The principles of leadership and management for adult social care

We offer leadership development opportunities, resources and support for health and care staff across the South East from all backgrounds and experience levels who want to help create a more capable, compassionate and inclusive healthcare system.

We enable staff to fulfil their potential within their roles and our approach is bespoke, inclusive and collaborative. Through our bitesize learning offers, coaching and mentoring, local and national programmes we can help you develop the knowledge, skills, expertise, attitudes and behaviours to support the next steps in your personal leadership journey.

One of the key skills for leaders and managers, particularly in social care, is communication. Every day needs to start and end with good communication to ensure that information is passed on accurately to the right people. It’s the role of the manager to set the tone for good communication across their service.​

In this module, you’ll start to explore some of the skills you need to be a good communicator, consider how to manage information safely and securely, and plan your next steps in providing good and outstanding adult social care services.​

This course aims to provide you with the skills and knowledge to lead, organise and motivate teams. This qualification is ideal if you have management responsibilities, but no formal training, and are serious about developing your abilities. It’s particularly suited to practising team leaders seeking to move up to the next level of management, and managers who lead people through organisational change, budget cuts or other pressures.

The Lead Practitioner in Adult Care will guide and inspire team members to make positive differences in someone’s life when they are faced with physical, practical, social, emotional, psychological, or intellectual challenges. They will have achieved a level of self-development to be recognised as a lead practitioner within the care team, contributing to, promoting, and sustaining a values-based culture at an operational level.

This apprenticeship is suitable for: Adult Care Workers who work in residential or nursing homes, domiciliary care, day centres, a person’s own home, or some clinical healthcare settings

This Leadership and Management course looks at the foundational skills needed to be a successful manager and leader. It could be that you’ve suddenly found yourself in a position of responsibility, or in charge of a team or running a department, or it could be that you’re in a planned stage of your career and are ready to develop or improve your leadership skills and qualities. This course is suitable for anyone wishing to learn more tools and information to succeed in a leadership or management role.

Everything you do as a leader and manager in adult social care must facilitate, promote and embed person-centred approaches to care and support and enhance the lives of the people accessing your service. In this module, you’ll start to explore some of the skills you need to ensure you lead truly person-centred services.

The responsibilities of leaders and managers in adult social care can not be underestimated. You need a range of skills, knowledge and qualities to be successful, and you need the ability to draw off these at different times in different situations. In this module, you’ll start to explore some of those abilities and plan your next steps to leading and managing good and outstanding adult social care services.

It’s important to continually respond to and learn from what is going well, and what isn’t going so well. This enables you to make improvements to your service and offer that benefit everyone – especially those accessing care and support.

The module is aligned to Standard 10 of the Manager Induction Standards and will cover the following 3 topics:

• Comments and complaints
• Continuous improvement
• Creating change

This qualification is for first line managers seeking to broaden skills, knowledge and behaviours in a more flexible and practical way related to today’s leadership and management practices.

A key component of a manager’s role in adult social care is to make decisions and provide direction. The service and team members you lead will look to you to make decisions on how to provide the best possible care and support to the people accessing your service.

Managers must develop and evolve their practice to respond to the challenges they and their employees face. The Management Essentials course develops the essential management skills to align managing and leading by using a practical and effective model that everyone can understand.

Skills for Care have identified 11 Manager Induction Standards (MIS) which set out the fundamental skills and knowledge required by a new registered manager, underpinned by the values and ethics intrinsic to social care. These were reviewed and updated in 2023.

This standard relates to the importance of building relationships and partnerships as part of your role as a manager within adult social care.

This standard speaks to an awareness of safeguarding signs, symptoms and factors around abuse and responses to abuse so new managers can develop deeper understanding of their responsibility to lead and manage others in safeguarding practice.

This course focuses on a range of topics, including what managers do, what skills they require, and how you can develop as a manager.

Understanding your role in managing resources is vital to enable to you provide good and outstanding care. 

This module is aligned to Standard 11: Personal development and wellbeing of the Manager Induction Standards and will cover the following 4 topics:

• Your own development
• Being self-aware
• Managing your workload
• Your personal wellbeing

This knowledge-based qualification ensures that the learner can demonstrate understanding of the principles of leadership and management in adult care services.

Governance can be defined as a collection of systems and processes concerned with ensuring the overall direction, effectiveness, supervision and accountability of an organisation or service. Within adult social care, good governance is paramount due to the nature of the work completed and the impact your management can have on people’s lives.

A membership offering learning and development opportunities to improve your leadership capabilities.

RM12 is a practical, year-long programme designed for registered managers, deputies, and aspiring leaders in adult social care. With just three hours each month, this supportive and structured course gives you space to reflect, grow, and lead with confidence. Each monthly session explores a key leadership theme, from supervision & goal setting to effective communication & conflict resolution, all grounded in your real-world experience.

What you’ll gain:

• Practical leadership tools you can apply straight away
• Greater self-awareness and resilience
• A supportive peer network of fellow managers
• Insight into real-life leadership challenges and solutions
• Lasting skills to reduce staff turnover and improve team culture

Session delivery:

• One session per month: Each interactive session takes place online from 09:30am – 12:30pm
• Small cohort: Maximum of 20 participants per programme to support meaningful discussion and connection
• Ongoing reflection: After each session, you’ll apply what you’ve learned in your workplace and share reflections with the group.

Safeguarding adults means protecting a person’s right to live in safely, free from abuse and neglect. As an adult social care employer, it’s important to understand your responsibilities around safeguarding and the standards you need to follow. In this module, you’ll start to explore some of the underpinning knowledge you’ll need to embed best practice in safeguarding and mental capacity.

Registered managers provide the best care for the people they support and their workforce. Skills for Care offer support and information for all registered managers and front-line managers.

Leading and managing a team in adult social care means supporting and developing the team as a whole, and supporting and developing each individual who makes up that team.

Equivalent to an A-level, this is an essential course for Team Leaders and Supervisors. Each of the nine units has a knowledge element where you will learn about management models and theories, which you will then apply to your workplace for the Skills units, to create a portfolio of evidence or presentations with assignments.

The Skills for Care podcast series ‘The care exchange’ celebrates the role of managers in social care.

What is the difference between leadership and management?

Stephen Covey says: “Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.”

This module supports social care managers to build effective internal and external partnerships that strengthen practice and improve outcomes for people using services. It explores how strong relationships enable shared learning, access to expertise and resources, and more effective, person-centred support.

Aligned with Standard 5 of the Manager Induction Standards, the module focuses on partnership working and co-production, helping managers reflect on existing relationships and identify practical next steps towards Good and Outstanding practice.

By the end of the module, managers will be better equipped to understand why partnership working matters, what makes partnerships effective, and how co-production can be embedded into everyday practice.