Caring in Covid-19: Personal Assistants’ Changing Relationships with their Clients’ Family Members

Manthorpe, Jill; Samsi, Kritika; Norrie, Caroline; Woolham, John

doi:10.31389/jltc.77

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…In this present study, family members had taken over much of PAs' work, with some PAs considering this would be unsustainable (Manthorpe et al, 2021). This confirms others' findings suggesting that encouragement for care workers needs to be sector specific.…”

Section: Vaccinessupporting

confidence: 85%

“…In this present study, family members had taken over much of PAs’ work, with some PAs considering this would be unsustainable (Manthorpe et al., 2021 ). This confirms others’ findings (Department of Health Northern Ireland, 2020 ; Giebel et al., 2020 ; Scottish Parliament, 2020 ) of the extra work for family carers during Covid‐19.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Data in this present paper come from a study of PAs undertaken in Spring 2020 during the first UK Covid‐19 lockdown in England (see Woolham et al., 2020 ). It investigated what steps, including infection control procedures, PAs were taking to protect themselves, their families, and their clients and how the pandemic was impacting on their work relationships with employers but also their families (Manthorpe et al., 2021 ). This present paper focuses on an arising theme; PAs’ knowledge, understanding and views of their part in infection control in these early months of Covid‐19.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Personal Assistants’ role in infection prevention and control: Their experiences during the Covid‐19 pandemic

Norrie

Woolham

Samsi

et al. 2021

Health Social Care Comm

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Personal Assistants (PA) or client‐hired workers are directly employed by people needing care and support, often making use of government funding. In the context of Covid‐19, questions emerged about how this workforce is supported to practice safely. This paper reports PAs’ understanding and views of infection control during the early months of the Covid‐19 pandemic in England. Telephone interviews were undertaken with 41 PAs between 16th April and 21st May 2020. PAs were recruited from a sample that had participated in a previous study in 2014–16. Interview questions focused on changes arising from the pandemic. Data were transcribed and analysed using Framework analysis. This paper focuses on PAs’ perceptions of their role and responsibilities in preventing and managing infection. Arising themes were identified about barriers and facilitators affecting infection control in five areas: accessing information, social isolation, handwashing, hygiene, personal protective equipment and potential attitude to vaccines. Infection prevention and control are under‐researched in the home care sector generally and efforts are needed to develop knowledge of how to manage infection risks in home settings by non‐clinically trained staff such as PAs and how to engage home care users with these efforts, especially when they are the direct employers.

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Section: Vaccinessupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Personal Assistants’ role in infection prevention and control: Their experiences during the Covid‐19 pandemic

Norrie

Woolham

Samsi

et al. 2021

Health Social Care Comm

Self Cite

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“…This is in contrast with the initial premise of the ILM and the notion of choice and control afforded to DP users. However, learning from the challenges posed by Covid‐19, some level of regulation or registration may be warranted (albeit with close monitoring and evaluation) (Manthorpe et al, 2021 ), particularly when situations arise where individual employers and directly employed workers would benefit from greater connectedness with the LAs that are funding this transaction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons learned from the impact of Covid‐19 on the work of disability support organisations that support employers of social care personal assistants in England

Leverton

Samsi

Woolham

et al. 2022

Health Social Care Comm

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Social care Personal Assistants (PAs) are directly employed by individuals to assist with activities of daily living such as help or support with personal care, shopping, household tasks and community participation. This option is encouraged by UK public funding. In England, disabled people's support organisations initially offered assistance with such arrangements, although numbers doing this have declined. The Covid-19 pandemic provided the opportunity to ask those remaining organisations providing support for PA employers about their activities during this time and the questions being posed to them by PA employers. This paper reports data from 15 interviews undertaken March-July 2021 with disability support organisation representatives. We identified one overarching theme 'Working to prevent and challenge marginalisation of PA employers', with three related subthemes: (1) Advocating for the voice of a forgotten group; (2) Needing to be proactive and (3) Adapting to new tasks and ways of working. Participant accounts focused on representing the needs of disabled people to the authorities and providing concise, timely and accurate information to PA employers, particularly around the use of public funds during Covid-19. Remote working amplified the digital-divide, resulting in these organisations working hard to ensure PA employers received important information about their support options. Befriending services and Covid-hubs were established by some organisations to reduce isolation and risks of poor mental health amongst PA employers. Many of the challenges facing PA employers existed pre-pandemic but were perceived to have been heightened during it, reflecting the value of and need for the work of these local support organisations. Our findings suggest areas where effective contingency planning drawn from closer collaboration between disability support organisations and central and local government might usefully be focussed. The potential for specific services or organisations to be commissioned to provide such support is discussed.

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“…The first study focussed on PAs' work, pay and conditions, training, and multi-agency working [19][20][21]. We re-interviewed 41 of this group for a second time between April and May 2020, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic about how their working lives had been impacted [22,23]. We returned to this cohort for a third time from December 2021-April 2022 to explore the longerterm implications of the pandemic and how they were affecting PAs' working lives.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘You’re out on a limb, on your own’: Social care personal assistants’ (PAs’) reflections on working in the Covid-19 pandemic ‐ implications for wider health and care services

Norrie,

Luijnenburg,

Moriarty

et al. 2023

PLoS ONE

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Context In England, Personal Assistants (PAs) are part of an international trend towards state funded but client-hired or directly employed care workers. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted and exacerbated pre-existing risks and advantages of this arrangement for both PAs and people with care and support needs. Objectives We aim to report PAs’ reflections on their experiences of working since the pandemic started in 2020 and highlight the longer-term implications for health and care services. Methods We undertook a large-scale, qualitative study in 2016–17 involving interviews with 104 PAs about their working lives. We re-interviewed PAs from this group twice to ask how the pandemic had affected them, once at the start of the pandemic in Spring 2020 and again in December 2021 –April 2022. This article reports findings from the last set of interviews undertaken with 38 PAs. Thematic analysis was conducted of interviews in which PAs discussed changes in tasks and responsibilities, pay and conditions, training, relationships and plans. Findings This article focuses on the following themes: PAs’ perceptions of their outsider status; support and training needs; job security; and whether PAs have an appetite for regulation to provide greater professional standing and connections. Limitations Interviews in this study were carried out during the Covid-19 pandemic over the telephone or virtually rather than in person so may have missed certain body language or informal relationship building. The sample may be under-representative of non-British PAs. We were unable to triangulate participants’ accounts with others’. Implications This study highlights the importance of national and local government including the PA workforce in planning for national emergencies. Consideration should be given by policy makers and local health and care systems to how PAs can be better supported than currently.

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Caring in Covid-19: Personal Assistants’ Changing Relationships with their Clients’ Family Members

Cited by 4 publications

References 25 publications

Personal Assistants’ role in infection prevention and control: Their experiences during the Covid‐19 pandemic

Personal Assistants’ role in infection prevention and control: Their experiences during the Covid‐19 pandemic

Lessons learned from the impact of Covid‐19 on the work of disability support organisations that support employers of social care personal assistants in England

‘You’re out on a limb, on your own’: Social care personal assistants’ (PAs’) reflections on working in the Covid-19 pandemic ‐ implications for wider health and care services

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