Social care leadership and system failures: how to do the impossible well

Kylie Valentine

Chapter 19 in Research Handbook on Leadership in Social Work and Social Care, 2025, pp 241-252 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Social care becomes the subject of public attention when things go wrong. System failures lead to care recipients being harmed, and this requires investigation. In Australia, Royal Commissions are increasingly used to investigate failures and provide opportunities for victims to speak and be heard. Consequently, we have as much evidence on the nature of bad practice as on the nature of effective leadership, and on the challenges of delivering social care. Balancing the need for accountability and visibility with the need for inclusion and positive cultures, effective leadership in care is conceptually and practically challenging. It is difficult to achieve in circumstances with ready access to resources and a highly trained workforce, and the circumstances for social care are often very different to this. This chapter investigates the lessons for leadership from responses to social care systems failures, and the potential and limitations of social leadership to address these. Findings from the Royal Commissions and from leadership literature show the need for change, but also indicate tensions between priorities placed on protection, accountability, inclusion, and rights. More broadly, the responsibilities placed on social care, and on social care leadership, in preventing harm are at odds with societal structures that perpetuate radical inequality.

Keywords: Systemic change; Equality; Royal Commissions; Leadership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035314485
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