It is a tough time for senior recruitment in adult social care. The candidate pool seems to be shrinking just when there is an ever-greater need for exceptional people in leadership roles.
The challenges in the sector are well documented. The recent health White Paper Our health, our care, our say highlighted several areas of development for adult care and will push for ‘personalisation', further integration, better access and greater independence.
PCTs have been reconfigured, with the result that for most local authorities, a whole new set of relationships – both formal and informal – need to be established. Budgets are becoming tighter when ‘demographics' indicate that more and more people will need greater support later in life.
All these are challenges enough, but the bigger issue is perhaps an unspoken, less tangible one. On the back of the ‘split' between adult and children's services, after Every child matters, local authorities rushed – quite rightly – to set up new, integrated children's services departments.
What would happen with the adult services side of the equation was not, for some, a priority – it was left as it was or bundled in with other services such as housing or culture and leisure.
It was the director of children's services posts which authorities pushed to fill. They took centre stage and were seen by some as more attractive or more pivotal.
Now, two or three years later – helped by clarification from the Department of Health about the role of director of adult services – authorities are finally working out the best structure for adult social care/adult services, and then trying to find the best people to fill these widely-different and challenging posts.
Crucially, members and chief executives are now more attuned to the fact that these posts are crucial in delivering a large number of their priorities, as well as handling a huge proportion of a council's budget.
From a recruitment perspective, one of the issues is there's no set model for the new adult services structure. More so than other areas of local government, the pattern is not straightforward – which gives members and chief executives a lot of free rein to tailor the structure to suit their local priorities.
Somehow, children's services appeared simpler. By and large, education was put with children's social care, and the task – by no means easy – was to meld these two services into one.
With adult social care, the mix is far more variable and complex. What else – if anything – goes into the pot? The options can include adult education, housing, leisure, culture/libraries, regeneration, environmental services, neighbourhood services, and a host of other options. The list is almost endless. The implications are manifold. First, it could be argued that adult social services can get lost in a broad ‘community services' directorate, and its importance can be diluted. Second, does the director of a broad portfolio need to have a social care background?
Conversely, if you do keep the range of services in a directorate ‘narrow', and focus on adult social services, some candidates would say that the director or assistant director role is less strategic and offers them fewer development opportunities. Indeed, for one recent director role at a county, some assistant directors from large metropolitan authorities said their current role was broader and more interesting.
Finally, in children's services we are beginning to see candidates come through who already have three of four years' experience of working in an integrated set up. The pool is pretty healthy.
But this is not the case for adult services, where integration, either internal or external, is in earlier stages of development.
Of course, good recruitment consultancies can and do make a difference in making a successful appointment, but it may take a few years for candidates to feel comfortable in what is a brave new world, where they will need the skills, flexibility and experience to tackle a very broad and challenging agenda.
Luke Judd is a partner at GatenbySanderson
