1 Why should leaders care?
‘The preventable death of Connor Sparrowhawk in July 2013 led to a number of investigations and enquiries into practice at Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust in whose care he died. … There was a lack of leadership, focus and sufficient time spent in the Trust on carefully reporting and investigating unexpected deaths …’
Slade House is just one of thousands of residential homes across the UK providing personalised care to individuals with additional support needs. Such places have a duty of care to ensure residents and their families can trust them with their health and wellbeing (Peate, 2017).
However, the Mazars report into Connor’s death highlighted significant failures of leadership and management at the Trust, together with ‘missed opportunities for learning’ (Mazars, 2015, p. 17). The authors concluded that failings in leadership at Slade House were multifaceted, and that Connor’s experience may have been very different had the leadership been more effective and caring.
Consciously adopting a caring approach to managing and leading can work towards preventing such catastrophes. If, and when, they do occur a caring approach can also help to ensure that everyone learns from such events in order to avoid them happening again. This doesn’t just apply to health and social care settings though. Leadership in any context is enhanced by taking a caring approach towards the role and those for whom the leader is responsible.