Leading children’s services: future building for children and young people

The research is a case study of one local authority and the leadership of complex change with a focus on Children’s Services. It has as its focus the leadership of children’s services and within that explores three particular areas of change: that of reducing budgets, the Academisation of schools and the systems change for child protection services. Implications for academic debate include the differences between the public and private sectors in terms of the political nature of local government; high levels of regulation and inspection; the relationship between employed staff and elected members; and the relationship with staff and that of trade union engagement. Although local government can draw from the private sector regarding leadership, the public sector has particular differences and this should be reflected in the approaches taken by senior leaders. The study evidenced the move from the traditional ‘command and control’ of bureaucratic leadership to that of distributed leadership as well as the utilization of shared leadership within the partnership arena. Leaders moved between transactional and transformational roles as the change process demanded. Implications for practice also included systems thinking; dealing with the barriers to change and putting ‘team’ into the senior leadership team