In seeking to make sense of their professional selves, many of the DCSs were keen to articulate how the role was special and distinctive, requiring particular personal qualities, strengths and skills to fulfil it.
Not many people can do this job. You have to be very skilful and incredibly tenacious. You have to be at the top of your game in terms of managing the complexity that we deal with every single day and know how to influence at every level, often in other organisations. The pressure can be relentless. I have to be agile, solid and visionary all at the same time (Jaime)
For those either in the role or close to it, there is recognition that it is a particularly demanding leadership position. Thomas (2014) described being a DCS as ‘the hardest
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It can be an insanely complex, demanding role. My effort is on translating it into simple – not simplistic, you can’t ignore the complexity, but I need to enable everyone else to see the picture. What we do and how we do … it can have a really positive or really negative impact on children. That never sits lightly. You have to be strong to carry that. (Charlie)
Lord Laming - the Climbie inquiry lead and original architect of the DCS post, called for recognition that: “balancing the many different demands of the role requires significant levels of determination and leadership skills. The responsibility of the role should not be underestimated” (Laming, 2009). Some DCSs commented that one of their biggest struggles was a misunderstanding of their role by senior colleagues in other organisations working with children, including health services and schools: “They [headteachers] are happy to see DCSs take the responsibility, but quite a few have absolutely no conception of how hard my job is” (Chandra). Gurrey and Brazil (2014) argue that lack of a positive supportive climate, or real understanding of what the role actually involves, from other senior leaders in health, education, youth justice and the police is a significant destabilising force, adding to insecurities around identity. Although for Alex, she found judgement and verification by others a positive experience, strengthening her role identity (Swann et al., 2012).
I go to meetings with the police and they call me ma’am and I’m like please don’t call me that it makes me feel old…. The culture is hugely hierarchical there and it is interesting the way they show deference to me. I think they invest my role with significant authority and that does reflect back to me, and I suppose I quite like that (Alex)
Encouraged to aspire to an ideal identity (Schwartz, 1987) and to act as a particular kind of leader in Children’s Services, DCSs are subject to strong messages about the need to embody the ‘true to self’ authentic leader (Luthans & Avolio 2003), and the highly skilled complex-adaptive leader (Heifetz, 1994; Uhl-bien et al., 2007). Both are manifested in the dominant ‘Resourceful Leader’ (NCLSCS, 2011) and ‘Systems Leader’ (Virtual Staff College, 2013) models. Operating in one of the most exposed positions of an increasingly marketised, neo-liberal public service in the UK, these ideals are constantly reinforced by intense performativity demands (Knights & Clarke, 2014) and by the expectation that these leader-managers in charge of hybridised, multi- agency and multi-disciplinary domains are going to preside effectively over it all. When Ofsted recently concluded that, in their view, over three quarters of children’s services
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are “not good enough”, the Government’s inspection body felt compelled to prescribe: “characteristics that are needed in a successful DCS leader”. This includes a
“leadership style driven by a strong moral base”, with the ability to “do what is right for children [and be] credible and visible, having clear responsibility and accountability”
(Joining the Dots, Ofsted Report, 2015, p.4). The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) quickly disputed the claim that 70% of children’s services were not good enough - branding Ofsted’s current assessment and inspection framework as ‘flawed’. Objection was also raised against attempts to construct a desired leadership identity by a regulatory force: “By trying to be an improvement agency as well as an
inspectorate, Ofsted is marking its own homework” (Wood & Simmonds, 2015, p.3).
While the ADCS, as the professional body of DCSs, is seen here resisting discourses of control imposed on children’s services leaders ‘from above’ (Evetts, 2003, 2012; McClelland, 1990), much of the rhetoric and leadership development programmes endorsed by the ADCS themselves, suggest occupational control ‘from within’ is predicated on models strongly promoting particular characteristics and behaviours of a desired type of leader and particular notions of professionalism. A strapline in the documents for an Aspiring DCS development programme states: “There is no space for
anything other than the highest quality of leader”. (ADCS, 2012-14). For some, living up
to images and expectations of the role was not particularly reasonable or realistic:
You are expected to be superhuman in this role. It is a pressure to be honest. You have to be all things to all people and it comes at you from every angle (Chandra)
Looking at the all the stuff about the amazing behaviour we are supposed to exhibit and the incredible qualities we are meant to have, does ramp it up a bit. I do think people looking at the role as a future step might be intimidated by all that. I am sometimes. (Esa)
Others seemed to be more comfortable - indeed happy, to perpetuate the ideal image of a high-performing, adaptable, indestructible leader:
I don’t think other people even begin to understand the unique leadership challenges of this job. You have to be an incredibly strong leader, being a DCS brings out the best in me. It totally suits me (Alex)
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The thing you have to learn to be good at as a DCS is to live with real messiness and contradiction every single day and then look like you’re gliding along the water like a swan. You are totally expected to be like this unruffled, completely in control person. Everyone around me expects that and I expect that of myself (Jesse)
Interestingly in Jude’s storying of self (McAdams, 1996), she shared the belief that her mental and physical strengths enable her to fulfil the demands of the role:
I’ve just had a medical and I’m quite fit which is good because you have to be able to take a huge, huge amount of pressure in this job. You need a high degree of resilience and physical and mental strength. In this role, your threshold for work and stress has got to be extremely high and mine is. (Jude)
Jude shared further thoughts about what she saw as resilience issues for some colleagues, she viewed as less able than her to: “handle the emotional demands” of the role. These are considered further in Chapter Nine of this study and cast an interesting perspective in relation to the concept of leading as emotional labour, the particular valuing practices of leadership work and the effect on those performing it (Iszatt-White, 2009, 2012).
