SCIE Practice guide 1: Managing practice

Standards

There is an extensive range of standards in use throughout the social care field. This section gives you access to some sets of standards that can be of particular use to you as a first-line manager of practice.

The Training Organisation for the Personal Social Services (TOPSS) says:

"Delivering high quality social care services requires strategic leadership and clear operational management. Managers using National Occupational Standards have found that the standards help to reinforce the link from strategy to operational management and to service standards.

The standards can contribute to:

• Business planning
• Workforce management
• Benchmarking
• Change management
• Contract specification for care services
• Marketing
• Risk management."

You can find out more about this approach from the TOPSS booklet: A Manager's Guide to Developing Strategic Uses of National Occupational Standards.

First-line managers can also use other standards, originally meant to support qualifications or services, as a sounding board for managing practice. They help you and your team to look at how you work to these standards; how you manage and develop practice accordingly; and give a sounding board for the quality of your collective work.

These are some of the standards you can use:

1. National Occupational Standards

These have been developed in most areas of work. In social work and social care, the standards have been identified and agreed by representatives of employment through TOPSS.

Standards currently in development or published cover:

• Residential Managers (Adults)
• Registered Managers (Childcare)
• Regulators (Registration & Inspection)
• PQ Childcare
• Youth Offending Teams
• Induction (including a Manager's Guide)

You can find further details on the TOPSS website: www.topss.org.uk

2. SSI Inspection Standards

The Social Services Inspectorate set standards for each national inspection and evaluate quality of services against those standards. Standards are service specific and cover a range of settings.

Function now carried out by the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI).