Redefining the Role of Support Workers in Intermediate Care: Key Findings from a National Project

The Accelerated Development Programme (ADP) is a tried and tested ‘spread’ methodology. It is widely used by the Changing Workforce Programme (CWP) to help health and social care communities to develop, test and implement new and amended roles. Drawing on the evidence for a generic health and social care support worker role and on good practice examples, an ADP was agreed, with the aim of developing 300 support staff working in intermediate care services in England.Teams started to participate in the ADP in September 2003 and the programme ran for 12 months. Towards the end, teams were asked to complete a questionnaire. This paper is based on the picture emerging from analysis of their responses, with key implications drawn out to assist local planning.