Nurses need "leadership development and support", nursing forum tells PM

The Nursing and Care Quality Forum has written a letter to the prime minister and its initial recommendations have been published.

The independent forum made up of a range of experts on nursing and care quality who work to improve the quality of nursing care across all care settings.

The recommendations have been welcomed by The National Skills Academy for Social Care, an organisation who focus on the leadership, management and commissioning and modelling excellence in learning for the 1.6 million workers and 21,000 employers in social care.

In particular, the Skills Academy welcomes the recognition by the Forum of the importance of leadership, and of the need for consistent approaches to leadership development. The Forum’s report states: “New leadership development and support is needed to equip our nurses with the necessary skills and competence to lead their team effectively.

“This was reinforced by staff who tell us that there is a need to have a national, consistent approach to leadership development. The NHS Leadership Academy and National Skills Academy for Social Care have made a good start here, in developing a description of leadership competency approaches with a range of supporting tools and programmes to help embed this.

“In our next phase, we will help to promote these. We will also work with them to engage with nurses, to identify in which leadership areas they need support and how best these needs can be met. The solutions might involve a range of offers, including coaching, mentoring and programmes that help develop new clinical leadership skills and behaviours.”

Diane Lawson, chief executive of the Skills Academy, said: “We are delighted to see the approach taken by the Forum to leadership development issues, which completely chimes with that of the Skills Academy.

“We have been working tirelessly for over two years to address issues of leadership, in order to change the culture of care. For us, this means developing people’s leadership capacity at all levels in the social care workforce. We look forward to working with the Forum to take this work forward.

“For the Skills Academy, leadership is for everyone. It is grounded in everyday behaviours, based on social care values – it’s not about what we do, it’s about how we do it. So it’s how we care that counts. “We know from our own research that the importance of leadership is already acknowledged in the sector: in a pan-sector survey carried out for the Academy at the end of 2011, 94% of respondents made a direct link between quality of leadership and quality of services.

“The Skills Academy will shortly be launching its Leadership Strategy, which we have developed as part of the forthcoming Health and Social Care White Paper.

“The Strategy identifies, in a Leadership Qualities Framework, the key behaviours that form the foundations of leadership in social care. The Framework also suggests ways people working in social care, whatever their role, can demonstrate those behaviours and identify relevant professional development pathways to address gaps.

“Our Leadership Qualities Framework will also enable organisations to assess their leadership strengths and weaknesses to build the capacity of their workforce. We believe it is only thorough investing in leadership development organisations can meet and move beyond compliance requirements towards excellence. We will begin to roll out the approach, working with the Forum, following the launch of the Leadership Strategy.”

The Nursing and Care Quality Forum’s letter to the prime minister can be seen here: http://www.dh.gov.uk/health/files/2012/05/NCQF-letter-to-PM.pdf