'Leaders in Our Own Lives': Suggested Indications for Social Work Leadership from a Study of Social Work Practice in a Palliative Care Setting

Abstract

In the context of calls for the social work profession to show leadership, this article reports a single site qualitative study in a specialist palliative care setting in England, which explored suggested similarities between social work practice and a recently developed model of ‘servant and partner’ leadership. The research showed that social workers demonstrated integrity in their dealings with both service users and colleagues, in that they were both respectful and holistic. It indicated that social workers used insights gained by engaging at depth with service users to influence decision making within the multidisciplinary team of which they were members. By drawing on sophisticated and adaptive communication skills and genuinely valuing others' contributions, they enhanced the ability of the team to achieve proportionate responses to sensitive and complex situations. The article suggests that social workers in this setting exercised leadership, in the sense of influencing the practice of others at the level of individual cases and more generally, and that this was achieved by practices that were based in established theoretical models of social work.