Launch of our first ever occupational therapy workforce strategy
In March this year we launched our Workforce Strategy - RCOT setting the direction for the profession to expand the occupational therapy workforce in the UK and position it to have maximum impact in improving people’s health and quality of life.
By 2035, we aim to have an occupational therapy workforce that is:
- Confident and skilled in championing inclusion and advocating for occupational justice, enabling every person to have the choice and opportunity to engage in a diverse range of activities and roles.
- Based primarily within communities, working closely and knowledgeably with local populations to meet their health and care needs, ensuring that services are accessible to everyone.
- Equipped to focus on prevention and early intervention, minimising the need for crisis intervention, reducing dependency on care services.
- Putting occupation at the forefront of their practice, empowering people to pursue the occupations that they value, to manage their health and care needs and to contribute to society.
The strategy will be delivered through a series of action plans, one for each nation within the UK. We will deliver actions under four strategic priorities:
1. Optimising occupational therapy, supporting OT practitioners to be changemakers, using their skills and knowledge to lead and codesign innovative products, interventions and services that improve access to occupational therapy and the lives and wellbeing of people.
2. Demonstrating value & impact by building our real world and research evidence for occupational therapy to put the case for how and where to deploy our expertise.
3. Retention and career development, supporting and promoting the development of all OT practitioners, especially those from historically marginalised and underrepresented communities, to be where they want to be at each stage in their career. As well as building our profession’s capacity, confidence and capability to incorporate leadership, learning, research and innovation into practice.
4. Effective workforce planning, empowering the OT workforce to contribute to and use the workforce planning data and intelligence available to them.
The strategy does not stand alone but sits alongside our sustainability action plan and Equity, diversity and belonging strategy. We are using an Innovation hub to collect service improvement and innovation projects and developing a research and innovation strategy and communities platform where members can self publish to share resources. The strategy is ambitious and will require a shift in resourcing from hospital to community services as well as embracing a public health approach. It has, however, been well received by members and external stakeholders and the challenge now is with us to deliver.
We would be really interested to hear from other countries that are doing anything similar. Please get in touch: [email protected].