Recent Government policies are designed to make sure that health and social services help us to stay healthy and independent as we get older, or if we become disabled. One way of doing this is to provide more equipment that helps to make life easier and safer, such as a seat in the shower, or rails on the stairs. Equipment like this is usually provided by social services or the NHS after an assessment by an occupational therapist, social worker, community nurse, physiotherapist or other hospital staff.

Due to a shortage of these professionals there can often be delays. In some areas support workers (or assistants) are doing these assessments instead of therapists, specialist social workers and nurses, in order to cut down waiting times. They are usually very experienced but may not always have all the skills for this new work.

The Trusted Assessor Project aimed to find out what skills support workers should have so that they help disabled people and their carers to get the right equipment. Once they have got these skills they can call themselves‘Trusted Assessors’, because they can be trusted to provide equipment that suits people
best.

This information has been put together as a‘Competence Framework’, which can be used to identify the appropriate skills for the work that is to be done.