Workforce Strategy action plan

• We will support occupational therapy practitioners to be changemakers, using their skills and knowledge to lead and co-design innovative products, interventions and services that improve people’s lives and wellbeing.
• We will champion innovative service delivery models that improve access to occupational therapy and achieve health equity for all.

We will highlight the value and impact of OT practitioners working at enhanced, advanced and consultant levels of practice.

We will get employers ready to retain an upskilled OT workforce following study at enhanced, advanced and consultant levels of practice.

Number of occupational therapists working at enhanced, advanced and consultant levels of practice. 

Number of enhanced practice apprenticeships established and cohort size.

We will work with our members to use the Innovation hub as a digital platform to build knowledge and confidence to drive innovation and demonstrate the impact of occupational therapy.

We will create opportunities for funding, mentorship and networking which can help innovators turn their ideas into reality.

Number of improvement journeys submitted to the Innovation hub.

Number and demographics of members who are part of the Innovation hub community. 

Quarterly summary of evidence trends and gaps from improvement journeys.

We will work with our members to collect case studies and impact examples across primary care, children, young people and families and community rehabilitation.

We will use these to show external stakeholders the value of improved access to occupational therapy for local populations and to wider health and social care delivery.

We will promote the use of improvement journeys and the benefits of applying impact examples to cascade learning.

Number of case studies and impact examples collected from our members, partners and stakeholders.

Number of improvement journeys and Innovation hub case studies about our workforce priority areas. 

Activity with external stakeholders will be reported in our internal scorecards and shared with members via our governance boards.

1. Economically (for example, using return-on-investment models).
2. Socially (for example, using realist evaluation methodology).
3. Experientially (for example, using people’s stories). 

These resources will be applicable across the UK and across all areas of practice.

Number of members who download resources to evaluate impact of occupational therapy provision economically, socially and experientially. 

Number of submissions to the Innovation hub by our members. 

Steady increase in the quality of submissions of improvement journeys to the Innovation hub by our members.

Together with our members, we will map where, how many and to what extent the OT workforce exists within the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital healthcare space.

We will work with our members, partners and stakeholders to explore the potential for OT practitioners to be co-designers of AI and digital healthcare tools.

We will use this map to monitor growth, regional distribution and demographics of the OT workforce within the AI and digital healthcare space by updating the map every three years.

Number and quality of responses to our mapping exercise.

Changes in our map of how many, where and to what extent the OT workforce exists in the AI and digital healthcare space. 

Number and demographics (career level, regional distribution and job title) of practitioners who submit an AI and/or digital healthcare improvement journey to our Innovation hub.

• We will support and promote the development of all occupational therapy practitioners, especially those from historically marginalised and under-represented communities, to be where they want to be at each stage in their career.
• We will build our profession’s capacity, confidence and capability to incorporate leadership, learning, research and innovation into practice.

We will review and develop learning and development standards for pre-registration education and early careers. These will be for education providers, practice-based educators and employers to use.

Our aim will be to increase how confident graduates and employers are in new graduates’ capabilities.

Numbers engaging with new pre-registration learning and development standards.

Number of providers and programmes with RCOT accreditation.

We will work with education providers to understand the current position and needs of our academic educator workforce.

This will help us build the case to expand the capacity and capability of educators in delivering pre-registration and post-registration OT education programmes.

Number of academic educators who respond when we’re scoping their needs.

Quality of and themes from responses to our scoping work.

We will revise the Career Development Framework.

We will seek to understand how our Career Development Framework best supports employers and members to progress their career.

We will seek to understand how our Career Development Framework best supports employers and members to progress their career.

We will support our members and employers to use the Career Development Framework to nurture practice at all levels.

Revised Career Development Framework published.

Review of number of active users of the Career Development Framework.

Evaluation of the active users’ experiences of using the Career Development Framework.

We will update our supervision guidance to build the confidence and capability of the occupational therapy workforce to engage in and benefit from supervision.

We will publish resources to explain how to use the supervision guidance.

Numbers engaging with the supervision guidance.

Reported experiences of using the supervision guidance and resources.

• We will empower the OT workforce to contribute to, access and use the workforce planning data and intelligence available to them.
• We will empower practitioners to use available data and intelligence to make informed decisions – so we are in the right place, offering the right service to meet local population need.

We will signpost our members and partners to resources that support access, use and application of workforce data.

Our data sources include Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), Skills for Care, NHS England, Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW), NHS Scotland and Health and Social Care Northern Ireland (HSCNI).

We will develop an RCOT learner data dashboard.

Number of visits to our resources sign-posting web page.

Number of engagements with the RCOT learner data dashboard.

Numbers engaging with co-produced plans.

KPIs achieved in each nation’s action plan.

Reports by our members through governance boards on their application of recommendations made in priority areas for workforce growth plans.

We will gather and share examples of workforce models and skills configurations that have improved outcomes for people, teams and systems.

These examples will inspire others to adopt workforce transformation practices.

Number of innovation journeys received via the Innovation hub.

Number of improvement journeys submitted that quote Innovation hub as an evidence source.

Data-sharing agreements established with HCPC, Skills for Care, NHS England, HEIW, NHS Scotland and HSCNI.

We will report on these through our governance boards and member events.

We will work with our members and their employers to carry out an inclusive survey of the UK’s OT workforce every three years.

We will use the results to monitor and respond to quantitative, qualitative and demographic characteristics of the workforce.

A UK-wide OT workforce survey will be carried out in May 2024 and every three years going forward.

Number of times data and intelligence from our workforce survey is used in regional and national reports, conversations and/or campaigns.