Domiciliary Care Workers (DCWs) are employed in both public and private sectors to support adults at home. The support they provide varies but often includes personal care, which demands close contact between care worker and the person being supported. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, people working across the care sectors in England and Wales have experienced higher rates of death involving COVID-19 infection. Social care workers, in both residential and domiciliary care settings, have been particularly badly affected, with rates of death involving COVID-19 approximately double that for health care workers. We aim to generate rapid high-quality evidence based on the views of care workers and by data formed from linking care workers’ registration data to routine electronic heath record (EHR) data. We can use this information to inform public health interventions for safer working practice and additional support for care workers.

Within 12 months: 

• Generate rapid evidence on short-term outcomes; 
• Short-term report recommendations (briefing sessions to UK policy leads, high-level infographic driven professional and public-facing summaries via digital and social media platforms using evidence-based approaches for developing public health messages (eg GRAPHIC). 
• Publish protocol paper, short-term results (high impact, open access journals). 

Within 18 months and beyond: 

• Generate evidence on long-term outcomes, generalisability assessment (to all UK nations), further recommendations to policy and practice; 
• Publish final results; 
• Foundations laid for longer-term research including exploration of UK wide data (e.g. NHS Digital) to benchmark future trends and plan policies. 

Outputs:

OSCAR Policy Briefing December 2021

Cardiff University CTR OSCAR infographic

Please see the Publications & Other Outputs section below for PDFs of both documents.