How to build a trust fund

Trust is the bedrock of leadership and part of the foundation of any successful organisation, but what does it look like and how do leaders create it, asks Andrew Coleman.

In many ways, trust is like gravity – the world cannot function without it. However such is its essential nature, it is all too often taken for granted. Trust is largely intuitive and we know when it’s present, but it is also slippery and difficult to quantify. It takes time to build and is quickly lost.

Trust is a way of managing uncertainty. It is insurance against the unknown, based on the belief that the other party won’t act against your interests, by either accident or design. Trust is the bedrock of professionalism, the idea that a consistent set of competencies and values are shared by those who fulfil a specific role. It therefore enables us display confidence in a way which otherwise wouldn’t be possible.

Trust is particularly critical in the day to day running of schools and at the heart of the principle of in loco parentis. The breakdown of trusting relationships between schools and families is therefore a major cause of concern and one which needs to be tackled quickly.

"Trust takes time to build and is quickly lost."

Cathy Stephens, head of centre at Castle Children’s Centre, Wakefield, recalls the need to build trust with parents when she joined the then-new centre as a social work co-ordinator.

“It was early days when I joined the centre. I don’t think local people and parents really understood what we were there for so it was really important to forge links and help them understand what we were trying to achieve.”

Promoting trust led both parents and professionals to challenge their assumptions.

“Our practice was very strong, but our partnerships with families were too paternalistic. We were guilty of seeing parents in the deficit rather than recognising the positive things they do. And they were suspicious of us as well. There was definitely a view that social workers were just there to take your children away and not there to help.”

Promoting empathy amongst professionals was an important step in this process and involved retaining an unswerving focus on the needs of the child:

“It was really important for me to help our staff understand our parents and the challenges they faced,” Cathy explains. “Everyone struggles from time to time and we’ve never said we can solve everything, just that we can help you have a more positive impact on your children.”

Cathy and her team viewed being consistent and true to their word as fundamental to their approach to developing relationships with families. Having patience was also important:

“It involves doing what you say you will, every time, without fail. If a family visitor says they’ll call at 1pm on Thursday, then they’ve got to call, unless they have a very, very good reason of course.

“It’s about not thinking the centre is the most important thing – it’s the child that really matters. You have to work and be patient to earn their trust.”

Trust plays a central role in developing co-operative relationships between organisations and individuals, particularly in the ‘grey areas’ of work, the margins of day to day practice which aren’t governed by procedures but instead are negotiated on an individual basis. In these cases, trust underpins the assumption that the other is using their expertise in an appropriate way and in the best interest of the child.

Dr Sonia Sharp, executive director of Children’s Services in Sheffield, is clear that helping to establish trust between professionals from different groups is an essential part of improving outcomes for children, and therefore central to the DCS’s role.

“As a DCS you’re involved in championing the individual needs of children and families and this helps to build trust,” she says. “Most people who come into children’s services at any level, as a teacher, youth worker or social worker for instance, have a deeply held belief about wanting to help children. So being a DCS involves tapping into that and being clear that it is always about prioritising the needs of real children and the difference they as professionals can make to those children’s lives.”

"Ultimately I have to trust my leadership team and recognise that sometimes they will deal with things differently to how I might but that that’s OK."

Sonia sees encouraging closer working arrangements as an important and practical step in helping to encourage this:

“There’s a really important job that I can do as a DCS to help bring together different professional groups.

“I can promote the co-location of services to encourage people to actually work closer together physically. I also use case studies of children to help people understand how they can connect with each other better, to have a more positive impact on children’s lives. I can also challenge the ‘Teflon’ culture, in other words to get work to ‘stick’ to people and make them take responsibility for doing specific things rather than simply talking about it.”

This principle of mutual co-operation between schools to promote the interests of children is also at the heart of the government’s aspiration of the ‘self-improving system’. This idea is not entirely new and many schools already work extensively in partnership to improve practice and share expertise. The National College’s National leaders of education and national support schools programme is a good example of such a self-improving system in practice. It is also an area where high trust relationships are essential to the overall success of partnership working.

Bill Jerman, headteacher of Hampton Hill Junior School in West London works as a Consultant Leader for the National College. Bill sees establishing a strong reputation for trustworthiness as key to such school to school support. Core to this is consistently displaying both a high level of integrity and the ability to deliver.

“We’ve established a really strong track record of working through our commitments with partners over the last 15 to 20 years and it’s important that you really work at that” Bill reflects.

Balancing the respective demands of his own school and those of the others he supports is one Bill’s key leadership challenges. Establishing trusting relationships – in this case between himself, his staff and governors – is again critical to successfully addressing this.

“I have to be really clear with my governors as to what’s involved in any support I’m offering to another school. On a practical level, I have to make sure that when I’m at my own school, I’m about and available, and am very clever with my time. But ultimately I have to trust my leadership team and recognise that sometimes they will deal with things differently to how I might but that that’s OK.”

Dr Andrew Coleman is Head of Children’s Services Research and Development at the National College.