As a social work manager, you may be dealing with a range of issues which will encompass both social work practice and management practice:

• co-ordinating staff supervision, reflective supervision, and performance reviews
• overseeing caseload allocation across your team
• advising and guiding staff in the management of their caseload
• ensuring that all statutory processes are conducted correctly and within deadlines
• ensuring that internal record-keeping systems are kept updated
• managing, and reporting on, your team budget
• providing guidance and support to student social workers, and to newly qualified social workers within your team
• managing your team’s training and development needs
• co-ordinating and facilitating regular team meetings
• managing attendance/sickness
• dealing with any performance or disciplinary issues
• working with HR when recruiting to vacancies/hiring agency workers/dealing with leavers
• monitoring the general health and wellbeing of your team and signposting staff to other support services as appropriate
• attending management meetings.

Equally, as someone who aspires to be a social work manager, you will need to be adequately prepared for the transition from practitioner to manager – and the Partnership is currently reviewing how best to do this with its employer partners.