Having strong, skilled leaders has been identified as being a significant factor in delivering world class, fully integrated children's services. Local areas have made good progress in moving towards children's trust arrangements however developing and delivering fully integrated high quality services remains a major challenge for many.

Evidence suggests that we are seeing the emphasis switching away from single sector leadership and management. Instead it is moving towards managing and leading sometimes complex multi-agency or multi-disciplinary settings. We need strong managers and leaders who have the experience, skills and vision to lead these services and as well as people from different professional backgrounds.

In making this switch, we are seeing the development of "common" skills sets, and also that focusing purely on senior managers is no longer enough. To drive the agenda forward we need leaders and aspiring leaders at all levels.

In this section we look at some of the different areas of leadership and management  

• Championing children.
• Leadership and management development for middle managers across the children's workforce.
• Providing effective supervision.