Doing, Being and Becoming a Valued Care Worker: User and Family Carer Views

ABSTRACT

This paper presents and discusses data from a study of the views of people using social care services and of family carers about their care workers, what they do that is valued, what are valued characteristics, and how people become or are made ‘good’ care workers. It is set within the context of policy interest in England in values based recruitment as a means to address some of the problems in social care services arising from high levels of turnover and variable care quality. Such efforts to promote values-based recruitment have brought the question of values centre stage in social care in addition to their more established place in social work and other professions. The interviews with services users and carers (n = 60) were conducted face to face in four local authority areas in England. Findings are that service users and carers value staff’s presentation and performance; relationships with care workers; but hold different conceptualisations of training as adding to their workers’ capability and approach. Values appear to be viewed as innate to individuals and not fostered by training. These suggest some differences between values that are integral to professional identities and those that are deemed important in care work.

KEYWORDS:

• Values based recruitment
• social care
• user views
• recruitment

Acknowledgements

We are most grateful to all the participants in this study and to the managers and others who facilitated access to research sites. The study team also includes Dr Shereen Hussein, Dr Michelle Cornes, Dr Martin Stevens, and Caroline Norrie. The views expressed here are the authors alone and should not be regarded as those of the Department of Health.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jill Manthorpe is Professor of Social Work at King's College London and Director of the Social Care Workforce Research Unit which is a Department of Health Policy Research Unit. She has a long-standing interest in social care, particularly for older people and across a range of providers. She is a Fellow of Skills for Care.

Jess Harris is a Research Associate at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit and has a background in voluntary sector advocacy and community development.

Kritika Samsi is a Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit where she specialises in dementia care and support research. She is a Fellow of the NIHR School for Social Care Research.

Jo Moriarty is Senior Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit and specialises in carer and dementia-related research within the context of social care and social work practice, policy and evidence.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Department of Health’s Policy Research Programme.