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Laurence Clark
Laurence juggles stand-up comedy with family life. He聮s previously toured an anti-Jim Davidson show and been called a 聭sit-down comic聮 by Cherie Blair - which was nothing compared to what he calls her! You can catch up with all Laurence's activities on his .
PA required: apply here
27th April 2009
Laurence Clark has recently gone through the stressful process of looking for a new personal assistant.
For me, switching personal assistants is a bit like balancing on one leg on top of a tower of children's building blocks, whilst somebody far below me removes one of those blocks and swaps it for another. It's difficult to get on with the business of working and actually having a life when the essential support I rely on so much is changing.
I've always considered myself very fortunate in that I have never had to rely on a traditional 'care' service provided by an agency. From the age of eighteen, I've always been in control of my own support fund and been able to use it to employ whoever I want as a personal assistant. This has meant that I've never had to spend a morning hanging around waiting for a 'home carer' to arrive late, give me five minutes of their time and then dash off to attend to the next poor sod on their work schedule.
On the whole, what I need is support with housework and getting around, as opposed to what some might call 'personal care'. I always send potential PAs a detailed description of what they would be expected to do, and more importantly a list of things that the job does not entail. I've even tried advertising in the local newspaper under different job categories such as 'administration' or 'cleaner' instead of 'social care'. But no matter what I do, inevitably I always seem to get my fair share of applicants offering to give me medication and wipe my bum.
Lots of disabled people don't bother with the rigmarole of advertising for PAs. Instead, they simply ask friends or even family members to work for them. I've tried this approach myself in the past, but it hasn't always worked out. The relationship you have with someone fundamentally changes when they become your PA, since typically we tend not to tell our friends what to do or boss them around all the time 鈥 at least not if we still want to keep them as friends. So whilst I've had PAs who have later gone on to become good friends, I've found that the reverse doesn't really work.
This time I decided to involve my wife Adele in choosing my PA, since it's always good to have a second opinion. Also, whoever we get is going to be working in our home, so it's only fair that she gets a say in selecting them. The other decision I made was to pay a broker to organise the recruitment process on our behalf because of the sheer amount of time and paperwork involved.
I've always considered myself very fortunate in that I have never had to rely on a traditional 'care' service provided by an agency. From the age of eighteen, I've always been in control of my own support fund and been able to use it to employ whoever I want as a personal assistant. This has meant that I've never had to spend a morning hanging around waiting for a 'home carer' to arrive late, give me five minutes of their time and then dash off to attend to the next poor sod on their work schedule.
On the whole, what I need is support with housework and getting around, as opposed to what some might call 'personal care'. I always send potential PAs a detailed description of what they would be expected to do, and more importantly a list of things that the job does not entail. I've even tried advertising in the local newspaper under different job categories such as 'administration' or 'cleaner' instead of 'social care'. But no matter what I do, inevitably I always seem to get my fair share of applicants offering to give me medication and wipe my bum.
Lots of disabled people don't bother with the rigmarole of advertising for PAs. Instead, they simply ask friends or even family members to work for them. I've tried this approach myself in the past, but it hasn't always worked out. The relationship you have with someone fundamentally changes when they become your PA, since typically we tend not to tell our friends what to do or boss them around all the time 鈥 at least not if we still want to keep them as friends. So whilst I've had PAs who have later gone on to become good friends, I've found that the reverse doesn't really work.
This time I decided to involve my wife Adele in choosing my PA, since it's always good to have a second opinion. Also, whoever we get is going to be working in our home, so it's only fair that she gets a say in selecting them. The other decision I made was to pay a broker to organise the recruitment process on our behalf because of the sheer amount of time and paperwork involved.
through the PA application forms聽聽聽聽
In total, we had 65 responses to the job advert, out of which 25 sent back completed application forms. As ever, sifting through the responses was a depressing experience. You tend to look for people who come across as open-minded and willing to take instructions, which pretty much rules out anyone who says they've done the NVQ (National Vocational Qualification) in social care, since from experience these people tend to come with quite a rigid view of what a PA should and shouldn't do. Also, I always get a few applicants who have very obviously only applied in order to demonstrate to the Job Centre that they are actively seeking employment so they can hang onto their Job Seeker's Allowance. These are the ones who don't bother filling out 90% of the form.
