Too many cooks or cannot follow the recipe? A critical consideration of conceptualising the professional leadership of social work in England as a collective endeavour

What is it about?

There is now an official requirement for social workers in England to demonstrate that they are part of the ‘collective leadership’ of the profession. This relatively new development raises several issues, not least of which is whether there is a clearly identifiable ‘collective’ leadership in English social work to actually be part of. This article discusses how professional leadership has come to be placed on the social work agenda in England in recent years. It then examines various definitional and practical issues associated with putting collective models of leadership into practice noting that collective leadership is made more challenging in hierarchical organisations and where there is a lack of a shared vision. A survey of sources of social work leadership in England reveals a picture that is crowded, fragmented and where directive leadership is more likely to come from private accountancy firms than it is from social work professionals. The discussion concludes with suggestions for making progress if the idea of collective leadership is to be a realistic aim. This includes building leadership capacity at all levels of the profession starting at the qualification stage.

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