Employing personal assistants is a way people can have choice and control over care and support arrangements; focusing on what’s important to them.
An individual employer is a person directly employing a personal assistant for their care and support. This is usually done using a direct payment from a local authority, a personal health budget from the NHS or their own money (or a combination).
Skills for Care has a range of support to help individual employers with recruiting, managing, developing and supporting personal assistants.
In this section you’ll find our Employing personal assistants toolkit. It can help individual employers to think about their responsibilities as an employer, from before recruitment through to when a personal assistant is in post.
Within the toolkit you’ll find links to further information and templates that can be downloaded and tailored to fit your circumstances.
We also have an Individual employer and personal assistants training guide to guide you through upskilling yourself and your PA.
This is the only path for true independence, choice and control.
Nadia Clarke
Individual employer
Employing PAs Toolkit
Our Employing personal assistants toolkit will help you to think about your responsibilities as an employer, and includes guidance, templates and resources about recruiting, training and managing your team.
Individual Employer Funding
This funding can be used to cover training costs to develop your skills as an employer, direct costs of completing training/qualifications, hiring replacement support whilst your usual PA is attending training courses and travel.
Funded training available through user-led organisations
Skills for Care has awarded funding to a number of organisations to offer training for individual employers and their personal assistants.
Find out more about the training on offer as well as contact details of the organisations.