Leading with the Heart

Clarify Thy Uniqueness Ltd
Aug 20, 2025
4 min read

Updated: Sep 7, 2025

Advocacy as the Soul of Social Work and Healthcare

*One stands out when making a difference*

Leadership and advocacy often feel like big, formal words reserved for highly qualified professionals who sit at the top of organisations. For social workers and healthcare professionals, leadership is not necessarily about titles, it’s about presence, purpose, and courage. Advocacy is not just policy making in boardrooms, it’s the everyday act of speaking up for those whose voices are silenced. Both leadership and advocacy are not extras in our work, they are the very heart of it.

Leadership is more than a job description. It is not about being the loudest voice in the room. It’s defined by presence, values, and the quality of our choices, regardless of whether we hold formal roles or not. It’s the quiet reassurance to a colleague in crisis, the decision to challenge an unsafe practice, or the willingness to stand firm when systems push back.

Research by PMC (2020) shows that social workers often excel in transformational leadership, bringing optimism, creativity, and recovery-oriented values into health and social care organisations. Effective leadership in social work is rooted in its professional values based on respect for the equality, worth, and dignity of all people, and its ethical principles of human rights, social justice and professional integrity (BASW, 2021). That is, advocacy, empowerment, collaboration, innovation, ethics, and policy influence.

Leadership for social workers and healthcare professionals means:

Integrity in Action: aligning your decisions with your values, even when it’s inconvenient.
Courage in Vulnerability: admitting when you don’t have the answers and inviting others into shared problem-solving.
Compassion in Practice: leading by example in how you treat service users, clients, families, and colleagues.

True leadership is not a rank, it’s a presence. Every choice you make influences the culture around you.

Whereas, advocacy is not only about campaigning for legislative change, though that is vital. Advocacy is about uplifting marginalised communities and addressing systemic injustices by giving voice, holding space and standing beside those who feel unseen by taking small, persistent actions. The code of ethics gives responsibility to professionals to ‘promote social justice and social change with and on behalf of clients' (BASW, 2021).

In practice, advocacy might look like:

Challenging discriminatory language in the workplace.
Ensuring a service user or client’s cultural needs are honoured in their support plan.
Supporting a colleague who is struggling with personal issues, stress and even burnout.
Speaking up when budget cuts threaten services for the most vulnerable.

Advocacy is not just what we do for others, it’s also what we model. When we dare to raise our voice, we give permission for others to find theirs.

The Intersection of Leadership & Advocacy

When leadership and advocacy meet, transformation happens. A leader without advocacy risks becoming a manager of systems. An advocate without leadership risks burning out in isolation. However, when we merge the two, we create movements, we shift narratives and we do not only hold the line, we redraw it.

For example:

A team leader who advocates for trauma-informed practices reshapes how an entire service approaches cases.
A social worker who challenges stereotypes within their own agency changes how families are treated for generations to come.
A nurse who leads a grassroots campaign for mental health funding ensures that community voices are heard in parliament.

Leading and Advocating for Ourselves

Many social workers and healthcare professionals find it easier to fight for others than to speak up for themselves. Thus, overlooking our own needs in service of others. The hardest part of leadership and advocacy is turning it inward. What is the greatest risk, if I may ask?

Sustainable leadership requires self-advocacy by:

Setting boundaries without guilt.
Safeguarding our wellbeing.
Seeking fair pay and safe working conditions.
Seeking supervision, mentorship, and support instead of carrying the weight alone.

It is only when we are supported that we can continue to serve meaningfully. When you advocate for your own wellbeing, you protect your capacity to advocate for others.

In conclusion,

Leadership and advocacy are not optional extras in your role, they are acts of service, resistance, and hope. Every time you choose courage over silence, integrity over compliance, and compassion over indifference, you are shaping a better system. You don’t need to wait for permission. Leadership begins where you stand and Advocacy begins with the breath you take before speaking up. The world doesn’t need perfect leaders; it needs authentic ones. It also doesn’t need louder voices; it needs braver ones.

Reflection - today ask yourself: