We know little about the skills and support homecare workers need to provide care to people with advanced illness approaching the last months of life. Homecare workers support the person and their family and work alongside other health and social care providers. However, they are often poorly trained and supported themselves.
Despite their critical role, little is known about the experiences of homecare workers, their training/skills needs and the best ways to support them to provide sustainable, quality, integrated care. The aim of this study is to provide insights into their role in providing care for people with advanced illness approaching the last months of life, and to develop the content of training resources that address these needs.
We aim to better understand the homecare worker role, experiences, and challenges. We will do this by talking to homecare workers themselves, as well as homecare clients, their family and friends providing care (‘carers’), and health and social care staff. We aim to identify good practice, training gaps and needs for homecare workers and ways to include and support them within the wider care team.