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

Abstract

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.

‘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

“…A strong theme of the interviews was that PAs appreciated being connected to a supportive and pro-active broker service or LA organisation and having the opportunity to access information, peer knowledge-sharing/networking, training and potentially emergency support. This chimes with findings from Leverton et al, [ 26 ] who conducted interviews with disability support broker agency representatives outlining a range of services available during the pandemic for PA employers , such as information sharing, advocacy, befriending services or peer support hubs. These authors described how such services had been reduced or ceased due to austerity measures pre-Covid-19 and discussed how the pandemic had highlighted the need and potential for specific services to be commissioned to encourage joined up working between disability support organisations and local/central government.…”