The following article has been taken from the Disabled People Against Cuts website. The original article can be found at Think Local Act Personal.

It has been a tough Xmas period, and fundamental changes need to take place to my support set-up, to ensure that I am not left in the same predicament at this time next year.

In order to do this, it is absolutely essential that I am able to employ a middle-manager, who will act as an assistant to me, and I must employ extra staff who can form an effective bank support-team. This will take up all of my energy over the next few months, but I am determined to see that justice is served and that I am able to stop living a half-life. I need, and deserve to live a life in which I can achieve my ambitions and goals.

I am not a humbug, but I do get very depressed at Xmas time as the support I need is not there. I totally understand that my staff need and deserve time off from work, to spend with their families and friends, but I want to build a support network that can cope with absences for whatever valid reason.

It is not as easy as it sounds though, as the UK is experiencing a social-care crisis at the moment, which makes surveys like the one below, even more important. Please do share this survey with any individual employers of Personal Assistants, that you may know.

Only by working together, can we hope to make a difference.

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Are you an individual employer with Personal Assistants (PAs)? Recent evidence suggests that recruitment and retention of PAs is proving difficult up and down the country.  TLAP, with the Local Government Association and other partners, has developed an on-line survey to give us all a better understanding of this. This is the opportunity to tell us about how the changing situation over the last couple of years has affected you.

The survey was designed by people who use PAs and is an important opportunity to get a clearer picture of the challenges faced by employers and to better understand what might be needed to improve the situation moving into 2022. Please help in spreading the word so that as many people as possible have the opportunity to share their views using the survey

This survey is now live with a closing date of Sunday 23rd January 2022.   The weblink to the survey can be found here or you can cut and paste into a browser here – https://research.local.gov.uk/jfe/form/SV_5hlpAkUlzT1zUsm

 For more info, support and alternative ways to contribute, please note;

• People completing the survey can look at the questions before they undertake it. You can look at a pdf here. (opens new window) People can move back and forwards in the survey, but once ‘submit’ is pressed, the feedback can’t be changed. The survey is written in easy read/plain English which should work for most people.  The survey should also work reasonably well on screen readers, tablets and phones but anyone experiencing technical problems can email liz.greer@local.gov.uk for support. It’s fine to do the survey with different people more than once from the same computer (IP address).
• For anyone who finds the survey too challenging to complete, In Control have kindly offered the alternative of a one-hour online discussion meeting on the 5th January to talk through the survey questions, and discuss the challenges people are facing in recruiting and retaining PAs. There are two meetings – please should book a place in advance using the links below:

 Wednesday 5th January 2022 at 1.00 

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAuce6urDwsE9QFtfml8AhRch8mTIPZ3_We (opens new window)

Wednesday 5th January 2022 at 6.00pm

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZckcOqqrzgoGtXBRBU89EtMBzjTWRY_5vO5 (opens new window)

• Finally, if anyone is keen to participate but can’t do the survey, or join one of the In Control meetings, Liz Greer and Martin Walker from TLAP will be happy to support alternative arrangements to enable participation, so please feel free to get in touch at  liz.greer@local.gov.uk or martin.walker@tlap.org.uk .