Literature Review on determining appropriate caseloads and workloads for Children’s Disability Network Teams

Literature Review on determining appropriate caseloads and workloads for Children’s Disability Network Teams

The aim of this literature review was to examine the international literature for guidelines or best practice recommendations for determining appropriate caseloads or workloads for interdisciplinary teams that deliver children’s disability services.

The literature indicated that there is limited evidence and guidance around determining appropriate caseloads and workloads.

The literature identified a clear shift towards adopting a workload rather than a caseload approach to service planning. Caseload approaches are generally not accepted as accurate or effective measures of therapists’ productivity as they do not recognise the complexity of therapy roles in current best practice. The Workload approach, on the other hand, has been promoted as a means of enabling more efficient and effective service delivery that aligns with best practice. The literature highlighted the numerous consequences of unmanageable caseloads and workloads including high levels of stress and burnout among staff.

A small number of tools and guidelines that various professions use to calculate or determine caseloads and workloads were identified although these were primarily for individual therapists rather than for multi-, inter-, or trans-disciplinary teams.

The literature highlighted the inefficiency of traditional ‘counting methods’, such as relying on a Caseload approach for service planning. It is recommended that a workload analysis is conducted to inform appropriate caseloads.