Leadership
Statement of importance
Having effective leadership in place at all levels across all agencies is crucial to facilitating the engagement of both staff and organisations in modernising mental health services.
Having effective leadership in place at all levels across all agencies is crucial to facilitating the engagement of both staff and organisations in modernising child and adolescent mental health services. Successful leadership in CAMHS means the ability to bring about and sustain new models of service and to improve the overall mental health of children and young people. It is about translating the key strategic documents into the local context and ensuring that all parties are signed up to the key challenges. Leadership is about action, and its development goes beyond support to nurture specific personal qualities – it also covers effective organisational and systems leadership, partnership working, leadership of improved clinical standards and the leadership of change. It is recognised that the developments and aspirations within CAMHS will require significant changes in the way decisions are made. Staff in frontline teams and services will need to be more readily involved in decision making on issues that effect practice and delivery. Staff at all levels will need to have opportunities to “think and work differently to solve old problems in new ways” in order that delivery of improvements set out in the key policy documents are to be realised.
Effective leadership is a prime element needed if improvement and change is to be sustained. A key feature being on the process of influencing, inspiring and setting direction, although the focus on transactional leadership (attending to the management of resources and outcomes etc) will remain a component it is no longer a key facet for leaders. As CAMHS move towards new partnerships and models of working new competencies will be needed that engender positive leadership in these environments, these will be the ability to form effective networks, to adapt to change, to influence and negotiate and to work within complex relationships and environments.
The emphasis on leadership and change management within this context is rightly beginning to receive increased attention and increasing investment.
Challenges
- Investment in leadership has been un-coordinated.
- Training tends to be on an individual rather than a team or service level.
- Varying assumptions about who should be trained as leaders.
- Confusion between leadership, management and service improvement initiatives and their respective priority.
- Lack of investment in service improvement and leadership initiatives approaches.
- Ambiguity both within and outside psychiatry regarding the role of psychiatrists as leaders
- Lack of capacity in HR in some areas to address issue.
- Ambiguity both in psychiatry regarding the role of psychiatrists as leaders and the training needed to support their roles in service improvement and leadership