Resilience was an important feature in Alex’s narrative too.
I don’t think you can teach the very special inter-personal qualities you need to be a good DCS. Some people stay as practitioners and that’s good, we need good social workers and health visitors etc. but this is the difference with management and why some people get to a higher level. I think it often comes down to how tenacious you are, how resilient and thick-skinned you are. You have to be all of that to cut it as a DCS (Alex)
While Chandra felt “totally committed to what I do” and able to use positive metaphors about herself in the role “There are some days when this feels like the best job in the
world and I’m just flying in it”, she went on to articulate that in the context of an
expanding remit there are times when she felt it was: “So overwhelming, I just want to
run away and quietly stack shelves in M&S” (Chandra). In an official review of child
protection in 2011 for the UK Government, Professor Eileen Munro made specific recommendations that the distinct child focus of the DCS post should be protected, and
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not diluted by post-holders being spread too thinly by taking on other service areas. However, reflecting the national picture where up to 80% of DCS are managing other large service areas (Hill, 2015), nine of fourteen DCSs in this study were already overseeing another directorate such as adult services, or housing, and there were expectations that additional management responsibility was imminent for the others.
I know I’m going to end up with more services. I’ve had this conversation with my chief exec. I didn’t come into this world to be …. in effect a Director of Social Services. I just don’t have the interest in adult’s mental health and elderly care. There’s enough risk here [in children’s services] and enough to do to keep me more than busy. It is increasingly expected though; so part of me thinks it’s inevitable, but it’s not what I’m about (Esa)
Purcell et al. (2012) argue that the reality for most DCSs is that they are more vulnerable and exposed than ever as organisational demands are almost certainly going to exceed the “reasonable limits of individual performance” (p.92) in the role. It was clear to see recognition of this in a number of accounts from the DCSs who acknowledged that the changing, and growing remit of the role was contributing to increased feelings of insecurity, particularly where new responsibilities were taking them away from what was seen as their core purpose:
When the DCS role came, I felt it was ‘my time’. It is a special job. You have to be pretty special and pretty focused to do it well. I do feel conflicted sometimes, pulled away too much from what I really care about, but it’s about how you respond to that and I cope really well with a massive, chaotic agenda. (Jaime)
It was striking how adept most of the DCSs appeared at reconciling themselves to living with the organisational uncertainties of expanding remits and increased commissioning. At the very least, this suggests evidence of skilled narrative-crafting, perhaps serving as an ‘identity stabiliser’ (Alvesson, 2010 p. 203) in their scripted stories about the changing organisational context and how they were coping with it. These narratives of the self, presented as ‘reflexively understood’ by participants (Giddens, 1991, p.53) offered interesting insights into how DCSs were attempting to make sense of their experiences and create meaning in an increasingly messy, complex world. At some stage in the interviews, all participants – even those who at times expressed self-doubt, articulated a self with possession of special leadership qualities and skills, generally
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seen to set them apart from others. These senior leader-managers are highly practised at front-stage performance (Goffman, 1959). So, the degree to which interactions and idealised expectations were influencing their narrated leader identity constructs was difficult to tell. However, “individuals exist both inside and outside society” (Layder, 2006, p.274) and are subject to the forces and dynamics of contextual resources, reproduced relations and ‘ways of doing’ in social settings, so self-identity is always revisable. Dominant leadership models and professional and institutional discourses encourage an ideal leader identity construct (Schwartz, 1987). They help ‘story’ the special leader needed in Children’s Services; one who is best placed to achieve positive outcomes for children, and has the qualities, strength and skills to also weather the storm of media, political and public attention and responses encountered in this role.