Supporting the Wellbeing of Care Home Staff: Lessons from the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The wellbeing of care home staff and the need to support them at work was highlighted with devastating clarity by the COVID pandemic. This small study explores what online and at work wellbeing resources were available to frontline care home workers during the first wave of the pandemic. A mixed methods study was undertaken May and July 2020. A multi-disciplinary team undertook a rapid review of online wellbeing information and resources relevant specifically to the care home sector and its non-nurse staff. Qualitative data comprised of digital recordings of semi-structured interviews with six care home managers of five care homes, and an online survey sent to 55 Scottish care homes with a response rate of 18%. Five overarching lessons were identified from the data. The first two (‘managing information overload’ and ‘medium not appropriate for the message’) relate to the awareness and use of the online wellbeing resources by frontline care workers. Three others (‘visible and supportive leadership’, ‘building team camaraderie’ and ‘maintaining a focus on wellbeing beyond a crisis response’) highlight the in-house, practice-based issues of supporting the wellbeing of staff. Although small, the findings from this study are of relevance and use by those in the UK and beyond working develop and sustain more effective ways to support and retain of this vital workforce.