Empowering social care and community workers by tracking and visualising resilience, resistance and burnout so their voices drive better decisions and actions that improve outcomes for them and the people they support.
Why is the research needed?
The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on social workers, social care staff, and community and voluntary sector workers across the UK. These workers play a vital role in supporting people and communities, often working in very challenging circumstances and going well beyond their formal job roles. For example, library staff increasingly support people with issues such as mental health, housing, and employment, alongside their traditional services.
Even before the pandemic, many frontline workers were already under significant pressure. The continued need to manage crises alongside everyday services has made it harder for individuals to remain resilient and for organisations to operate sustainably. Social care staff report some of the highest levels of work-related stress in the UK, and evidence shows that wellbeing and work-related quality of life declined sharply during the pandemic. Existing approaches to reducing burnout have often been short-term and have not led to lasting change.
What are we doing?
We will carry out a scoping review of existing research on resilience, resistance, and burnout among social workers, social care workers, and community and voluntary organisation staff. This will include studies that explore the economic impacts of these issues on workers, services, and the people they support, as well as research on the use of visual dashboards in social care and related settings.
We will work with professional practice social media groups to help develop visual dashboards that show real-time and emerging trends in resilience, resistance, and burnout. Using a secure system, anonymised posts from participating groups will be analysed to produce simple, easy-to-understand graphs. We will also develop a visual economic analysis to show how these trends may affect frontline workers, services, and service users. Together, these outputs will contribute toward building a multi-dimensional understanding of workforce resilience, resistance and burnout across Greater London and the East of England.
To help interpret initial findings, we will invite social workers, social care staff, and community and voluntary organisation workers to complete an anonymous online survey. Participants will be asked for their views on the trends identified, possible reasons for changes over time, and how clear and useful they find the visual outputs.
We will also invite frontline workers to take part in focus groups, and managers to take part in interviews, all led by our PPIE Co‑Leads. These discussions will explore survey findings in more depth, including possible triggers for changes in resilience, resistance, and burnout, the economic implications for workers and services, and the usability of the dashboard. All forms of participation will help ensure that the findings reflect real frontline experiences.
How are we working with communities, services and organisations?
Our project is co-produced with people who have lived experience. The team includes PPIE Co‑Leads who are social workers and who experienced frontline service delivery during COVID‑19. They are involved in co-designing, developing, and delivering every stage of the project.
Our PPIE Co‑Leads, alongside a former healthcare worker now working as a researcher, are actively building relationships with networks of social workers, social care staff, and community and voluntary organisation workers across both regions, including peer support workers. This includes collaboration with the Digital and Community Engagement Co‑ordinator for community organisations in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
Ahead of the project, we also recruited five public contributors with diverse backgrounds and experiences, including older adults, people from minority ethnic backgrounds, and people with experience of poor mental and physical health. We are holding staged consultations with this group throughout the project to ensure our work remains grounded in lived experience.
Our Advisory Board includes NHS staff, a clinician from the UK Health Security Agency, and experts in cultural geography, digital analytics, workforce health, and marketing from universities in the UK, USA, and Australia. We are working in partnership with NIHR ARC Pan-London (formerly NIHR ARC North Thames), and the project is listed on the NIHR Research Delivery Network portfolio.
What will the impact and benefits of this research be?
We will develop clear, visual evidence to support decisions about investing in measures that strengthen resilience and resistance and reduce burnout among frontline social care and community organisation workers.
Over time, more responsive and targeted support informed by real-time and predictive trends is expected to contribute to lower burnout, stronger resilience, improved job satisfaction, and better staff retention, with wider benefits for services and the people they support.
What do we have planned for knowledge mobilisation and implementation?
We will co-develop practice-focused recommendations based on the study findings and deliver knowledge exchange workshops to introduce the tracking and predictive system, supported by real-world case study examples.
We will also co-create plain-language implementation guidance and dissemination materials with public partners, ensuring accessibility, cultural responsiveness, and relevance to different audiences. Outputs will include visual summaries, community briefings, short videos, plain English booklets with artwork, training materials, and dissemination through trusted local partners to support meaningful and lasting impact.
Related papers, outputs and resources
We will publish several academic papers in public health, social care, and frontline services journals, beginning with a scoping review.
Findings will be shared with social care, public health, and long‑term care audiences through national and international dissemination activities, including conference presentations and papers, workshops, and practice‑focused events, as well as through relevant research and service networks.
Outputs will include an example visual dashboard showing real-time and predictive trends in resilience, resistance, and burnout, alongside an integrated visualisation of economic impacts, co-designed with community, service, and organisational partners.
Further materials will be shared through our knowledge mobilisation and implementation activities, including visual summaries, community briefings, videos, plain English booklets, and training resources.
Who is involved?
- Co-Leads: Dr Eolene Boyd, University of Cambridge
- Co-Leads: Dr Michela Tinelli, London School of Economics and Political Science
- Dr Henry Musto, University of Cambridge
- Andy Cowan, University of Cambridge
- Dr Calum Mattocks, University of Cambridge
- Dr Liam Saddington, University of Cambridge
- Doris Mutsando, University of Cambridge
- Ndai Nyamazazare, University of Cambridge
- Dr Jacqueline Damant, London School of Economics and Political Science
Advisory group (in-kind):
- Professor Jagdip Singh, Case Western Reserve University, USA
- Professor Fei Guo, Macquarie University, Australia
- Professor Chris Baumann, Macquarie University, Australia
- Dr Daniel Robins, University of Oxford
- Dr Jonathan Goodman, University of Cambridge
- Professor David Stilwell, University of Cambridge
- Dr Angelique Mavrodaris, UK Health Security Agency and University of Cambridge
- Dr Muzaffer Kaser, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust and University of Cambridge
Get in contact
Email Katia Asfalto or Eolene Boyd at ka561@medschl.cam.ac.uk or emb43@medschl.cam.ac.uk.
This project is funded by the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR209616T Programme Development grant)
