How to develop your deputy so you can hand over the work

By Alexis Neighbour, leadership coach and former homecare franchise owner

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The reason you can't step back from the rota isn't that you're disorganised. It's that nobody else is quite ready to take it, and nothing in your week is set aside for getting them there.

I ran a Home Instead franchise for eleven years, as both owner and registered manager, and in that time I invested in a lot of training. Level 5 diplomas, CPD modules, half-day workshops on supervision and safeguarding. Most of it was fit for purpose and I've sat through plenty of it myself. What I noticed eventually is that almost none of it changed how anyone actually led. People came back with a certificate and a folder, and by Thursday they were doing the job exactly as they'd done it the Thursday before.

The courses aren't the problem. The problem is that booking one is where most development plans start and finish. Training isn’t a one-time event, it’s an ongoing investment. 

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Training and development are two different jobs

Training covers a skill or a requirement. Someone needs to complete a MAR chart correctly, so you book the course, they do it, you keep the record. It's a transaction, and it works. Most of your mandatory training belongs here and should stay here.

Development is slower and considerably less tidy. It's the business of someone becoming capable of a job you haven't given them yet. It involves feedback they'd rather not hear, responsibility they're not quite ready for, and somebody paying attention to how they're getting on.

Most care providers I work with have training under control, because the CQC will ask to see it. Development never gets a deadline, so it never gets done.

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What it costs to wait

The gap shows up in your management layer first. Skills for Care put the registered manager vacancy rate at 11.4% in 2024–25, around 3,400 unfilled posts across adult social care (Skills for Care, State of the adult social care sector and workforce in England 2025). Those posts are hard to fill from outside. The reliable way to fill one is to have somebody inside who's ready, and readiness doesn't happen by accident.

There's a cost to you personally too, and it's the one nobody puts in a business plan. If nothing in your agency moves without you, your capacity is the ceiling on the business. You won't out-work that. I've tried.

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One list, four piles

Here's the exercise I'd start with, because it turns a vague intention into a short list of names.

Write down everything that took your attention last week. Not what should have, what did. Include the small things, because the small things are usually where the week actually went. Then sort every item into one of four piles.

Keep. Only you can do this. Genuinely only you, not "only me, for now". In most agencies this pile is much shorter than the manager expects.

Delegate. Someone could own this today, with a handover and no hand-holding.

Develop. Someone could own this with support. Not yet, but not far off.

Stop. This no longer adds value to anyone. The report nobody reads. The meeting that exists because it has always existed.

The develop pile is your plan for them. Not a policy document, not a training matrix. A short list of real responsibilities with a real name against each.

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Getting the piles right

Two mistakes account for most of the trouble.

The first is dropping things into ‘delegate’ that belong in ‘develop’. You hand over the on-call rota with a five-minute explanation, it goes wrong in week two, and you take it back. Your deputy learns that you don't trust them and you learn that they can't do it. Neither is true. It was sorted into the wrong pile.

The second is a ‘keep’ pile full of things you're simply better at. Being better at something isn't a reason to own it forever. If three months of somebody being slower than you frees up a day a week for the rest of the year, that's a good trade, and it won't feel like one at the time.

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What "with support" actually means

Support isn't a training session, and it isn't you standing behind them. It's three things, agreed at the start.

A clear boundary on what they can decide alone and what they bring to you. Get specific. "Use your judgement" isn't a boundary, it's an invitation to guess wrong.

A time in the diary to talk about how it's going, separate from the operational catch-up. If it isn't in the diary it'll be swallowed by the day, and the first time you discuss it will be after something has gone wrong.

An agreed end to the support. Four to twelve weeks, depending on the task. Without an end date, "with support" quietly becomes permanent, and you haven't delegated anything, you've just added a meeting.

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When they get it wrong

They will, at least once, and that moment is the whole exercise. What you do when your deputy makes a decision you wouldn't have made determines whether anyone in your agency takes a decision again.

If it was inside the boundary you agreed, back it, even if you'd have chosen differently. If it was outside, go back to the boundary rather than the person. The question is what was unclear, not who was careless.

Take the task back only if it's genuinely unsafe. Everything else is the cost of building someone who can do the job next year.

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Where to get help without much of a budget

Skills for Care registered manager membership costs £35 a year and includes the social care manager's handbook, a monthly newsletter, mentoring and discounts from training providers. They run 130 local manager networks covering every local authority area in England, and a library of registered manager webinars on managing people, recruitment and retention.

There are deputy manager networks too, which are the obvious place to send whoever is next in line. If your deputy is heading for registration, the Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management for Adult Care is still the standard qualification, and it's worth doing properly rather than quickly. Birdie has a fuller guide to what becoming a registered manager involves if that's the direction of travel.

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When a course isn't the answer

A course is the right tool for a knowledge gap. If your deputy doesn't know employment law, send them on the employment law course. Registered manager training does that job well.

Most of what stops managers isn't a knowledge gap. It's knowing exactly what you should do and not doing it. You know the conversation you need to have. You know you should stop checking every rota. Nobody has ever failed to delegate because they hadn't heard of delegation.

That's what coaching is for, and it's a different kind of work. A coach isn't there to teach you something. They're there to be the person outside your own head who can see the pattern you can't, and to keep you honest about the thing you keep not doing. Where a whole management team needs to change how it works together rather than individually, team coaching does something no qualification can.

It costs more than £35 a year, and it isn't the right starting point for everyone. If you haven't yet tried a local network or an honest conversation with a peer who runs a similar agency, try those first.

Whoever you choose, choose someone who has done the job. Care leadership isn't the same as leadership in general, and advice that ignores the registration you personally hold and the inspection sitting somewhere on the horizon tends not to survive contact with a Tuesday.

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The name you'll leave off the list

You'll do this exercise for your deputy and not for yourself. Registered managers are routinely the least developed people in the building: you sign the registration, you carry the accountability, and there's rarely anybody whose job it is to ask how you're getting on. If what you recognise reading this is exhaustion rather than a skills gap, start there rather than with a plan for somebody else. I've written separately about spotting the signs of burnout.

Alexis Neighbour owned and ran a Home Instead homecare franchise for over 11 years, as owner, director and registered manager, and sold the business in 2023. She now coaches business owners and leaders at The Franchise Coach, bringing 25 years of coaching practice. She is a recognised advisor to the British Franchise Association, an ICF-accredited Professional and Executive Coach (PCC Level 2) and an accredited EQ-i 2.0 Practitioner.

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Getting out of the weeds is easier when the weeds are smaller. Birdie partners save an average of 52% of the time they used to spend on rostering and 57% on care planning, which is time that can go into the develop pile instead. See how it works.

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