Health Management and Policy Alert

Leadership for a collaborative and inclusive future

Department of Health and Social Care -
This report is the results of an independent review, led by General Sir Gordon Messenger and Dame Linda Pollard, into leadership across health and social care in England. The review focused on the best ways to strengthen leadership and management across health and with its key interfaces with adult social care in England. It makes the following recommendations on interventions on collaborative leadership and organisational values, positive equality, diversity and inclusion action, management standards and more.

• Report
• Department of Health and Social Care - press release
• The King's Fund response

Digital boards: two years on: digital transformation in practice

NHS Providers -
The NHS Providers’ Digital Boards development programme is delivered in partnership with Public Digital and is designed to support boards in leading the digital transformation agenda. The programme is commissioned by Health Education England as part of their Digital Readiness Education Programme and is supported by NHS England and NHS Improvement. Digital Boards aims to build board understanding of the potential and implications of the digital agenda and increase the confidence and capability of boards to harness the opportunity that digital provides through board resources, webinars, peer learning and free board development sessions for individual trusts. This briefing looks at what has been achieved through the programme and what is still to come.

• Briefing
• NHS Providers - briefings

What is compassionate leadership?

The King's Fund - 

Research shows that compassionate leadership has wide-ranging benefits for both staff and organisations. Learn more in this explainer.

• Explainer

 

Supporting named leads for health inequalities on NHS boards

NHS Race & Health Observatory -
This report, published by the NHS Race & Health Observatory in collaboration with The King’s Fund, sets out recommendations to help ensure senior NHS officials responsible for improving health inequalities are able to make a difference. It outlines practical recommendations and next steps to ensure named leads on boards are equipped to make a difference on health inequality outcomes and held to account with system partners on progress.

• Report
• NHS Race & Health Observatory - press release

Review of health and social care leadership in England: terms of reference

Department of Health and Social Care - 

The government announced a review of leadership in health and social care, to be led by former Vice Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir Gordon Messenger and supported by Dame Linda Pollard, Chair of Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust. The terms of reference outline the scope for the leadership review to consider what is needed to improve how health and social care is led and managed in England. The review will consider how to foster and replicate the best examples of leadership. It aims to reduce regional disparities in efficiency and health outcomes across the country.

• Terms of reference
• More detail

Leading public services through Covid-19

National Leadership Centre -
The National Leadership Centre (NLC) supported the Government’s response to Covid-19 by acting as the conduit between Central Government and the NLC’s network of public service leaders. As part of this, the NLC ran a quantitative survey with public service leaders from March to June 2020. The NLC also commissioned Ipsos MORI to conduct qualitative research with their network, which ran from July 2020 to March 2021. This report brings together findings from both strands of research.

• Report
• National Leadership Centre - publications

Building strong integrated care systems everywhere: ICS implementation guidance on effective clinical and care professional leadership

NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSEI) - 

This guidance supports the development of distributed clinical and care professional leadership across integrated care systems (ICSs). It describes ‘what good looks like’ in this regard, based on an extensive engagement exercise involving over 2,000 clinical and care professional leaders from across the country, led by a multiprofessional steering group.

• Guidelines
• More detail

Clinical and care professional leadership in integrated care systems

NHS Confederation -
This report was commissioned by NHS England and NHS Improvement, to inform its guidance to support embedding system-wide clinical and professional leadership in all integrated care systems.

• Report
• NHS England guidance: building strong integrated care systems everywhere
• NHS Confederation - publications

Strengthening NHS board diversity

NHS Confederation -
An independent taskforce asked to examine the diversity of healthcare leadership has said that NHS organisations can create a "sustainable pipeline" of senior leaders that properly reflect the diversity of their staff and communities by refreshing their processes for appointing chairs and non-executive directors (NEDs). The report, based on the feedback of taskforce members including NHS chairs, NEDs and chief executives, found that while there are pockets of innovation, the current NHS appointment process for NEDs would benefit from a standard, more transparent procedure.

• Report
• NHS Confederation - news

Developing place-based partnerships: the foundation of effective integrated care systems.

The King's Fund - 
This report considers the potential of place-based partnerships to improve population health and truly support integrated care, and highlights principles to guide their development and the support they might need from regional and national leaders. The King’s Fund reviewed existing evidence and experience on place-based working, explored the development of place-based partnerships within three systems and undertook targeted engagement with local leaders from ICSs, local authorities and voluntary and community sector organisations. This research highlights the potential role of place-based partnerships in improving health and wellbeing and illustrates how these opportunities can be realised.

• Report