Breaking the Circuit: Critical Reflection on Leadership Models within Social Work | BASW England North & West Yorkshire Branch

Dr Lace Jackson Lace’s positionality as a Black Global Majority woman from Jamaican Caribbean heritage has shaped her current research focus on leadership and identity. An Advanced Social Worker, Lace has substantial experience in social work and leadership practice over 30 years in various roles within children’s and education safeguarding, leading social care learning and development functions, and as an executive and research institute director within the charity sector. Having completed her PhD exploring the personal and professional challenges of Global Majority Leaders in the UK, Lace is committed to the sphere of practice and works as a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Bedfordshire and as a regional academic at the Open University.

Dr Charlotte Scott Charlotte is a white British woman, and has been a social worker for over 20 years, starting her role in social care as a housing support officer in a charity supporting homeless people. She has worked in roles in a range in adult social care settings, primarily in a Community Mental Health Team as an AMHP and Best Interests assessor, and as a Principal Social Worker. She is a practice educator and in recent years completed a PhD exploring how decisions are made during Mental Health Act assessments. She works as a regional academic in Social Work at The Open University, is a Social Work England partner, and associate with Research in Practice.

Summary: The aim of this workshop is to inform, to promote reflection and provoke rich discussion on a key area of practice. We will explore how distinct approaches to leadership in social work practice can disrupt conventional norms, ‘breaking the circuit’, whilst aligning to professional values and ethics, pro-actively promoting social justice, cohesion, equity and diversity. Recommendations will be made to bring about meaningful change in social work’s approach to leadership, valuing the unique contribution the profession can have to an understanding of emancipatory leadership approaches.

We will consider how we understand leadership within social work practice, particularly in relation to Professional Capabilities Framework Domain 9, and what assumptions and dominant models have informed this understanding, providing space to critically reflect on this through open discussion. In this workshop Lace will present key concepts developed in her research exploring leadership from a Global Majority perspective. This original study finds that even though Global Majority Leaders can thrive by drawing on cultural capital and relational leadership enactments, they still face profound barriers in their experience and practice of leadership within UK-based organisations and how the perspectives of Global Majority leaders in the UK are often downplayed or ignored in the broader organisation, leadership, and identity literature.

Charlotte will present the ways in which her initial engagement with Lace’s research shifted her positioning around an understanding of leadership within social work, as Lace also offers a challenge to the prevalence of Compassionate Leadership, inviting us to take a critical stance when engaging in the growing discourse around this area of practice.

Charlotte will share her response to Lace’s findings, how she revisited her own research, and the ways an understanding of social work leadership can be informed from practitioners in a variety of roles. In terms of her own research this is via a consideration of the Approved Mental Health Professional role, but we can also consider the ways in which all practitioners can be empowered to take on leadership roles. In relation to AMHPs and their skill at adapting to the contexts within which they work, the findings suggest that AMHPs recognise and mitigate the power inherent in their role by developing an approach that holds rights-based practice at the centre of their practice. They make relationship-based connections whilst working reflexively to adapt and navigate the challenges of the role. These empirical findings build on a growing recognition of AMHPs as leaders, as the role necessitates that they co-ordinate work and hold multiple simultaneous roles whilst working with a degree of autonomy when carrying out their duties. We argue that Social Work leadership has the potential to have impact more widely in terms of offering a model underpinned by the principles of social justice, allyship and rights-based practice. We will explore how we understand operationalised marginalisation, and provide space to develop meaningful plans of action to reduce this and for you to develop within your organisations.

*Please note this is an In-Person event. There is on campus carparking (charged); give yourself time to find both a carparking space and the room.

Interactive Map: https://www.york.ac.uk/map/#locidb-t-005