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Focused Occupational Support’s approach to occupational stress is unique to the social care sector, as it supports people to accept that working in social care can be demanding, but it’s how those demands are processed that can lead to people experiencing high levels of stress.
From a background in psychology, specialising in occupational and organisational psychology and extensive experience in social care and social care management, Focused Occupational Support (FOS) has evolved. The actual programme of support, The FOS Programme, is targeted at managerial level staff within social care organisations to implement top-down effective support that should increase staff well-being, retention and reduce sickness absence.
The initial development of FOS was a three year stress research project facilitated and supported by Freeways, a registered charity providing support services to adults with learning disabilities in and around the Bristol area. Through the project, a cooperative relationship with Cardiff University’s Centre of Occupational and Health Psychology was established. This enabled us to extend the theories in occupational stress to practical applications, which resulted in an occupational support service being deployed within Freeways. To ensure the research project’s interventions introduced into the occupational support service would extend to the wider social care community, independent stakeholders in the sector were invited to join the project’s steering group. Included were members from CQC, Bristol City Council, Valuing People SW and Care Learning.
Our principal approach was not to eliminate stress but to manage stress adaptively, to inform staff members of likely stressors and the situations in which they may arise and to help them recognise and discern between stressful situations that are in their control and those that are not, or shouldn't be. Results have been astounding, a reduction in sickness absence in the management team by 53%.
The FOS Programme has been specifically developed to extend to the wider social care community in a time and cost effective way. Further information of FOS, the reasoning and research which led to its development can be found on the website. Details of the programme are available by request if you feel FOS could assist your organisation or if you’d just like to make further enquires, please use the contact form provided on the site.
www.focusedoccupationalsupport.org |
