Moving Social Work

The Moving Social Work programme aims to create resources and co-produce strategies for the education of the social workers of today and tomorrow. This project will make the first resources to educate social work training and provide post-qualified social workers with the tools to promote physical activity to and for Disabled people.

Having begun in November 2020, the project is currently moving through four stages (scoping, content production, effectiveness testing and final production). We will aim for a national rollout by developing knowledge and testing the developed resources. The entire project is being co-produced with a team comprised of practising social workers, social work lecturers, social work students, carers and Disabled people.”

Phase two of the Moving Social Work programme began in January 2024. The research-backed and co-produced resources have been developed within phase one, and delivery to universities and practice learning environments within local authorities is underway. In addition, we will be gaining data to support our consideration of a suitable pilot site to scale up the training programme work to enable focused delivery of the resource training. This will provide an opportunity to embed the training into direct practice and take key learning from the feedback and experiences of practitioners and Disabled people, thus supporting national rollout development. The re-formation of the Advisory Board will provide guidance to the Project Management Team regarding embedding physical activity promotion for disabled people in social work university/college education and Continued Professional Development (CPD) training. The Board will support keeping the direction and strategy of the project under review, ensuring national developments, innovations, and policy initiatives in relevant fields and that opportunities to promote the project’s work are being considered. These will be the key aspects that will be focused on within the next twelve months.