Workforce Mental Health & Wellbeing

We are hugely proud of the phenomenal work being undertaken by adult social care staff, social workers, and unpaid carers to care for and protect vulnerable people across the region. We recognise the significant cost that has been bourne by many across the workforce, and the need to ensure that everyone has access to support and resources to improve and maintain their mental health and wellbeing, where required.

Adult social care employers and managers have a big role in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of their staff. We have developed a short, 2-page toolkit to help managers understand this role, and direct them to practical resources to do this.

Unpaid carers don’t always have an employers or manager to provide support, and so we’ve also developed a short, 2-page toolkit specifically for unpaid carers, highlighting some of the main resources that may be helpful for them. However, at least 1 in 9 workers across the whole economy do have unpaid caring responsibilities. This means all employers and managers have a responsibility to understand and support the specific mental health and wellbeing needs of their carer employees. For unpaid carers who are in employment, we hope this briefing is something you can use to start a discussion with your manager about your mental health and wellbeing needs.

At NW ADASS we have tried to draw together some of the huge number of mental health and wellbeing offers available for the paid and unpaid adult social care workforce to help people navigate these and find those that will be most helpful to them. Below you will find three directories of national, regional and sub-regional offers, tailored slightly for adult social care workers, adult social work workers, and unpaid carers. We have provided each of these in two versions: a PDF document that can be directly shared with people, and a Word Document, that localities and employers can adapt to include local resources and offers also.

We would really welcome any feedback on these resources, including feedback on any of the offers we’ve identified, or suggestions for additional resources to include in future updates. Please emails nwadass@wigan.gov.uk with any feedback.