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Health and social care management involves overseeing the planning, delivery and quality of care services. This guide explains what care management involves, the role of the registered manager and how good management supports safe and effective care.
Health and social care management encompasses all the leadership, planning, operational and people management activities through which care services are planned, delivered, monitored and improved. In a registered care setting, overall management responsibility sits with the registered manager, who is personally accountable to the Care Quality Commission for the operation of the service. Good management is one of the most significant determinants of care quality: CQC research consistently shows a strong correlation between the quality of management and leadership and the overall quality of care delivered.
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The registered manager is the individual registered with CQC as responsible for the day-to-day management of a care service. They are personally accountable to CQC for the service’s compliance with the Fundamental Standards and must notify CQC of certain events including incidents, safeguarding referrals and changes in the provider organisation. The registered manager must be a fit and proper person and must demonstrate the competence, skills and experience needed to manage the specific type of service registered. CQC will interview the registered manager as part of an inspection.
Effective people management in health and social care requires skill in recruiting and retaining care workers, managing performance and conduct, supporting staff wellbeing, delivering supervision and appraisal, managing absence, ensuring training compliance and creating a positive workplace culture. Care managers must also manage the relationship with care agencies, ensuring that agency workers are briefed, supervised and integrated effectively into the team. Managing a mixed workforce of directly employed and agency staff requires clear protocols and consistent expectations.
Financial management is an important and often challenging component of care management. Care managers must manage budgets effectively, control costs including agency spend, ensure sustainable business operations and respond to changing commissioning environments. Agency costs can be a significant proportion of a care provider’s staffing budget, and managers who manage agency relationships strategically, using preferred suppliers on negotiated rates, achieve better cost outcomes than those who source agency staff reactively at spot rates.
Good care management includes robust systems for monitoring care quality, identifying concerns, investigating incidents and complaints, learning from feedback and implementing improvements. Quality management tools including clinical governance frameworks, audit programmes, service user satisfaction surveys and staff feedback mechanisms all contribute to a culture of continuous improvement. CQC’s Well-Led domain assesses the quality of these management systems as an indicator of the overall quality of the service.
Managing agency staff effectively is a distinct skill within care management. Agency workers need clear induction to the specific service even if they have worked there before. They need briefing on the needs and preferences of individual service users. They need supervision and feedback. And their performance needs to be communicated back to the agency so that workers who do not meet the required standard are not redeployed. Managers who invest time in managing agency relationships well achieve better outcomes from agency use than those who treat agency workers as interchangeable resources.
The culture of a care service, the values, behaviours and expectations that shape how staff treat service users and each other, is largely determined by the quality of its leadership. Managers who model person-centred values, who treat staff with respect and fairness, who are open to feedback and who create psychological safety for staff to raise concerns create the conditions for excellent care. CQC outstanding ratings are almost invariably associated with strong, values-led management.
For related information see our articles on Good Staffing in Health and Social Care and Best Practice in Health and Social Care.
A health and social care manager oversees the planning, delivery and quality of care services. This includes people management of directly employed and agency staff, financial management, quality monitoring, compliance management, liaison with CQC and commissioners and creating the leadership culture that determines the quality of care delivered.
A registered manager is the individual registered with CQC as personally responsible for the day-to-day management of a care service. They are accountable to CQC for compliance with the Fundamental Standards and must have the competence, skills and experience required for the specific type of service. CQC will interview the registered manager as part of an inspection and assess their knowledge, leadership and vision.
CQC assesses management and leadership through the Well-Led domain, which is closely linked to overall inspection ratings. Providers with strong, values-led management, robust quality systems, open cultures and continuous improvement approaches are most likely to achieve good or outstanding ratings. Poor management, weak governance and cultures that discourage staff from raising concerns are strongly associated with requires improvement and inadequate ratings.
Visit our Health and Social Care Agency Resource Hub for more guides on staffing, compliance, CQC standards, agency costs and how to choose the right care agency for your organisation.
The information in this article is provided for general guidance only and does not constitute legal, regulatory or professional advice. Regulations, rates and compliance requirements change: always verify current requirements with the relevant regulatory body. SENDhelp Education Limited accepts no responsibility or liability for any loss or damage arising from reliance on this content. Any links to third-party websites are provided for convenience only and do not constitute endorsement of their content.
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