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

Abstract

In 2018, the official requirement for social workers in England to demonstrate ‘professional leadership’ was refreshed and extended to now include needing to be part of the ‘collective leadership’ of the profession. This development raises several issues, not the least of which is whether there is a clearly identifiable ‘collective leadership’ in English social work to be a part of. The article discusses how professional leadership has come to be placed on the social work agenda in England. 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 the lack of a shared vision. A survey of sources of social work leadership in England reveals a picture that is crowded and fragmented, and where leadership is as likely to come from private accountancy firms as 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.