft’ skills, so it does not contain a lot of content to be learned and tested. While there are review quizzes to assess your knowledge gains in Sessions 3 and 4*, most of the course activities are reflective, providing an opportunity for you to explore your self, your strengths and your practice as an actual or potential leader. You may wish to ‘buddy’ up with a colleague to share and discuss the outcomes of these reflections, or bring them into the supervision process through discussion with your line manager. If you are undertaking this course as a team, you could build in team sharing and discussion at the end of each session.
The main opportunity to put
your online learning into practice is through Session 5: Project – Putting It Into Practice. Here you will be able to take your learning and create a leadership project in a real world setting. You will need to build in an opportunity to ‘report back’ on your project and the way you do this will vary, depending on whether you are working as an individual or as part of a team undertaking the course.
Upon completion of this course, you will also receive a downloadable CPD certificate
This course will be of benefit to any frontline health or care professional who has a leadership or supervisory role over other staff members.
In nursing and residential care homes, supported living and other supported settings for people with learning disabilities, autistic people, older people, those with mental health needs or disabilities, this would include:
- Nursing and care home managers
- Shift leaders
- Nurses
- Senior care workers
- Senior support staff and team leaders.
In hospitals, clinics and other healthcare settings this would include:
- Modern matrons
- Ward managers
- Staff nurses
- Doctors
- Other clinical and allied professionals
- Social workers
- Clinical and health psychologists
Links to other qualifications and standards
Skills for Care
The Care Certificate and Levels 3 & 4 Diplomas in Care contain units with the theme of Personal Development and Values.
The Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management in Adult Care units in the areas of DILMAC 1A & B, Leadership and Management, DILMAC 4A Relationships and partnership working, DILMAC 5C Continuous improvement, DILMAC 6A & B Professional development, supervision and performance management, DILMAC 9A Managing self.
The content of Good Care Leadership covers aspects of the following SfC modules:
- Leadership Qualities Framework: Demonstrating personal qualities; Working with others; Managing services (Managing people and managing performance); Improving services (Encouraging improvement, facilitating transformation)
- Managing People: Building resilience; Code of Conduct; Developing your staff; People performance; Supervision
- Transforming Care: Set the right culture and values; Workforce development
- Leadership Starts With Me – entire unit
The NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework dimensions
- Personal and people development
- Service Improvement
- Quality
The NHS Leadership Academy dimensions
- Inspiring shared purpose
- Leading with care
- Sharing the vision
- Engaging the team
- Holding to account
- Influencing for results
Registered Nurse revalidation
Good Care Leadership is particularly suited to the compulsory nursing revalidation process for all qualified nurses. As well as being a form of CPD, as a reflective development process it is an excellent basis for the requirements for written reflective accounts and the requirement to have had reflective discussions. The course is relevant to the NMC Code, Section 25 Leadership. The Values exercises directly relate to The NMC Code of ethical practice.
The course comprises video presentations by the author followed by exercises and quizzes that can be carried out individually or as teams both online and offline.
An end-of-course project prompts learners to put leadership knowledge and skills into practice in a real-world setting.
Each of the five sessions takes between 2.5–3 hours, so the total time required for the course is approximately two days, plus time involved in executing a work-based project planned in Session 5. There is also a need for a follow-up session for reporting on the projects; this will need to be arranged according to local needs and according to whether the course is being undertaken by an individual, a team or an organisation.
Trainers and assessors are able to access the students’ work within their accounts and add comments. This includes completed and uploaded handout exercise sheets, quizzes and end-of-session reflections.
This online learning is applicable to organisational and team development in a wide range of settings, for example:
- Managers of a learning disability service could use the course with senior carers to develop their leadership potential in transforming existing provision.
- Managers or senior carers in a care home for older people could use it to develop their staff in order to boost morale and improve quality of care.
- An NHS Trust Training Department could use it to bring staff from many wards together for a large training exercise to ensure that leadership skills are widely cultivated throughout the Trust.
About the author
Paul Whitby, was formerly a psychiatric nurse and is now a clinical psychologist. He contributes to the Bath University Clinical Psychology course and the Aneurin Bevan NHS Trust management development course. He started his career as a psychiatric nurse and for a while was a Charge Nurse at the Bethlem Royal Hospital before completing his Clinical Psychology training.
Throughout his clinical psychology career, Paul has worked on wards alongside the nursing staff. He believes that his experiences have given him a unique insight into the problem of variability in the quality of care offered in different care homes and wards, why some places succeed and other do not.
Paul has been involved in training at various levels for many clinical disciplines in the NHS. He is also a trustee of a local dementia charity. He edits the Faculty of the Psychology of Older People Bulletin (a British Psychological Society periodical).
Course access
Is available 24/7 through “My Account” once registered
Group access
Group licensing available
