ConnectedLives Leadership Programme

Building leadership inside a complex system 

Hertfordshire Adult Care Services wanted their people to work with greater autonomy, navigate complexity with confidence, and hold their own with the NHS. 

Over six years we worked with more than 500 participants across every level of the service — senior leaders, frontline practitioners, administrators and commissioners — in three interlocking programmes. We trained fifteen internal facilitators from within the organisation to run future cohorts themselves. 

The work is still running. The capacity to sustain it now lives inside Hertfordshire.

A three year story

No one could have imagined …

‘We need to change the way we do things...’ Hertfordshire adult care services told us back in 2019. 

And then? The pandemic hit. Picture how it affected life partners struggling with dementia, young people with disabilities maturing into adulthood, people vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by others, isolated people, angry people trying to work their way through mazes of bureaucracy.

Care workers had almost unimaginable challenges, not least their distress as they reported rising daily death tolls in their homes, residents isolated and confused, staff exhausted, scared and grieving.

But we have been alongside them for three years. Creating moments where staff come together. Challenging their thinking, building space for their own vulnerabilities alongside those they work with. Coming together with service users and their families – how to go beyond tokenism, to get past the guilt and defensiveness, to really listen to each other.