Personal Assistants for care - PAs are not easy to find

Local care Ad

This week the hunt for a Personal Care Assistant has reached crescendo. I have issued a P45 to one relocating to North Devon. I have placed an advertisement in a local journal "TheWeekIn" and I have also paid for that.


This will go on for 6 weeks. Personal Care is not easy to advertise. I find that there is very little help locally in Bath and North east Somerset (BaNES) where social services have proven so far to be unaware of the situation.

Last year, my then social worker in a very high pitched and lofty voice had closed my case even when I was saying that there was no money in my Personal Budget to pay for my staff.

I wrote an email to the Lead of team for what the council described the folks who did not live in Bath. They call my area "Wansdyke" that is the old administrative area and also the name of the constituency in parliament.

It does not mean that it is any better. Last year I had been able to recruit four PAs but was only able to pay one. I put in money to top up the account even if they say not to do this. I used to tell the three on the time table that I was inventing money at each time I was calculating the wages.

They covered as well as they could for sickness of children and jury service; even better than a care agency. My pleas were finally heard and I was put in contact with the "Vanguard" team that was assessing Social care in Banes. Had they kept me last on their list of jobs to do?

I was getting very tired as I could not sleep a wink. I spoke to the two ladies that came for two hours and again a week later for two hours. I felt all the time that they were going to stop my Personal Budget and that I would have to get a care company to look after me.

During the second or third visit it was mentioned that I could pay my staff what I wanted including a Christmas Bonus if I had wanted to. So, I did just that to the three on the timetable as they had been good to work for me with no holiday pay for some of them and had covered the work.

Finally, I was given some money backdated to only mid November and told that I would be able to repay myself gradually. I also gave some hours to my fourth PA who I had found via the Jobcentre. We coped with the snow. We coped with the care company CareWatch even when they could not send anyone because of the snow. We cleaned the floor after the doormat was avoided. We called this "Pole vaulting". We did not complain when the door key was lost. We changed the lock. We again not complained when we had to change the key safe; we just claimed VAT back. We were told that we were not able to claim any of that from the Personal Budget.

I found a more helpful company to advise me with staffing and administering the PB called Phoenix. Yet it does not have a bank of PAs of any substance or they want all the work which is allocated. It is better than the Shaw Trust which was as it says doing this

Direct Payments Support - Information, support and guidance on all aspects of receiving and managing a direct payment.
and
Champion Service Users - We actively encourage people who have experience of receiving a direct payment to support us with delivering new services, meeting, presentations, home visits and talking to people who are interested in the service.

My experience is that Phoenix has advised regarding Statutory Holiday Pay (SHP), found a way around the sudden unavailability of Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) checks to individuals who are receiving Personal Budget for social care, and helped me understand the hidden costs of employing PAs. They have at no time said that I was demanding too much....

After 21st July  2010 when I was told I was asking for too much help by the Shaw Trust, I contacted them three times.

First to ask for a CRB check on the PA that I had found via the Jobcentre myself as there robust bank of PA was not substantial. The second time was to ask for a contract for my existing PAs. Then the third time was to ask about "contingencies" that where never there as I had to contribute a lot to keep the payroll going.

Oh dear, I was demanding as I called more to find out about the tax that I was going to pay for my quarterly dues to HMRC. I had paid some staff for a sleeping night of care that is £37.98 and I wanted to know what was the SHP accrued for that. No advice came that was anywhere near what it is: 12.07% of £37.98. So far, I got away with it but I know that my team knows what to expect after my switch to Phoenix...
I better stop today as my fingers find this PA hunt tiring.