Abstract
Introduction: The ever-growing demands on care systems have increased reliance on Home Care Support Worker’s (HCSW’s) which has seen a shift to provision of care away 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 Sláintecare implementation strategy reform and modernise of the Irish health and social care services has precipitated a government investment of up to €15 billion in commitment to health spending (Gov.ie, 2018).
Aims & Objectives: 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 models for 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.
Outcomes: Article screening of titles, abstracts and full texts was conducted by three independent reviewers (EM, ML and EN) 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.
Conclusion: 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 career pathway for HCSW. The scoping review did identify the gaps in the evidence on the assessments of systems or models for HCSW’s career pathways development and CPD opportunities. Recommendations are that future research should include Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) within the evaluations to build evidence to support CPD activity and a career pathway development for HCSW’s.