Moving Social Work: Training the social workers of today and tomorrow in physical activity promotion
Projects
Moving Social Work: Training the social workers of today and tomorrow in physical activity promotion
Research summary
Objectives: To produce the first research led teaching and community-based training materials and resources on physical activity (PA) to influence social work practice of today and tomorrow and improve disabled people’s health.
Why is there a need to do this?
Physical inactivity is in the top ten greatest causes of ill health, and has massive costs for the NHS. The physical and mental health benefits of PA are also well established.
Yet, and emphasising health inequalities, disabled people are twice as likely as non-disabled people to be physically inactive.
Disabled people experience worse health outcomes than non-disabled people and physical activity (PA) is one important intervention to close this health gap. The huge costs to the NHS of inactivity are well established, as are the health benefits of PA. Yet, one large group of the population that is particularly inactive is disabled people. They are twice as likely to be inactive when compared to non-disabled people.
To help change this, social workers have been identified as key practitioners to deliver PA guidance.
Reasons why social workers are key influencers/messengers to support behaviour change among disabled people include:
- They have regular and widespread contact with disabled people.
- Social workers are often trusted and valued sources of information, meaning they have considerable potential to influence people.
- A main barrier to PA for disabled people, along with having limited knowledge of PA, is the ‘activity trap’. That is, disabled people fear their personal budgets/benefits will be withdrawn, or their human/legal rights when employed comprised by employers, if they are seen doing PA. Social workers are ideally placed to counter the former myth/untruth and provide accurate information about the latter to help dispel fears.
- Finally, research has identified a strong demand among social workers for PA education. Social Work England, who regulates social workers, recognises this need. It fits with their aim to improve social work by equipping students with skills for the future and upskilling the current social worker workforce to improve the health and wellbeing of people they work with.
Social workers present a hugely underutilised opportunity for health promotion. However, social workers have little knowledge of how to promote PA to disabled people.
Incorporating PA promotion into university/college teaching and training presents a cost-effective opportunity to drive change. It would support the social workers of today and tomorrow in improving disabled people’s health and reducing health inequalities.
What did we do?
To drive change, research funded by ARC NENC (and led by Professor Brett Smith at Durham University) integrated different types of knowledge in order to create and test the effectiveness of taught University sessions, online CPD training, and resources for educating social workers in how to support PA health behaviour change for disabled people.
Taught sessions, training, and resources were designed through a number of stages:-
- A scoping review of existing PA training and resources, literature review of theory, mapping exercise of social work degree curricula, and interviews with social workers, disabled people and PA experts.
- Knowledge Cafés and surveys with front line and university/college social work lecturers, disabled people, and PA experts.
- Development of CPD training and resources produced for embedding in social work education.
- Testing the implementation of the resources.
- Roll-out of resources.
This is the first project in the UK to develop, implement and test an education approach to embedding PA promotion into the social work care workforce.
It contributes to reducing health inequalities by supporting a large disadvantaged and marginalised group, and tackling their low levels of PA.
Impact so far
As a result of this work, the Moving Social Work (MSW) programme has been developed and is now being rolled out across England – via universities, practice learning environments within local authorities, and in NHS settings.
The roll-out has been supported via £1million of funding from Sport England.
Moving Social Work – Get Yourself Active
MSW is an education programme designed to encourage social workers to speak about physical activity to disabled people and other groups.
The programme is evidence-based and has been co-produced with multiple partners –including Disability Rights UK and Durham University. This work all began with the initial research project funded by ARC NENC.
Moving Social Work is embedded in the Government Disability Strategy (2021) and is a real opportunity to tackle health inequalities.
Over 1,000 social work students and social workers have received the training so far. Ongoing evaluation demonstrates it is successfully applied.
‘Get Yourself Active’ are supporting the roll out the programme, with Sport England funding. ‘Get Yourself Active’ is a Disability Rights UK programme.
Outputs
DHSC blog: Moving Social Work: it means what it says! – Social work with adults
Publication – Full article: Co-production: A resource to guide co-producing research in the sport, exercise, and health sciences (tandfonline.com) (March 2022)
Publication – Designing a programme to train social workers on how to promote physical activity for disabled people: A Delphi study in the UK – Monforte – 2022 – Health & Social Care in the Community – Wiley Online Library (January 2022)
Publication – Full article: The world café is an unmethod within co-produced research (tandfonline.com) (August 2023)
Blog – Moving Social Care: Why social workers could be the key to promoting physical activity for disabled people – ARC (nihr.ac.uk) (March 2021)
Blog – Moving Social Work: Training the social workers of today and tomorrow in physical activity promotion | Research in Practice (March 2022)
Plain language infographic – Moving Social Work Summary and Steps (getyourselfactive.org)
News – Moving Social Work – Get Yourself Active