Last week, IMPACT got involved in Professional Care Workers Week (PCWW), which the Care Workers’ Charity hosted for the sixth year running. PCWW is a “celebration of care workers and the essential work they do, created to promote awareness and raise the profile of care workers in the UK”.
For our webinar, we explored the future of the sector and how evidence is used in practice with 10 care workers, in a range of roles. Obert Tawodzera, IMPACT’s project officer, chaired the second session and said:
“It was a privilege to serve as a facilitator for the discussion during Professional Care Workers Week. Through this engagement, I gained invaluable insights into the barriers that often obstruct care workers from effectively utilising evidence in their daily responsibilities. Notably, the common hurdles include a deficiency in proper training, time constraints, and the frustrating reality of essential evidence concealed behind paywalls, beyond the reach of those who need it most. Having been a care worker myself in the past, I can personally relate to the challenges that were passionately discussed. It’s clear that IMPACT, with its mission to break down barriers, will play an instrumental role in ensuring that evidence of all kinds is readily accessible to professionals and all stakeholders within the adult social care sector.”
Laura Griffith, IMPACT’s Deputy Head of Evaluation said:
“As part of Professional Care Workers Week, it is so important to listen to people who work on the front line to shine a light on what is happening in the social care sector. This webinar helped demonstrate some of the approaches taken and barriers faced when care workers try to improve their practice and get recognised for the skilled work they do. People spoke about the lengths they go to for the people they care for, including researching medical conditions in detail, but also how they could have more scope to input into the personalisation of people’s care. We discussed how implementation centres, such as IMPACT, could play a role in helping them access wider support and knowledge across the care sector.”
A recording of our webinar is on the Care Workers’ Charity YouTube channel.
The webinar was only possible with the support of Karolina Gerlich, Chief Executive of the charity and a member of IMPACT’s leadership team.