Home working during the COVID-19 pandemic: The experience of drug and alcohol support workers

Abstract

Background:
Drug and alcohol support workers play a vital role in addressing the growing burden of substance-related harm and mortality. The COVID-19 pandemic led to an abrupt and significant shift towards home working for many in this workforce. This study explores these workers’ home working experiences, addressing a research gap and providing valuable insights for staff, organisations delivering public health services, and service users.
Design and methods:
This qualitative study explores home working experiences of 30 drug and alcohol support workers in northern England during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data collection included innovative digital methods: (1) digital timelines (n = 16); (2) in-depth interviews (n = 17); (3) five focus groups (n = 12). Timeline text was treated as qualitative text data. Interviews and focus groups were recorded, transcribed, and coded. Data were subject to Framework Analysis.
Results:
Seven themes were identified: (1) Difficulty balancing and separating work and home life; (2) Importance of setup, infrastructure and conducive work environment; (3) The move to remote/home working – a process; (4) Convenience and efficiency benefits; (5) Loss of the social – reductions in social connectedness and feelings of isolation; (6) The importance of the ‘office’ for connection, communication, socialising, and information sharing; (7) Managing remotely – the development and implementation of strategies and ways of coping.
Conclusions:
While home working offers some benefits for substance use support workers, providers, and service users, it also introduces significant challenges. Understanding these is critical for service optimisation. A hybrid (in-person/remote) delivery model, combining home and co-located, office-based working may be optimal.

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Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/22799036251381226