DEVELOPING THE ROLE OF PERSONAL ASSISTANTS

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DEVELOPING THE ROLE OF PERSONAL ASSISTANTS

• Margaret Flynn
• University of Sheffield
• 28 March 2006, LSE

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Aims

• To examine how personal assistance is defined
• To explore the experience and training needs of
  Personal Assistants in two localities in the NW

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Methods

• Discussions with advisory group
• Interviews with 16 Direct Payments Recipients and
  14 Personal Assistants checked out with
  interviewees

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Some Introductions

• 14 Direct Payments Recipients and 2 who wanted
  to get Direct Payments
• 14 Personal Assistants

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Peoples pre-Direct Payments experience

• Direct Payments Recipients gave many examples of
  damaging and inflexible services before they got
  Direct Payments

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Personal Assistants skills and knowledge

• Key words personal care household tasks
  personal knowledge communication listening
  sharing activities and pastimes being empathic
  and sympathetic trust
• People skills

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Recruitment

• Recruitment from home care services and from the
  same pool of domiciliary home care providers
• Pot luck
• Concerns about the inadequate rates of pay

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Training Personal Assistants

• 11/14 Direct Payments Recipients favoured the
  employment of people without relevant experience
  or formal training and with common sense
• Training opportunities neither accessed nor funded

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However

• Most Personal Assistants had relevant work and
  family experience
• Many had relevant qualifications
• 8 asserted that they had no training needs

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What is expected of Personal Assistants?

• Job descriptions?
• Changes over time
• Friends or employees?
• Community of practitioners?

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The unsought characteristics of Personal
Assistants

• Discourtesies
• Lack of common sense
• Abuse of biographical knowledge
• Absent boundaries
• Unannounced absences
• Getting shut

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HR matters

• Personal assistance is neither wholly
  professional nor wholly informal
• Not everyone wanted to be in charge

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Service provision

• Are women/ people from ethnic minorities/ people
  in less prosperous localities being assessed
  fairly?
• Recommendation Decisions about levels of service
  support should be explicit

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And finally

• Flynn M (2005) Developing the role of personal
  assistants, freely downloaded from
• www.skillsforcare.org.uk
• (go to Our Projects/Types of Social Care/New
  Types of Worker)