A scoping review investigating the economic evidence to support the
development of career pathways for home support workers.
Abstract
Objectives: The ever-growing demands on care systems have
increased the reliance on Home Care Support Worker’s (HCSW’s) which has
seen a shift to provision of care to community based and close to home
care provision. Currently there is no clear outline of a career pathway
nor career development for HCSW’s, and this lack of associated framework
which recognises CPD for career progression is impacting on recruiting
and retaining HCSW’s within the care sector. The aim of this scoping
review is to explore the international evidence to identify the
potential costs/outcomes of the development of a career pathway for
HCSW, and the economic benefits connected with continual professional
development (CPD). The rational for taking this approach is that the
evidence to date is limited, regarding the effectiveness of systems or
frameworks for a career pathway for HCSW’s and value for money.
Methods: A scoping review was conducted of peer-reviewed
international literature using structured searches of electronic
databases (Web of Science, PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO,
Social Care Online, and Social Sciences Citation Index) and grey
literature (Sept-Nov 2023) using key economic terms and methodologies to
capture economic evidence and connected costs with HCSW career
development and CPD activities. Results: Article screening of
titles, abstracts and full texts was conducted by two independent
reviewers (EM, ML) to minimise bias and ensure rigour along with
applying a GRADE approach for literature quality. The search strategy
identified peer reviewed literature which included economic issues
associated with CPD and HCSW career development. Following, 17 papers
were critically appraised and during the process of data extraction four
key themes emerged: (1) Cost-benefits of employment and training (2)
Organisational economic perspectives (3) Service economic perspectives
and (4) Sector economic perspectives. Discussion: The inclusion
of economic evidence within this scoping review identified that there is
very limited evidence associated with economic evaluation approaches to
estimate the costs and benefits of CPD and development of a career
pathway for HCSW. The scoping review did identify the gaps in the
evidence on the assessments of systems or frameworks for HCSW’s career
pathways development and CPD opportunities. Recommendations are that
future research examining this topic should include Cost Benefit
Analysis (CBA) to build evidence to support CPD activity and a career
pathway development for HCSWs.