‘Management out of sight for too long’

Written response Van der Wal to concerned letter of unit participation council

• Director Social Work acknowledges the management team has been out of sight for too long.
• Development Social Work and upcoming accreditation ask to look forward.

Mistakes have been made. The workload of the managers was too high, and the management team of the division has been invisible. In a letter to the unit participation council of Health Care and Social work, director Ineke van der Wal responds elaborately to the questions and concerns the council had stated in a letter of the 13^th of February.

There have been some issues concerning Social Work. The disturbances started near the end of 2017, when the three study programme managers of new study programme Social Work, Jan Willem Bruins, Jildau de Haan and Tamara Mulders, were taken off their management duties (Bruins), or (de Haan and Mulders) gave notice to have no intention to continue their work. This led to the teachers being in disarray, after which the unit participation council asked the study programme managers for explanation. Answers were expected to be given in a joint meeting with the council and the director on Wednesday the 21^st of February. However, to the chairman Frank Joustra’s surprise, Van der Wal was reluctant to respond to the letter. She promised a written response.

According to Joustra, there was an ‘explosive situation’ within the study programme and frantic attempts had been made to find out more about what had been going on behind the scenes. But he never received a reply.

In her written reaction of last Tuesday, Van der Wal points out that she shares the council’s worries and that de Haan and Mulder, together with the newly hired managers Riejet Nijdam and Jolling Lodema, are taking care of the encountered problems. For this, De Haan will stay longer than he had mentioned before, at least until the summer break. It has been agreed that Mulders will stay until the visitation inspection on the 24^th of April. Van der Wal apologises again for the management team having been out of sight: ‘In my aim to act as responsible as possible and in trying not to harm the privacy of certain individuals, I have realised that the provision of information got going much too late.’

Van der Wal looks ahead. She concludes that the three managers, because of their high workload, didn’t get up to implementing the Education Development Plan of Education. Jolling Lodema (together with a number of others) is working on an ‘adjusted elaboration.’ The council has stated to intend to stay out of that, but will remain informed of the progress. (MH)