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Our first nation-specific Workforce Strategy action plan has been released

Read our Workforce Strategy action plan for Wales

RCOT
18 June 2024

We released our first-ever Workforce Strategy in March.

Our Workforce Strategy sets out our vision for an expanded occupational therapy workforce – positioned to have maximum impact in improving people's health and quality of life.

To deliver our Workforce Strategy, we also released an action plan. This detailed our approach to success.

Getting nation specific

With our Workforce Strategy launched, and well received, we have started working with nation leads and stakeholders to build nation-specific action plans.

These plans work with, and bring together, current policies and listen to each UK nation's unique occupational therapy needs.

Our Workforce Strategy action plan for Wales is the first!

If you’re based in Wales – or interested in seeing what a nation-specific action plan looks like – you can read it at rcot.co.uk/workforce-strategy/wales-action-plan

Delivering our Workforce Strategy will be a team effort. We’d like to thank the member volunteers in our Workforce Strategy advisory group in Wales who’ve helped to shape this action plan.

 

The Workforce Strategy action plan for Wales was developed by RCOT and co-produced by members to position the profession to meet the challenges of modern Wales. It is a strategic document that members, strategic stakeholders and the public can use to shape and develop occupational therapy practice in Wales to meet future demands.

Dai Davies, Professional Practice Lead – Wales

 

Our four workforce priorities

To achieve our vision we have four workforce priorities that inform our action plans.

Workforce priority one: Optimising occupational therapy

  • 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.

Workforce priority two: Demonstrating value and impact

  • We will build our real-world and research evidence for occupational therapy to justify investment in the occupational therapy workforce by quantifying the impact.
  • We will work with our leaders to put the case for how and where to deploy our expertise to add the most value for people and their families, the wider health and care system and to avoid critical shortages within the OT workforce.

Workforce priority three: Retention and career development

  • 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.

Workforce priority four: Effective workforce planning

  • We will empower the OT workforce to contribute to, access and use the workforce planning data and intelligence available to them.
  • We will empower the occupational therapy workforce to use the data and intelligence to make informed decisions about their positioning within the health and care system.

These four priorities have been applied throughout our Workforce Strategy action plan for Wales.

Addressing the big issues

Our Workforce Strategy sets out to transform and modernise the workforce – from the ground up.

This means first tackling the big systemic issues:

  • policy misalignment
  • poor funding decisions
  • patchy data
  • leadership challenges
  • lack of understanding of the value of occupational therapy.

If you’d like to learn more about how we plan on working with Welsh politicians, NHS services, stakeholders and – most importantly – the Welsh OT community, read the action plan for Wales today.