When child care workers become managers – What are the issues?

Hy Resnick

Many child care workers who stay in the child care field see themselves as “moving up” to become managers sooner or later.* If they do they will face a number of personal, organizational and professional changes with which they will have to contend. In this column I will identify and describe one of these changes (skill changes) with the hope that this information might be helpful to those workers considering promotion. In future columns I will discuss other changes that child care workers who are planning to become managers will have to face and deal with.

Skills
Five skills are discussed which seem to be the most important a new manager has to acquire or improve upon, to be effective in their new role. They are Planning and Conducting staff meetings, Educating and supporting subordinates, relating to others based on organizational needs, integrating authority and therapeutic roles, and developing skills in thinking, planning acting long range

Planning and conducting staff meetings
Meetings are often seen as an irritant by staff members and as a burden by managers. But a well planned meeting by a new supervisor can be an opportunity for both management and staff to improve the quality of work with children in care and at the same time to improve staff morale. The key of course is honest involvement of staff in the planning of meetings so it meets their needs as well as managements. New supervisors need to acquire skills in planning and conducting effective meetings.

Educating and supporting subordinates
Child care workers would certainly have many opportunities to observe co-workers interacting with the children in their care and would no doubt have judgements about how effective these workers were and might have ideas about how to help them be better workers. But rarely would pass on these judgements to them (or others.). But supervisors would not only have to pass judgement on subordinate’s behavior in supervisory and evaluation conferences but would also have to communicate those judgements to top management “something that might be uncomfortable to do .

Relating to others based on organizational needs
Developing skills in managing relationships with subordinates and upper management not out of emotions but based on the work requirements with subordinates and upper management! It is fair to say that one of the real satisfactions in child care work is in the relationships workers develop with their colleagues with whom they share many commonalities. Many best friends are often formed in this work setting (lots of marriages too!) but as a member management relationships are more formal and controlled. For example supervisors may not like a subordinate but have to work with him or her in a functional way, i.e. helping them to do their job and ignoring (if that’s the word) feelings about that person. A supervisor's relationship to that person is based on the work required, not on the emotions that person elicits.

Integrating authority and therapeutic roles
Developing and maintaining skills to carry the authority as well as the therapeutic role with young clients is quite complex and contains contradictory elements. For example, sometimes supervisors who are in an authority role responsible for the care, safety, and mental health of a unit must make a decision that may not be feel helpful or supportive to an individual youngster but it may have to be made for the good of the unit. Some youngsters may find it difficult to trust a supervisor who has to act as an authority some time.

Developing skills in thinking, acting and planning long range
Supervisors will focus less and less on the immediate demands of dealing with kids in care on a 24-7 basis and more and more on planning for future events. Child care workers by necessity are focused on the “here and now” because kids in care need adults now! New supervisors need to turn their time orientation from dealing with things today to focusing on some tomorrow to do their new job well. This takes a real shift in how a person orients him or her self. It needs to be learned and can be learned but it's not easy

These skills are needed to carry out the manager's job effectively. Child care workers in the past have learned and implemented these skills and so will future child care workers.

* Some leave the field for other more easy or lucrative professions. A few choose to stay as service deliverers.