Skills for Care believes that leadership isn’t a just title reserved for management-level roles. They wanted to show how support workers and other frontline care staff display leadership skills as part of their everyday jobs.
As a result of the project, Skills for Care have published a series of resources, called “Leadership Starts With Me”. This includes short films about everyday leadership, in which people we support and their teams feature. The resources aim to help managers talk about leadership within their teams.
Three ladies supported by Sue Bray and her team in Derbyshire (Thera East Midlands) volunteered to take part and held a meeting to talk about what the project would involve. Staff were nervous about being filmed and asked lots of questions but Nicky, Thera’s Head of Health, Safety and Compliance, helped them to understand what would happen and what sort of questions they would be asked.
Sue said: “Skills for Care wanted to capture what the ladies get up to on a day to day basis to demonstrate how each of us has a role to play in everyday leadership. The ladies really enjoyed the film crew being with them for the day; everyone was so kind and made sure that the ladies set the schedule.
The staff team soon got into the swing of things and even though you can see on the film that most of us were out of our comfort zone, the Skills for Care team were great and we had a lot of laughs – mostly at each other when they did the up close filming!”
Sue added: “The feedback from the Skills for Care team was amazing and this gave us all a boost as it shows that we really do a great job. The biggest impact is from our colleagues in Thera; we have had so many emails with positive feedback. We are all really pleased that we could show what Thera does best and that is giving the people we support their voice and choice in their lives.”
Adam Wells, Managing Director for Thera East Midlands, said: “Since becoming the MD for Thera East Midlands 3 years ago there have been many things I have been proud of, but I think this tops it all. Watching the films made me feel so proud of the teams and all that they have achieved for the people they support.
Only last week one of the people they support joined us on the recruitment day for the Operational Manager in Derbyshire and she was an independent, confident woman who was supported by the most brilliant support workers, who also feature in these films!”
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