Physical activity is good for health and wellbeing. Yet we know that despite wanting to be more active, disabled people are often not. How can this change?
One important part of making change is to ensure disabled people are supported.
Our research found that social care professionals are an overlooked yet important group of messengers for promoting physical activity. Disabled people often view social care professionals as highly suitable messengers because they have a great reach and are credible, emphatic, and knowledgeable of their circumstances.
It can be part of efforts to promote health and wellbeing, reinforcing a commitment to the Care Act 2014. Personalised budgets can be used by people to get and stay active, social workers are vital here. They have said their expertise would be useful to support disabled people through the personalised budget process to get and stay active. Social workers we’ve spoken to as part of research have said that conversations about physical activity or sport can be incredibly useful as both a means to make positive change in other areas of people’s lives as well as to further showcase what positive things they do for communities.
We know also that when people promote physical activity they themselves become more active. The benefits of promoting physical activity for social workers and the social care profession are thus many.
Despite research highlighting the importance of practitioners in promoting physical activity, we also know that they often lack the training to effectively promote physical activity to and for disabled people. We are working with Social Work England, Sport England, Disability Rights UK, the Department of Health and Social Care, social workers, disabled people, university teachers and students, and local authorities to help reverse this. But how?
Together, we are currently co-producing a continuing professional development (CPD) programme to train social care professionals – those working today – in physical activity promotion. We are also conducting co-produced research to find out how best to educate people who are doing a social work degree – the practitioners of tomorrow - in how to promote physical activity to and for disabled people.
We will test this work in a group of universities and with local authorities. Our overall aim is to embed physical activity promotion in social work degree programmes nationally. We aim also to deliver high quality CPD training for social workers.
The research is led by Durham University. It is funded by Sport England and the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North East and North Cumbria (NENC).
Our hope is that this (research driven) education and training facilitates getting social workers into the habit of, and feeling confident about, promoting physical activity.
Contact
If you want to take part in the project, learn more about it, or share your views, please feel free to contact us brett.smith@durham.ac.uk.