The Staff College: Leadership in Healthcare

COVID-19 update: 7 May 2020

The global COVID-19 pandemic poses significant challenges to all of us, and in particular to leaders and front-line staff working within health and social care. Our thoughts are with all those working to care for patients in these challenging times, and with everyone affected.

The pandemic is highlighting the critical importance of leadership and I’m so proud of our many members stepping up and taking key roles in leading the preparation and response for their organisations.

Like many charities and organisations across the UK, we have been working hard in recent weeks to ensure that we can continue to support all of the organisations we currently work with. We believe that the development of leaders with the confidence, capacity and compassion to bring people together to work with the unfolding wicked problems in front of us and ahead will be crucial. We are determined to remain flexible to help those who seek our support now and in the future despite the uncertainty around how long the impact of the pandemic last.

To maintain continuity of support will require some different ways of working within our own team. I am deeply thankful to our faculty and staff who have stepped up to the plate to find a new way forwards and am grateful for the ongoing support of our Trustees and Advisory Council.

Changes to courses and working practices

Our key priorities throughout this period are to protect our team and everyone we work with. We’re following the latest official guidance to help efforts to reduce the spread of COVID-19. To this end we have implemented some changes which will remain in place for the foreseeable future:

• Postponement of all Senior Leadership Development Programme modules until the end of 2020. We will continue to review the impact of the pandemic and update further when modules can recommence.

• Postponement of all other commissioned leadership programmes until September 2020. We will continue to work closely with the organisations we support to review the viability and safety of these over the coming months as the outbreak evolves. These programmes will all still take place, but at a time when the pressures created by the outbreak have reduced locally.

• Continuing to offer support to the health and care system throughout this difficult period in any way we reasonably and safely can. This includes working with teams in real time to develop better leadership, process and cohesion as they grapple with the changing landscape as a result of COVID-19. We are continuing to develop our thinking about innovative ways we can help.

We’re also taking some practical and sensible precautions to protect our staff:

• We have closed our office; the team is now working from home. We are still contactable via email or phone.
• All meetings take place virtually.
• We continue to follow official advice on isolation requirements.

We will continue to provide updates as things evolve here and will be in contact directly with anyone affected by changes to our programmes and plans.

Look after yourselves and each other

Charlie Brown
CEO, The Staff College: Leadership in Healthcare

The Staff College: Leadership in Healthcare (Staff College) is a national charity dedicated to developing leaders and helping them to deliver better outcomes. Our faculty of experienced leaders have led large, complex organisations in the NHS, Defence, Business and Education. Together they have a rich, collective wisdom on developing leaders.

We deliver a wide range of leadership development programmes for individuals, teams, Boards and organisations within primary and secondary care, as well as supporting several STP and multi-organisation transformation Boards. Since we started back in 2010, over 3700 members have attended our programmes.