How a dedicated team is helping people with health issues get back into work
Radiographer Malany Kalicharan found her calling by getting involved with the WorkWell initiative, which supports patients who are struggling with starting or returning to employment. She explains to Synergy why radiographers could be key to achieving that goal
By Malany Kalicharan and Glenn Halliday
By Malany Kalicharan and Glenn Halliday
Malany Kalicharan is a radiographer with more than 25 years of experience in healthcare. After qualifying in South Africa in 1999 from the Durban University of Technology, she has spent the last 20 years working in the NHS, across CT, MRI and more specialist areas, such as hysterosalpingography and colonoscopy.
When she later moved into management as a superintendent radiographer for a busy A&E department, she developed a keen interest in the ability to support healthcare outcomes at a broader system level.
Since Covid, Malany has stepped slightly outside of traditional radiography roles through a secondment focused on allied health professional (AHP) workforce strategy in October 2021, which led to a role as project lead for international recruitment for radiography (beginning August 2022 and ending in April 2023).
Having worked across acute, regional and national settings, her passion for healthcare strategy and workforce transformation was clarified. In pursuit of broadening her experience within community and primary care, Malany took on her current role as work and health integration programme manager for the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care Board (LLR) in October 2024, where she focuses on helping people with health barriers to stay in or return to work.
In this role, Malany works on the WorkWell national pilot programme – a service that addresses the rising flow of people out of work, sometimes never to return, in a phenomenon known as ‘work loss’. Launched by the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health and Social Care, the national programme aims to support around 60,000 long-term sick or disabled people to start, stay and succeed in work through integrated work and health support.
Malany and Glenn Halliday, strategic lead for work and health integration, are focused on integrating health and employment programmes into service, improving work outcomes for disabled people and those with health conditions, and bringing residents closer to labour market opportunities and retention of employment.
Glenn Halliday and Malany Kalicharan
Glenn Halliday and Malany Kalicharan
Glenn is focused on the fourth purpose of the Integrated Care Board (ICB) – supporting broader social and economic development. The role leads the partnership relationships with local authorities, public health, Department of Work and Pensions, Department of Health and Social Care, NHS providers, primary care general practice, further and adult education and local enterprise employers within LLR.
Glenn is leading several programmes funded by central government to support residents, through personalisation and preventative care, using evidence-based data on health condition prevalence in the geographical footprint of the ICB. By providing leadership for co-created and co-designed delivery programmes, Glenn helps ensure innovation can adapt to the population’s needs and service delivery.
Malany and Glenn told Synergy more about how radiographers can support initiatives like WorkWell.
Can you tell us about the WorkWell programme?
Malany: Our work with LLR around the WorkWell programme focuses on embedding a prevention-led work and health approach that supports people with health-related barriers into employment, while also enabling the wider system to operate more effectively. The work is grounded in the NHS 10 Year Health Plan’s three shifts: moving from treatment to prevention, hospital to community, and analogue to digital.
In practice, this means working with partners to design non-clinical, community-based support that reduces health inequalities and promotes good work as a determinant of health. A key part of our roles involves monitoring population health and employment data to identify gaps, target support where inequalities are greatest and ensure interventions align with local and neighbourhood priorities. We engage regularly with local, regional and national stakeholders to align with policy direction, share learning and influence system development.
LLR WorkWell Community of Practice Team
LLR WorkWell Community of Practice Team
Day to day, our roles are a mix of strategic coordination and hands-on system enablement. This includes working closely with WorkWell delivery partners, work and health coaches, AHPs and integrated neighbourhood teams to support implementation. We attend and contribute to work and health events at local, regional and national levels, ensuring learning is brought back into the system.
We also arrange and facilitate communities of practice, creating space for peer learning, reflective discussion and consistent approaches across partners. This combination of data-informed planning, partnership working and continuous learning helps ensure the WorkWell programme delivers measurable impact on population health, employment outcomes and health inequalities.
What role can radiographers play in helping individuals at risk of work loss return to work sooner?
Malany: Radiography plays a critical but often under-recognised role in supporting people at risk of work loss to return to work sooner by enabling timely diagnosis, informed clinical decision making and confident rehabilitation planning. Radiographers are also often among the first clinical professionals patients encounter in the diagnostic pathway.
High-quality, timely imaging helps reduce diagnostic uncertainty, which is a major cause of delayed treatment, prolonged absence and patient anxiety. By providing accurate imaging early in the pathway, particularly for musculoskeletal, neurological and trauma-related conditions, radiography supports faster access to appropriate treatment, rehabilitation and work-focused advice.
Importantly, radiography supports safe, graded return-to-work decisions by informing clinicians, employers and occupational health teams about functional capability and recovery progress. In this way, radiography contributes not only to clinical outcomes, but also to economic participation, wellbeing and independence.
What can radiographers do to support this work?
Malany: A radiographer’s role is not to determine fitness for work, but to support clarity, confidence and clinical decision making across the pathway. When imaging services are accessible, well integrated and patient centred, radiography becomes a powerful tool in preventing long-term work loss.
Radiographers can get involved at:
- Clinical practice level – support patients directly by providing clear, reassuring explanations of imaging procedures and findings (within scope), helping reduce anxiety and catastrophising about outcomes.
- Service and pathway level – improving access and flow, and supporting imaging pathways for MSK and work-related conditions.
