Leadership development programmes: frequently asked questions

Virtual 
If the programme is online, it will be held on Zoom. In the month before the programme begins, you will be sent full joining instructions, including the Zoom link. 

In person
Most in-person programmes are held at The King’s Fund in London. If they are at an alternative venue, this will be clearly marked on the course page and in your joining instructions.

Each programme has slightly different timings, and you will be sent the details of these in your joining instructions.

If your joining instructions haven’t arrived 2–3 weeks prior to your programme, please get in touch with your programme co-ordinator, who will be listed on the individual programme page. See all programmes.

If you need to know timings further in advance, then your programme co-ordinator will be able to help.

The cost of each programme is listed on the individual programme page. See all programmes.

If bursary places are being offered, this information will also be detailed on the individual programme page. See all programmes.

The programme cost includes the course and resources (eg handbook and journal). For in-person programmes this also includes refreshments (lunch, tea breaks etc). Travel and accommodation are your own responsibility.

We aim to respond to all enquiries within 3–5 working days. If you’ve not heard back from us, please email the programme co-ordinator listed on the individual programme page. See all programmes.

This depends on what you're looking for and what you're hoping to achieve.

The programmes are split into several sections to match different learning needs:

• Clinical leadership

• Personal and team leadership

• System leadership

• Organisational development

Within that, the programmes have different focuses, and in the case of Clinical leadership the programmes are aimed at different levels of experience, which are outlined on the individual pages.  

If this doesn’t help, and you’d like to talk with someone, then please email us on [email protected]

You will receive full details of the T&Cs as part of the booking process. If you need to transfer your booking, please contact your programme co-ordinator as soon as possible to discuss options. The outcome will depend on notice period and availability of places.

The last few years have seen a lot of disruption, and on rare occasions we may have to make changes to programmes at short notice. This could be due to NHS strikes, train strikes or Covid-19. While we hope this won’t occur, if it does affect your programme, you will be informed as soon as possible.

Dietary requirements can be fulfilled, providing your programme co-ordinator is informed of your needs in advance.

If you have specific learning requirements, please share these with us in advance and we will do our best to support them.

Our venue has lifts and accessible toilets on each floor.

Hearing loop systems are available in our larger venue rooms (Burdett, Maynard, Edwards, Maxwell and Marlborough).

The King's Fund is committed to ensuring participants on our flagship leadership development programmes reflect the diversity of both the health and care sector and the wider population.  To achieve this, we are undertaking a refresh of our approach to data collection to ensure it is robust, effective, and compliant. Whilst our approach is being reviewed, we are pausing our current data collection method and will begin a new approach in due course.

At The King’s Fund we are committed to challenging and dismantling systemic racism, and we want to help organisations and individuals understand how to do this too. We recognise that racism persists as a significant barrier to achieving equity in health and care. It shapes the experiences and opportunities of our colleagues from global majority backgrounds on a daily basis. It is time for change, and change is urgent. That is why we are focusing on developing anti-racist leadership in health and care.

Within our team and with our clients we are developing anti-racist practice, recognising that this is an area that we need to pay constant attention to. Our commitment to anti-racist practice is reflected in our learning partnership with brap, which brings our two charities together in a long-term relationship. We are working together in our belief that we must all do better in the leadership and practice of anti-racism and through this partnership actively demonstrating how to do this.

Through this partnership we have developed Activate, a new anti-racist leadership programme, and have initiated a review of our leadership and organisational development programmes to include anti-racist practice as a core principle of what we offer. 

We will do this by:

• providing expert development for leaders: offering robust and evidence-based development programmes that centre anti-racist principles, tailored to address the underlying issues that affect health and social care organisations and their leaders

• facilitating reflective practices: conducting our own continuous self-reflection and critical thinking, so that we can help our clients identify and address racist behaviours and structures within their environments; and exploring the intersections of racism on other forms of discrimination, recognising that anti-racist work helps us to understand more about other systems of oppression

• ensuring accountability: modelling accountability for racism, through sharing our anti-racist principles alongside our own learning journey, while acknowledging that fear of this work can stall the progress so urgently needed.  

Our journey towards being an anti-racist organisation is ongoing, we will not always get things right, but we are committed to applying the principles of anti-racist practice to ourselves and our work.  

We can be a racist one minute and an anti-racist the next. What we say about race, what we do about race, in each moment, determines what—not who—we are. The heartbeat of anti-racism is confession, is admission, is acknowledgment, is the willingness to be vulnerable.
- Ibram X Kendi, How to be an Antiracist