Three-year project to support staff

A three-year project has been set up to improve the support of
front line staff and their practice, but the project still has to
reach the target workers, writes Keith
Sellick.

Addie Stevenson, project manager of the Managing Front Line
Staff project, set up by the Scottish executive, said that local
authorities were setting up groups with a champion to monitor and
pioneer supportive policies for front line staff.

She said: “A chief executive of Asda said ‘treat a
colleague (staff member) badly and within two weeks they will treat
a customer badly’. This can be mirrored in social
care.”

But staff at East Lothian Council, one of the councils with a
front line staff group, said that information had not filtered down
to staff on the front line and some staff said they had not even
heard of the group.

Stevenson said that this was a problem. She had held a meeting
for home care workers “who did not know that they had a
champion”.

She outlined the tasks of the project in improving staff
management and supporting them at the front line with a range of
measures such as bonuses, training, person-centred employment
practices and even counselling for staff.

A new handbook on good practice for supporting staff will be
produced next March and a website has been already set up.

More information on the handbook and good practice at www.adsw.org.uk/supportingstaff.