- Multidisciplinary and system working by supporting integrated pathways where imaging informs work-focused rehabilitation plans.
- Education, leadership and professional influence by sharing best practice through professional networks, conferences and publications. Support any research and audit focused on imaging’s impact on recovery time and return-to-work outcomes.
What have been the main achievements so far?
Glenn: Our initial delivery plan was to target the most deprived and economically inactive areas of LLR (nine wards) – today we have 23 primary care networks out of 26 (88.5 per cent) signed up to deliver WorkWell for their patients.
To mitigate the risk of patients not being able to access WorkWell as their general practice hadn’t signed up, we initiated a ‘Roving Community WorkWell model’, where senior work and health coaches manage consented residents to access the support available or identify patients from self referrals who are registered with a WorkWell general practice.
The Roving Community WorkWell model has been a success in mitigating the above risk but has also allowed us to engage within community groups, Jobcentre Plus sites, career events, adult education centres, community centres, women’s hubs, men’s groups, mental health cafes, Clinical Community Assessment Days (to support waiting list reductions) and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Malany Kalicharan and Glenn Halliday at the WorkWell Learning and Change Network
Malany Kalicharan and Glenn Halliday at the WorkWell Learning and Change Network
From the integration of the work and health coaches to the general practice personalised care team, providing a community of practice for the coaches to establishing training and competency opportunities, reviewing cases and their challenges and involving WorkWell participant engagement has enabled development and improvement of the service.
What’s next on the agenda for the WorkWell programme?
Glenn: Following the Charlie Mayfield report in November 2025 – Keep Britain Working – at LLR, because of the WorkWell pilot, we have been able to support SMEs with a programme that supports employees through their lifecycle of employment when health becomes a barrier to stay or return to work.
After the launch of the Get LLR Working Plan in December 2025, WorkWell offers a front door to low-intensity support for health barriers to employment and a pipeline to other high-intensity programmes: Connect to Work, talking therapies, mental health individual programmes of support and adult education. We are looking to strategically commission a digital single point of access to all programmes offering health employment support.
We will be introducing AHP leadership to support WorkWell. Many PCNs have chosen not to employ occupational therapists and speech and language therapists via the NHS Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme.
What is the role of AHPs in cross-disciplinary initiatives like WorkWell?
Malany: I believe the overall role of radiographers and AHPs in cross-disciplinary initiatives such as work and health integration is to act as connectors between diagnosis, function and real-world outcomes. AHPs are uniquely placed to bridge the gap between clinical care and everyday life, ensuring that health services are not only treating conditions but also supporting people to remain independent, economically active and engaged in their communities.
AHPs bring a holistic, function-focused perspective that complements medical models of care. In initiatives such as WorkWell, this means contributing to pathways that consider how health conditions impact mobility, cognition, endurance and confidence, not just pathology.
Radiographers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and other AHPs collectively support early intervention, prevention and recovery, which are essential to reducing long-term work loss.
At a system level, AHPs should help shape pathway design, influence commissioning and inform service evaluation, ensuring that cross-disciplinary initiatives are clinically grounded, person centred and outcome focused.
Radiographers are uniquely positioned because they often represent a patient’s first or early point of contact with diagnostic services. This gives them a unique opportunity to:
- support early detection and diagnosis, which is fundamental to preventing long-term ill health and worklessness;
- identify functional red flags and wider health concerns during patient interactions, signposting into appropriate support pathways;
- contribute to faster diagnostic pathways that reduce delays to treatment, recovery and return to work; and
- use their system-wide view of diagnostic demand and capacity to inform neighbourhood-level planning and population health strategies.
Radiographers also sit at the intersection of technology, data and patient care. Their expertise in diagnostics, imaging pathways and data interpretation means they can play a strategic role in redesigning pathways that are more integrated, efficient and equitable.
Radiographers’ exposure across specialties, combined with their understanding of acute pressures and community impact, makes them strong contributors to cross-disciplinary initiatives. They can bridge the gap between early diagnosis, clinical intervention and wider work and health outcomes. When embedded into neighbourhood and WorkWell models, radiographers and AHPs help ensure that diagnostics and clinical insight are not siloed but actively support prevention, inclusion and sustainable workforce participation.
What advice would you give to radiographers who are interested in getting involved in programmes like WorkWell?
Malany: Start by recognising the value of your role beyond the imaging department. Radiographers already contribute significantly to patient outcomes, but these initiatives offer an opportunity to influence pathways, prevention and recovery at a broader system level. Build confidence in your transferable skills.
Radiographers often underestimate how transferable their skills are. Experience in clinical decision making, risk management, workflow optimisation, data interpretation, patient communication and multidisciplinary working is highly relevant to cross-disciplinary programmes. Understanding and articulating these skills is an important first step.
Reflect on how your daily practice contributes to outcomes such as timeliness, safety, patient confidence and functional recovery, as these are central to initiatives focused on work, health and prevention.
So recognise your transferable skills, start locally, develop system awareness, invest in leadership development and don’t be afraid to step beyond traditional boundaries – radiographers have far more to offer these initiatives than they often realise.
Find out more about WorkWell
WorkWell is a support service in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland to help patients start, stay and succeed in work. A specialist work and health coach helps to identify physical and/or mental health problems that may be affecting a patient’s chances of keeping or getting a job, and refers them on to other health and care professionals to help with any problems identified.
