Contextual and individual barriers to providing practice leadership by frontline managers in community services for adults with intellectual disabilities: A qualitative study

Abstract

BackgroundAs practice leaders, frontline managers observe staff working, provide feedback and use organisational structures to improve staff skills and focus on service‐user quality of life. This qualitative study explored the experiences and barriers for frontline managers providing practice leadership to staff in community services for adults with learning disabilities.MethodsAudio‐recorded data was collected during semi‐structured interviews with 14 frontline managers, transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis.FindingsThree themes emerged reflecting participants' experiences of barriers to their work as practice leaders, focusing on stable staff teams, ‘admin’ and paperwork, and developing staff, each with sub‐themes.ConclusionsResults reflect existing research and suggest new challenges relating to progress in personalisation. Frontline managers experience barriers to providing practice leadership due to contextual and individual factors described in the themes. Successful implementation of policy initiatives, for example, Transforming Care requires further research on the impact, development and provision of practice leadership for support staff. should recognise these factors influencing frontline managers and ensure suitable policies and training to support practice leadership.

The strength of Frontline Practice Leadership in Australian supported accommodation services: Challenges confronting service providers

“…The potential reasons for the decline in practice leadership identified in this study are similar to those in recent UK studies (Bradshaw et al, 2018; Deveau & Rickard, 2023): time pressures on frontline managers, perceived as being created by increased administration and managerial tasks and workforce issues, that reduce their capacity to carry out practice leadership tasks. However, the underlying outer system contexts causing these pressures in the present and UK studies were quite different; the aftermath of COVID, the NDIS individualised funding scheme and its associated regulatory impact were factors in the present study, whereas austerity measures and funding cutbacks were factors in the UK studies.…”

“…The influence of frontline managers' skills and confidence on the strength of practice leadership in a service is evident from the range of scores in the quantitative data where some organisations had one very high or low performing service. The impact of inadequate skills was echoed in the qualitative data, which suggested that newer managers in the continuing organisations, and many in the newer organisations, felt ill equipped for practice leadership, having received The potential reasons for the decline in practice leadership identified in this study are similar to those in recent UK studies (Bradshaw et al, 2018;Deveau & Rickard, 2023): time pressures on frontline managers, perceived as being created by increased administration and managerial tasks and workforce issues, that reduce their capacity to carry out practice leadership tasks. However, the underlying outer system contexts causing these pressures in the present and UK studies were quite different; the aftermath of COVID, the NDIS individualised funding scheme and its associated regulatory impact were factors in the present study, whereas austerity measures and funding cutbacks were factors in the UK studies.…”

“…The present and previous studies suggest that frontline managers perceive their time for practice leadership tasks as insufficient and consumed by their other responsibilities (Bradshaw et al, 2018;Deveau & Rickard, 2023). Key performance indicators for practice leadership tasks, found in the two strongest performing organisations appear useful, but may need to be complemented by explicit expectations about the proportion of time frontline managers spend on administration, managerial and practice leadership tasks.…”

“…Studies indicate that frontline managers spend a small proportion of their time on practice leadership tasks and struggle to balance these with their other tasks (Beadle‐Brown et al, 2014; Clement & Bigby, 2007; Larson et al, 2007). Other barriers include administrative demands, lack of training and skills in practice leadership tasks, unstable teams and difficulties recruiting staff (Bradshaw et al, 2018; Deveau & Rickard, 2023). The consistently weak practice leadership found in accommodation services (Beadle‐Brown et al, 2014; Bigby et al, 2019) has raised questions about ways of protecting time for practice leadership tasks from other management responsibilities (Beadle‐Brown et al, 2014) and the strategies senior leaders can use to more strongly embed it in organisations.…”

“…Ways of organising practice leadership often differ between organisations, due to the size of accommodation services and attempts to use resources effectively (Bigby et al, 2019; Deveau & Rickard, 2023). In Australia, for example, some organisations have restructured from having a frontline manager in each service who also does direct support work to instead a manager responsible for several services.…”