BSMS > Research > Primary care and public health > Public health > Supporting care workers

Supporting Care Workers in COVID

Supporting Care Workers in COVID, is a collaborative and interdisciplinary research project between the University of Kent, and Brighton & Sussex Medical School, aiming to explore the best way to support care workers and their clients during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We will be developing guidance to support staff in social care, with a particular focus on residential and domiciliary care for older adults in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex.

About the project

During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been many reports from those working in care provision of:

Lack of guidance on how to keep their clients and themselves safe
Anxiety of passing the infection onto family members who may also be vulnerable
Challenges in the supply chains for receipt of PPE equipment, as well as guidance on how to use it effectively, including when moving between patients and care-settings.

Our work will explore and seek to improve the safety and experiential aspects of residents flowing between hospitals and care homes. We also seek to improve domiciliary care provided, which is currently neglected within current guidance. To this end, we are running five work packages:

There are five work packages:

A systematic review of the rapidly changing governmental guidance for the care sector.
Qualitative and ethnographic study exploring the working lives of practices of social care staff working in care homes and domiciliary care.
Describing the context of social care for older people using quantitative social care and demographic data.
Mathematical modelling: understanding what the dynamics of COVID-19 transmission in domiciliary care, and what are the implications for prevention and support of the services.
Implementation and dissemination – operating through the study and providing continuous feedback to relevant services and specific support by researchers for initiatives such as customised training and messaging to social care staff.

Participation

We would like to speak to managers and staff in care homes and domiciliary care (over Zoom) and are conducting individual interviews and group interviews (focus groups) over the next few weeks. Individual interviews last approximately 60 mins, and focus groups approximately 90 mins.

We can offer Love2Shop vouchers to compensate participants for their time (£15 for interviews; £25 for participation in focus groups).

We want the study to give a voice to those working in the care sector in these difficult times, so would very much value your participation. To get involved contact us via phone or email with your availability.

For more information, please see the participant information sheets below.

Funding

It is jointly funded by NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Kent Surrey Sussex (ARCKSS), the University of Sussex, and the Kent Surrey and Sussex Clinical Research Network (CRN).

Meet the team

Jo Middleton

Dr Leanne Bogen-Johnston

Dr Lavinia Bertini

Dr Wendy Wood

Becky Sharp

Prof John Drury

Ann-Marie Towers

News and publications

We expect our outputs to be as follows:

We intend to deliver improvements in the quality of advice, support, and training materials for domiciliary care workers visiting vulnerable clients in their own homes during the COVID-19 outbreak
Training materials and resources for providers, carers, clients, and families
Briefings for Public Health England (PHE) guideline writers
Advice to SAGE working group on care homes
Advice to SAGE working group on behaviour

Contact us

For further information about the project, or if you’d like to participate in the research please contact the fieldwork research team; Lavinia Bertini.

Email: covidcarers@bsms.ac.uk

Call/text: 07995 540 753 (Lavinia)