Project background
All occupational therapists and occupational therapy support workers, irrespective of background and/or characteristics, should feel valued, respected and supported to develop their talents to the full. We aim to ‘Lift Up’ every member of our occupational therapy workforce to be the best they can be throughout their career. Through this project, we want to ensure that occupational therapists and support workers from groups which have been historically marginalised and underrepresented in our workforce are given the support they need to develop their careers across the four pillars of practice.
Combining the support of a project advisory group and insights from across a portfolio of HEE projects, this project aims to capture, define and highlight examples of good practice in support of occupational therapists from diverse backgrounds.
We will also use insights from our supervision audit and workforce survey to inform elements of this work. Responses from a rich diversity across the OT workforce will help us to identify underrepresented groups and understand their unique experiences. This will help establish challenges and opportunities to ‘Lift Up’, particularly relating to engagement in supervision processes that effectively support professional development.
Project advisory group
We want to empower people with previously underrepresented backgrounds and/or characteristics to reflect on and share individual lived experiences relevant to this project, to shape its priorities and its outcomes. As a member of the advisory group, you’ll:
- meet virtually a maximum of once per month for 90 minutes, until March 2023
- share your views and opinions on aspects of the project via collaboration on the FutureNHS platform
- commit to three to four hours per month
- help identify the priorities for this project and advise on the design and delivery of these.
Group membership
If you’re interested in the development of the OT workforce – we want to hear from you. We’ll strive to ensure that the members of this project advisory group have a diverse experience. We welcome members from all four UK nations, across the range of protected characteristics and from different sectors and levels of practice, including support workers, students and newly occupational therapists.
We advocate strongly for a culture that values, respects and celebrates diversity and positively supports those with lived experience. We are committed to listening and learning from our members and those who use occupational therapy services. We’ll ask group members to complete an optional anonymous diversity of experience form to help us find out if we need to do targeted recruitment so we hear voices from across four UK nations, the range of protected characteristics and from different sectors and levels of practice.
If you are interested in being involved in this group, please send an email to the Professional Development team prof.dev@rcot.co.uk including:
- your geographical region
- current role
- a brief outline of how your experience could help to inform this work.
We hope to host the first meeting of this group virtually in mid-December.
Hannah Spencer, Topic Lead
Nikki Daniels, RCOT Head of Communities and Connections