Looking at great leadership in social care with compassionate and inclusive leadership

Throughout this online short course, you’ll look at your own experiences and case studies from employees and employers around the world to analyse the critical role language use, identity claims, and culture can play in interactions you may have with others in a range of professional settings.

Suitable for leaders of all teams at all levels, this programme is delivered through four lively and highly interactive workshops, based on a practical and compelling book by Professor Michael West. Participants explore the evidence around compassionate leadership, develop their knowledge and practice in this area, and gain new insights to apply immediately in their workplace.

Whether you’re leading a team or supporting someone one-to-one, adopting and embedding a compassionate approach shapes the culture of care settings, supports wellbeing, and enables us to respond with humanity in every situation.

This edition of the MILE newsletter brings together courses and resources on compassionate leadership, team wellbeing, and ways to strengthen the human connection at the heart of care.

Compassionate leadership is associated with enhanced learning and innovation, lower staff stress, and improved patient care. Drawing on the research of Professor Michael West and other experts, this face-to-face training programme is for health and social care leaders who are looking to cultivate compassion for themselves and the people they lead.

This webinar, recorded on 10th June 2025, highlights the importance of Compassionate Leadership in health and social care. Jenny Stanley, Director of 1Stop Training, and Mark Topps, Co-Founder of The Caring View, discuss what compassionate leadership is, whether it can be developed, and why it remains an essential leadership skill in 2025.

This programme is designed for health and care managers and supervisors to help them develop core inclusive leadership skills.

On this four-week course from London’s Workforce Race strategy team and the NHS Leadership Academy, you’ll gain an in-depth understanding of the concept of allyship. Focusing on real examples from the health and care sector, you’ll learn when and how you can be an ally to the people in your organisation.

Click here to apply for free access to FutureLearn courses and programmes designed by the NHS if you work in UK health and care and meet the eligibility requirements.

The importance of inclusive leadership is increasingly understood and sought after across almost every industry. This includes the health and care sector, and managers and supervisors need to develop these leadership skills if they want to stay relevant in the workplace. This six-week course from the NHS Leadership Academy will help you to do just that.

Click here to apply for free access to FutureLearn courses and programmes designed by the NHS if you work in UK health and care and meet the eligibility requirements.

Develop inclusive and compassionate leadership skills to ensure diversity and equality in the health and care industry.

Developing and maintaining healthy psychological contracts can be difficult but it’s an essential part of leadership. This five-week course explores how you, as a leader, can create psychological contracts that help ensure both equality and diversity.

Click here to apply for free access to FutureLearn courses and programmes designed by the NHS if you work in UK health and care and meet the eligibility requirements.

On this four-week course from NHS Leadership Academy, you’ll learn how to be disability positive as a manager. Guided by diversity and inclusion experts, you’ll learn how to support, celebrate, and advocate for your disabled colleagues. You’ll be able to use your training to create a culture of disability positivity in your team and workplace.

Click here to apply for free access to FutureLearn courses and programmes designed by the NHS if you work in UK health and care and meet the eligibility requirements.

On this four-week course from the London Race Strategy Team and the NHS Leadership Academy, you’ll learn what microaggressions look like, and what you can do to challenge them in any healthcare facility.

Click here to apply for free access to FutureLearn courses and programmes designed by the NHS if you work in UK health and care and meet the eligibility requirements.

Explore critical perspectives on dying, death, and grief to develop your professional practice or reflect on personal experience.

End of Life Challenges and Palliative Care is led by the University of Glasgow’s End of Life Studies Group, a research and teaching team dedicated to examining end of life issues. This course is supported and approved by the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh (RCPE), and learners who are members of the RCPE will earn 50 CPD Credits upon completion of this microcredential.

By the end of the 10-week course, you’ll have deepened your own thinking on a range of end of life issues, while gaining the training and credentials you need to work in palliative care.

The training aims to upskill colleagues in how to handle difficult situations with compassion, using appropriate communication techniques and active listening skills, whilst very much focusing on how to keep yourself well if you feel affected by a situation.

This module is designed to appeal to anyone with an interest in caring services in a modern, complex and demanding world. From service users and informal carers, to social workers and clinicians, if people don’t work effectively together the quality of services will be undermined. Rooted in the foundations of a caring approach to leadership and management, this module provides tools and insight to understand your role in relation to others.

A popular 6-month leadership development programme, designed in partnership with global experts, recently refreshed and delivered by experienced facilitators to develop your knowledge and skills in leadership and management.

The UK population is ageing, with over 50% of UK adults expected to be 50 and over by 2035 (Office for Health Improvement & Disparities, 2022). As a manager in health and social care you will be keenly aware of the challenges that ageing presents. However, focusing on the more positive aspects of ageing rather than its limitations can help us cultivate an enriching environment where older adults are valued, respected and encouraged to flourish.

The key topic for this newsletter is Strengths-based leadership. Strengths-based leadership in health and social care focuses on identifying and leveraging the unique skills and abilities of individuals and teams to enhance service delivery and outcomes.

The Rosalind Franklin programme will support you to become outstanding innovators, leaders, and team members working across the health and care system, to help improve services for people and communities that access them.

Gain essential leadership skills to help you become a culturally aware manager and lead multicultural teams to success.This microcredential will enable you to build self leadership and emotional intelligence to lead culturally diverse teams. You’ll gain practical and nuanced leadership skills such as conflict management and understanding how to enable communication and collaboration using appropriate leadership styles. These skills are key when managing global virtual teams and multicultural individuals.

This course explores the relationship between stress and organisational change, and the ways in which management can lead with a caring approach in the context of ongoing organisational change in health and social care.