Succession Planning in Social Care: When Too Much Sits With One Person

There are some managers who seem to know absolutely everything about their service. Ask about a resident and they know the full history; ask about a complaint and they can tell you where it is up to; ask why agency usage went up three weeks ago and they will usually know that too.

That level of knowledge is reassuring, but it can also hide a problem if too much of the service starts to depend on one person carrying all of that information, judgement and follow-through.

I have been in services where nothing dramatic happened when the manager was away, but you could still feel the difference. Things took a little longer to move, people were less confident about what they could decide for themselves, and some issues simply sat there because “the manager normally deals with that”.

The stronger and more capable the manager, the easier it is for everyone else to lean on them, and over time that can create a situation where the person is not just leading the service but quietly holding far too much of it together.

It usually happens for understandable reasons. If you know the service well, it is quicker to make the call yourself, sort the complaint yourself, or deal with the awkward conversation rather than spend twice as long talking somebody else through it. I can guarantee at some point we have all done it.

The problem is that every time the same person steps in, somebody else misses the chance to develop. That is where succession planning becomes relevant for me. Not as something that suddenly becomes important when somebody hands in their notice, but as part of everyday leadership.

If we think someone has the potential to step up in future, there should be more behind that than a vague sense that they are “one to watch”. We should be clear about what they already do well, what they have not yet had enough exposure to and what experience they need next.

That might mean leading a quality review, chairing part of a governance meeting, managing a complaint from start to finish, taking ownership of an improvement plan or spending time with a more experienced manager in another service.

None of that is complicated, but it does need to be intentional and planned.

Otherwise, people can sit in deputy or senior roles for years being described as “not quite ready” without anyone being particularly clear what ready actually looks like.

There is also a big difference between giving someone more work and actually developing them. We are generally quite good at the first one.

A deputy can end up with the rota, training follow-up, supervisions, incident checks and half the operational headaches in the building but still have very little exposure to the parts of leadership that require judgement.

That is not really succession planning.

If someone is being prepared for a bigger role, they need to be involved in the difficult bits as well: safeguarding discussions, complaints, quality reviews, risk decisions, governance conversations and the situations where there is no perfect answer and someone still has to make a sensible decision.

They need to be asked what they think before being told what the answer is. They need the opportunity to make decisions within their role, explain their reasoning and, occasionally, get something slightly wrong and learn from it, as that’s often when you learn the biggest lessons.

You cannot transfer judgement in a few months because someone has resigned. You can explain systems, contacts, meetings and priorities, but confidence and professional judgement only develop through experience.

I also believe succession planning needs to go wider than the registered manager role.

In some services, there is just as much dependency on the deputy, the clinical lead, the administrator who knows every system, or the senior carer everybody turns to when something does not feel right.

If one of those people left tomorrow, would you know where the gap would appear?

That is much more useful to consider, than simply asking whether there is a succession plan.

Who are we actually developing? What experience are they getting? What are they still not being exposed to? Where is knowledge concentrated in one person?

And what would become vulnerable if that person was no longer there?

There is a retention point here too.

Good people are more likely to stay where they can see that somebody is investing in their development and where progression does not depend on waiting for the person above them to resign.

If the only development offer is “maybe one day you can have the manager’s job”, that is not much of a plan.

People need opportunities to grow before there is a vacancy, and organisations need to understand that developing someone does not mean they have to become a carbon copy of the person currently in post.

Not everyone wants the next job either, and that is fine. Someone can be an excellent deputy, clinical lead or senior without secretly longing to inherit the registered manager’s inbox, but their development in their current role remains just as important.

Succession planning should be about capability and choice, not pushing good people into roles they never really wanted.

Personally, this is why succession planning belongs in governance conversations, not just workforce ones. A service can be performing well and still be surprisingly fragile if too much knowledge, confidence and decision-making sits with one person.

The assurance comes from knowing that when a good manager takes leave, moves on or is simply unavailable, the service does not lose its grip because other people understand what matters, what needs to move and where they can make decisions.

That doesn’t just happen. It must be developed while things are going well, not discovered as a priority once the leaving card has already been bought.

We shouldn’t be asking who would step in if someone left, succession planning in social care means we should be preparing people before they are needed.

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