Social care governance: a workbook based on practice in England

SCIE Guide 38

Published: January 2011

Context

Social care governance focuses on the responsibility of individual workers and teams to continuously learn from and improve their practice. It encourages professionals to take real pride in their practice and enables them to introduce changes and achieve better outcomes for carers and people who use services. Working together on governance can stimulate team development and learning which can be spread across the organisation and provide a fit with the Good Governance Standard for Public Services.

About this guide

This workbook is based on practice in Somerset and Bath. Twelve multi-disciplinary teams across Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset completed a series of workshops examining the core elements of practice. The teams spent one hour on each core element to look at identifying good practice, improving practice and feeding back areas for development at an organisational level. Action plans at team and organisational level were developed to implement changes to practice.  Somerset County Council intends to roll it out to the entire adult social care workforce starting with frontline teams, training and development, commissioning teams as well as the voluntary sector.

Audience

The workbook will be of interest to other authorities as a systematic way of checking and improving practice in social care. It can empower people by helping them to keep focused and take charge of the change process in a time of uncertainty and upheaval.

Download the workbook

Download: Social care governance: a workbook based on practice in England (492kb PDF file)