Celebrating the contribution of support workers

This month the CSP, along with a coalition of 13 other AHP professional bodies, celebrates Support Worker Awareness Week. We have worked together for many years to strengthen our collective voice to advocate for support workers and demonstrate their vital contribution to healthcare in both the NHS and the independent sector.  

As a collective, we know that support workers need clearer career pathways where they can continue to contribute to the work of multidisciplinary teams alongside registered colleagues.  

For example, the CSP has already succeeded in advocating for more higher-level support worker roles in England – support workers who work across the four pillars of practice – and we continue to make the case for more of these vital roles.  

These support workers make significant contributions to patient care, and you can learn more about higher level roles, what differentiates them from more traditional support worker roles and how they could contribute to your service in this month’s hot topic.  

Support workers make a valuable contribution to pre-registration education through supporting physio placements for learners. Our feature explores how support workers undertake this important area of work in practice and contribute to the future growth of the profession.   

Finally, our main feature explores in detail the launch of the National Rehabilitation Centre. As well as looking at how this transforms patient care and hearing from the physios involved, it also explores a transformational new role, rehab assistant practitioners, which the centre will pioneer.  

Advocating for members is a vital part of the CSP’s work and last month we had a presence at all the main political party conferences, making the case for growing the physio workforce, including support workers. There’s more about what this involved and who the CSP’s representatives were talking to about in this month's Frontline magazine.