What is Caring for Carers project?
Caring for carers: innovating for workplace health and wellbeing support is a year long project (Sept 23 – Aug 24) that brings together insights from project SHAW alongside Smplicare, an exciting new tech start-up with expertise in health data collection and modelling. Our aim is to develop an innovative digital intervention which will help individuals better understand the ways in which their health, work and wider lives interact. The project is supported by Healthy Ageing Catalyst Award.
Why is this study needed?
Against the backdrop of the UK's ageing population and workforce, there is widening economic and social concern about high rates of economic inactivity (early retirement) among ‘older’ workers. Around one fifth of those who leave work early do so because of health complications, with negative consequences for their future health and wellbeing.
The supported housing sector is part of a sector (social care) currently facing a crisis in terms of employee commitment, attraction, and retention alongside an increased demand for its services. It is also characterised by an older workforce. Hence the need for innovative solutions to better support the health needs of employees in mid-later life.
Existing work by researchers (Professor Wendy Loretto and Dr Jakov Jandrić, University of Edinburgh Business School) has found that key barriers to addressing health support for older workers lies: firstly in their lack of understanding of the ways their health affects their work and vice versa; and secondly in being able to communicate their health needs to managers or to navigate the occupational health services that may be on offer to them.
This project brings together that empirical knowledge alongside the exciting work being conducted among housing association s and the broader social care sector by Smplicare (Garrett Sprague).
For more information, please contact the project PI, Professor Wendy Loretto: