Support workers play a valuable role in delivering safe and effective care to those who access occupational therapy services across health and care. We recognise this and are committed to ensuring the occupational therapy support workforce have access to the right education, training, development opportunities and resources to enable them to thrive.
We're collaborating with Health Education England to complete a series of projects that will shape the future of the occupational therapy workforce. This includes a project which aims to complement HEE’s AHP Support Worker Competency, Education and Career Development Framework launched in October 2021. This project will help us to grow our resources and activities for the support workforce, promote their role and contribution and address the learning and development needs of support workers and those responsible for supporting them in their roles.
Project advisory group
We’ll need your guidance, advice and support to inform, influence and drive this work. The project will run for six months (October 2022–March 2023). The advisory group will meet virtually, once per month for approximately 90 minutes, and views and opinions sought on aspects of the project through email communications outside of these meetings. We ask that you commit approximately three to four hours per month to advisory group activities.
As a member of the project advisory group, you will help to identify, advise on the design and delivery of the priorities for this project. These activities may include, but are not limited to:
- defining the roles and responsibilities of the occupational therapy support workforce.
- showcasing support workers roles and their impact.
- identifying activities to increase our engagement with the occupational therapy workforce.
- provide insight into new and existing RCOT opportunities, activities and resources which can support learning and development.
- resources to enable support workers to engage in effective supervision.
Membership of the group
We want to hear from you if you:
- are a support worker who supports the delivery of an occupational therapy service, in a dedicated or hybrid role
- have experience of supervising support workers or managing a service with a support workforce
- are a member of the public who has lived experience of accessing an occupational therapy service which included engagement with a support worker
- support the learning and development of the support workforce
- are a registered occupational therapist who have previously worked in a support worker role.
Regardless of your current level within the professional practice or leadership pillars of the Career Development Framework, your contribution is important and being part of this group can contribute to your development. You will work with others from a range of backgrounds to advocate for the needs of the occupational therapy support workforce and provide leadership and support to help meet these needs.
We’ll strive to ensure that the members of this project advisory group have a diversity of experience. We’re looking for members from across different sectors and scopes of practice, the four UK nations, and across the range of protected characteristics. We strongly advocate for a culture that values, respects and celebrates diversity and positively supports those with lived experience. We are committed to listening and learning from our members and those who use occupational therapy services, especially those that have been historically marginalized and their voices seldom heard.
We’ll ask you to complete a brief anonymous data collection form once you’ve been confirmed as a group member. This will allow us to record the diversity of experience within the group and find any gaps in the membership for carrying out further targeted recruitment.
If you are interested in being involved in this group or require further information, please email the Professional Development Team prof.dev@rcot.co.uk by 10am on Monday 26 September including:
- your geographical region
- current role
- a brief outline of how your experience could help to inform this work.
We plan to host the first meeting of this group virtually during the week beginning 17 October 2022. and will send communications week beginning 3 October 2022.