Individual employers in receipt of Personal Health Budgets employing personal assistants report

Data correct as at March 2022 

Next update due: March 2023

This data visualisation and report provides more information about the personal assistant workforce and the experiences of the Personal Health Budget (PHB) holders who employ them. It includes key figures about the size and profile of the PHB personal assistant workforce, turnover rates, pay rates and other workforce information.

 

Downloading the visualisation and notes about the data

• You can also download a PDF or PowerPoint version by clicking on the arrow found at the bottom right of the visualisation.
• There are notes about the data when you hover over the ( i ) in the visualisation.
• For information about how workforce estimates are created or rounding and suppression rules please visit our webpage on methodology.
• If you require data that isn’t available in the visualisation or report below, please contact us.

 

Key findings

• It is estimated that 25,000 people in receipt of Personal Health Budgets (PHBs) were individual employers and they were employing around 75,000 personal assistants.
• Individual employers in receipt of a PHB had on average, 3.21 PAs each.
• PAs that were employed by people in receipt of PHBs had, on average, 1.22 PA jobs (22% of PAs employed by people in receipt of PHBs held more than 1 PA job).
• The average turnover rate of PAs employed by people in receipt of PHBs was 23.1%. This was considerably lower than the turnover rate for care workers in the independent sector (35.3%) and higher than adult social care PAs, at 18.3%.
• The average vacancy rate of PAs employed by people in receipt of PHBs was 12.2%. This was lower than the rate amongst adult social care PAs, which was 13.1%, but both were higher than the vacancy rate amongst care workers (9.8%).
• Around 15% of PAs employed by people in receipt of PHBs were on zero-hours contracts. This was much lower than PAs working with social care funded employers (21%) and care workers in the independent sector (35%).
• The mean hourly pay rate for PAs employed by people in receipt of PHBs was £10.20 (as at February 2022). This was higher than the mean hourly rate for care workers in the independent sector (£9.56 as at December 2021).

 

 

Further resources

• For more information about PAs employed in the social care sector please see the Individual employers and personal assistants topic page.
• For more information about direct payment recipients, trend information and other individuals employer their own staff, please see the size and structure of the adult social sector and workforce report, chapter 4.
• Skills for Care has a range of resources to support individual employers and personal assistants in our information hub.

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