Implementing professional support for the voluntary sector workforce: A multi-case action research study

Background- Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise organisations (VCSEs) including charities and community groups deliver health and wellbeing services. Three percent of the UK workforce (950,000 people) are VCSE employees. Some are health and wellbeing staff (we call these VCSE staff) who deliver support to service users.

Examples include Link Workers, Peer Support Recovery Workers, Welfare Advice Officers and Community Befrienders. VCSE staff report feeling unsupported and consequently leave their jobs. A fifth of VCSEs face worsening staff retention and 43% report recruitment challenges.

This is detrimental for service users who face disruptions to their care. Professional Support e.g., supervision and mentoring has improved retention amongst NHS staff. However, there is a lack of research on implementing Professional Support for VCSE staff that considers the unique VCSE context. Our proposal addresses this.

Research question- Which Professional Support interventions can be implemented to enable VCSE staff to feel sufficiently supported to stay in their role delivering health and wellbeing services?

Aim- To identify and implement Professional Support interventions that can enable VCSE staff to feel sufficiently supported to stay in their role delivering health and wellbeing services. Objectives- (1) Identify which Professional Support interventions can be used to support VCSE staff. (2) Examine how support can be tailored to VCSE staff with different protected characteristics and needs.

(3) Identify the enablers and barriers to implementing Professional Support for VCSE staff.

(4) Co-produce resources that can be used by VCSE organisations, commissioners and other stakeholders to implement Professional Support. Methods- Multi-case action research with four work packages (WPs):

(WP1) Stakeholder engagement, M1-30- We will engage stakeholders throughout the study to provide expert input including a Service User Group.

(WP2) Mapping Review of implementing Professional Support, M1-10- We will conduct a mapping review to identify Professional Support that has been implemented in similar health and care workforce roles e.g., counsellors and consider transferability to VCSEs.

(WP3) Multi-case action research, M4-25- We will use a multi-case action research design to implement Professional Support with six VCSE organisations based in two Integrated Care Board areas. We will:

? Explore VCSEs’ experiences of implementing Professional Support by conducting a staff questionnaire and stakeholder interviews.

? Calculate the costs of delivering different types of Professional Support e.g., staff time to develop, deliver and attend support.

? Support stakeholders to co-design the implementation of locally appropriate Professional Support strategies e.g., creating a supervision programme. ? Evaluate the impact of Professional Support through follow-up questionnaires and interviews.

(WP4) Stakeholder engagement in dissemination, M26-30- We will involve stakeholders in designing outputs including a Professional Support toolkit and training resource. Timelines- 30 months.

Anticipated impact & dissemination- The study aims to improve the delivery of Professional Support, enabling VCSE staff to feel more supported with longer-term outcomes of improved retention and better care for service users. We will disseminate the findings through national practice-based networks, which are commonly used to reach VCSEs.