Female CEO Excellence 2017 Awards

20 CEO MONTHLY / FEMALE CEO EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2017 , 3SpiritUKwas developed fromgrass root social care practice, rather than from corporate ambition. We spoke to Caroline Bartle to find out more about the firm’s achievements, and future aspirations. Best Social Care Consultancy MD - UK A dedicated, passionate group of allied professionals, 3Spirit employs individuals from a range of backgrounds, including occupational therapy, social work and nursing. Caroline tells us about her past experiences and how she draws on her experience when making decisions in her current role. “Previously, I have worked in social work which is where I started my career. Often, I have felt there were problems with the culture and systems within the local authority care services which prevented proper connections between people. Many services forget that care, on whatever level, is about people, and how we create sustainable capacity for one human being to care for another. “Having started my first company, recruitment in health and social care, I fell into learning and development, and from that, I went on to complete an MBA and started to think about learning on a more strategic level. I developed several knowledge management frameworks that we used in training and in our consultancy work.” Providing expertise, possessing extensive knowledge in health and social care are all key aspects of what makes 3Spirit successful. Caroline is very clear that success comes from collaboration as a team, and by working across boundaries “Winning this award is an honour for me, but would like to dedicate this to the 3Spirit team for their relentless commitment to pushing boundaries in social care and to supporting human rights consistently throughout their work. Our sector often receives negative press, so it’s wonderful to have an award that recognizes the value the sector brings in contributing to the foundations of a strong and resilient community” “Here at 3Spirit, our service is a collaboration of allied professionals. We work together to develop learning programs that are holistic and fit the integrated agenda. We work with health and social care services to enable compassionate and effective services; this might involve working with services that support adults with learning disabilities, dementia, mental health problems, physical disabilities and drug and alcohol problems.” Having a facilitative leadership style has been critical to her success. “As a person and leader, I have always been a visionary, but vision alone does not lead to success. Having a good mix of skills in a team is what enables goals to be achieved. My leadership style is very facilitative, I trust in my team to present their own ideas and have autonomy and satisfaction in their work. I am incredibly lucky to work with the people I do. Many of whom have transitioned with me through the different companies.” Understanding challenges and opportunities within a sector are critical to success Caroline discusses what challenges she has faced and how they have affected her role, particularly with regard to women. “Some care services see learning and development as a tick box activity; this limits the extents to which an organisation can develop. We work hard to get people to believe in the power of their work and in the human capacity for supported change. Much more work still needs to be done, however, to enable the workforce to have a bigger impact in their work. “When we deliver any training in our sector you will see that most people in the class are women, and although men make excellent support staff we just do not see enough of them. However, in many senior positions in social care and health it is mainly men. Many women who are in senior positions like me have usually come up through the ranks, so have the experience of the real challenges of front line practice and generally make excellent ambassadors.” “Looking ahead, I would like to see more support for women in care to become entrepreneurs. I want to see women being enabled to have the space to achieve this through more affordable childcare. Balancing the demands of a social care role (and in fact, any demanding work role) with the pressures of a family is extremely difficult. The progressive society in which we live, where the idea of a ‘business woman’ is further supported, still struggles to balance this newfound role with the maternal expectations of a women. To be both full-time is nothing short of superhuman” Ensuring what techniques she employs to make sure the FCE17006