Lived Experiences of Support Workers. Navigating Work and Family Life During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the UK.

Abstract

Support workers are an ‘invisible’ part of the health sector whose work requires them to continue to work through different events such as pandemics. This thesis focuses on exploring the lived experiences of support workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in England and the strategies they used in order to cope and manage both work and family life while all social restrictions were still in place. The thesis is comprised of a meta-ethnography, a qualitative exploration of the lived experiences of support workers and a proposed supervisory protocol (PSP) for guiding supervisors to assist support workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The meta-ethnography screened 167 articles out of 211 results, identifying four qualitative studies that explored the support workers’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight key themes were identified from studies in the UK and US, which informed a qualitative study, conducted based on the principles of reflexive thematic analysis (RTA). For the qualitative study, fifteen (15) support workers were interviewed sharing their lived experiences of working during COVID-19 and while all COVID-19 restrictions from the government were still in place. Five themes were identified.
The thesis contributes to our understanding of the lived experiences of support workers under extreme health (e.g., pandemic) and societal (e.g., lockdown, social distancing) conditions. This is the first time that research conducted in the UK focuses on support workers undergoing these emotionally challenging experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and while all governmental restrictions were in place.