White Paper: Advancing a Home Support Worker Career Pathway

LHP Skillnet launched our first ever White Paper on “Advancing a Home Support Worker Career Pathway” on Tuesday 15th October in the RCSI, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery. This White Paper offers strategic recommendations based on comprehensive research and stakeholder consultations. Its aim is to inform and encourage policymakers, researchers, provider organisations and home support workers (HSWs) across Ireland and beyond in the ongoing efforts to address workforce expansion and sustainability in the home support sector.

In 2022, Home and Community Care Ireland (Representative Body for Home Support Providers) highlighted the challenges around HSWs recruitment and retention, supply challenges across the whole home support sector and challenges for individual HSWs. LHP Skillnet, in its mandate to support workforce development, sought funding from Skillnet Ireland to develop a Green Paper which included an international scoping review of literature available on career pathways for home support workers and a White Paper to establish an action plan for advancing a career pathway in an Irish context.

Stakeholder engagement and consultation on the Green Paper was sought prior to the development of the White Paper, which was launched this week.

This initiative of advancing a career pathway for HSWs is imperative due to the ageing demographic in Ireland. Population ageing and changes in societal attitudes are generating a surge in the need for home support services. The type of home support services required is also changing as more people have complex and/or long-term health conditions and are more likely to be living on their own.

Establishing a structured career pathway for home support workers is essential for alleviating current workforce shortages across Ireland and acting now for the future. The initiative aims to enhance the appeal of home support as a career choice by providing clear avenues for training and professional growth, as well as opportunities for work, skill development and career advancement within the sector.

Stakeholders met to engage with the White Paper’s findings at LHP Skillnet’s Launch Event in Dublin.

Career pathways are designed to align job roles and workforce development with organisational goals and societal needs, ensuring talent development meets both individual aspirations and broader strategic objectives. By fostering skill development and promoting retention, career pathways contribute to economic growth and social mobility, ultimately leading to positive outcomes for individuals, organisations and communities alike.

The White Paper puts forward proposals that build on the best currently available evidence and stakeholder views on advancing a career pathway. Key aspects of a career pathway should be: roles and responsibilities, career progression, training and development, quality careers and data analysis.

To develop and implement a comprehensive career pathway, this white paper proposes to establish four focused Knowledge Workstreams as a structure to underpin and guide this essential area of change across the whole sector. It emphasises actionable steps to advance a career pathway over a minimum indicative of a time frame of 18 months.

The four Knowledge Workstreams are:

1. Competency Framework Development
2. Connecting the Career Pathway to Multi-pronged Workforce Solutions
3. Digital Technology Integration and Data
4. Stakeholder Engagement and Expert Guidance

Collaborative leadership, resourcing and multi-sector working are crucial in driving forward the four proposed Knowledge Workstreams. The proposals emphasis direct involvement of HSWs and clients in decision-making. Resourcing and ownership of the next steps in the white paper will be key to gaining momentum on the action plan highlighted in the paper.

This launch aimed to achieve the first step outlined in the paper which is to disseminate the White Paper to key stakeholders and the contribute to public and professional awareness activities for home support sector reform. A round-table discussion with stakeholders to discuss this white paper and career pathway development took place and was an important step which will be followed up with a documented evaluation of the round-table stakeholder meeting.

The White Paper serves to contribute to a concerted approach to expand and elevate Ireland’s home support sector. It focuses on driving change through developing a comprehensive career pathway for the sector, defining roles and competencies from pre-service to early career, advanced, specialist and expert levels. This will help to build a robust and skilled workforce and retain staff, talent and expertise in the sector.

Although the White Paper focuses on HSWs, the development of a career pathway could also be valuable for healthcare assistants working in nursing homes and other types of support roles that will be increasingly necessary to meet the diverse types and levels of needs of an ageing population.

Please download the White Paper below to explore the findings in more detail.