Enablement-focused Wellbeing Assistant roles

This was achieved through:

• Renaming the roles as Wellbeing Assistants.
• Adapting existing job descriptions to include explicit responsibilities pertaining to rehabilitation, enablement and holistic patient assessment.
• Developing a programme of competencies, linked to pay incentives within the level three banding.
• developing a training programme delivered by AHPs to equip staff with skills and knowledge required for new roles, including expectations of Wellbeing Assistants, understanding rehabilitative and enablement approaches, contribution of AHPs, non-pharmacological symptom control strategies for common symptoms such as breathlessness, simple equipment provision, therapeutic manual handing and undertaking a straightforward holistic assessment.
• AHPs providing on the job training and support to Wellbeing Assistants to embed learning into daily practice.

• Following triage by a professional, Wellbeing Assistants undertake straight forward assessments of new patients referred to Wellbeing Services – freeing up AHPs to focus on more complex or specialist assessments.
• Wellbeing Assistants lead generic gym classes – enabling greater numbers of people to access and benefit from rehabilitation services without increased AHP resource.
• Wellbeing Assistants demonstrate improved clinical reasoning, enablement-focused support, champion a rehabilitative approach and have greater job satisfaction.