My favourite this time was an applicant whom Adele had mistakenly put in the short-list pile at first, having completely missed the little essay he'd taken upon himself to write for us on the back of his form in order to demonstrate his excellent grasp of disability equality issues. He said that he had been "investigating" disabled people and had "gathered much useful information about people who've had car crashes, people with one leg, people with no legs, people whose brains don't work 鈥" His list went on for one whole side of A4 paper. I was almost tempted to invite him for an interview solely to gather useful information for my own 'investigation' into weirdos I want to avoid at all cost.
My favourite this time was an applicant whom Adele had mistakenly put in the short-list pile at first, having completely missed the little essay he'd taken upon himself to write for us on the back of his form in order to demonstrate his excellent grasp of disability equality issues. He said that he had been "investigating" disabled people and had "gathered much useful information about people who've had car crashes, people with one leg, people with no legs, people whose brains don't work 鈥" His list went on for one whole side of A4 paper. I was almost tempted to invite him for an interview solely to gather useful information for my own 'investigation' into weirdos I want to avoid at all cost.
this be the PA applicant they're looking for?聽聽聽聽
We chose to hire a room to conduct the interviews, having found in the past that sometimes people don't take it as seriously if you invite them to come to your home. On one occasion, an applicant even brought their five year-old son with them, who then proceeded to cry all the way through the conversation. There was something about shouting the questions over the background noise of a wailing child which suggested that this person wasn't going to work out.
In the end we invited six people to come and meet us, out of which three actually turned up on the day and only one proved to be suitable for the role. This in itself was a great relief, because if we hadn't found anyone who was right for the role then we would have had to start the whole recruitment palaver all over again.
Although a personal assistant is generally thought to be quite a low-skilled and menial job, out of a possible 65 people who showed an interest in being my PA just one person actually fitted the bill. I guess there's a lot more to it than people think.
In the end we invited six people to come and meet us, out of which three actually turned up on the day and only one proved to be suitable for the role. This in itself was a great relief, because if we hadn't found anyone who was right for the role then we would have had to start the whole recruitment palaver all over again.
Although a personal assistant is generally thought to be quite a low-skilled and menial job, out of a possible 65 people who showed an interest in being my PA just one person actually fitted the bill. I guess there's a lot more to it than people think.
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Comments
Im interviewing for my FIRST PA on wednesday. Im really nervous, i had 5 replys - interviewing 3 of them Not really sure what to say or do - will post on message board.
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Actually, I have to say that the homecare agency I use are generally very good. I know that goes against the grain, but I feel it important that we shouldn't tar all of them with the same brush.
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Hi Laurence,
Thanks for a very informative post...
Although I don't have any direct experience of using PA's myself, I was recently asked by my friend Rick if I had any ideas on how to search for new PA staff. He asked me if I would help by trying to find a more effective way of advertising so I thought I would share our experience so far and ask if you or anyone else on this forum had any ideas or advice about recruiting PA's.
So far, Rick's been employing his own PA's according to how many he can find through private advertising and the rest of the time he has to resort to using 鈥渃are鈥 agencies. Although these agencies do occasionally send people who turn out to be pretty good at filling the PA role... more often than not they will just send people who are used to working in a 鈥渃aring鈥 role or think that Rick needs a nurse or companion.
Another problem with the agency is the higher turnover of staff and that means that Rick is constantly having to train people to use his hoist for example and to get used to his requirements.
One alternative to using a care agency is to advertise and employ your own staff but even then its proved to be pretty difficult to find staff that have even a basic understanding of the social model of disability and are willing and open to learning the new skills required.
Despite all this it seems that there ARE people out there who have the right approach to the role of personal assistant and would be willing to learn and take instructions accordingly but the problem for a service user is finding and retaining those people.
So if there are suitable candidates out there, surely its just a case of finding the right place to advertise, writing a suitable job description and hopefully attracting the right people? To this end Rick has spent a lot of time thinking about job descriptions and searching for places to advertise. He's currently looking for a recruitment agency who can demonstrate that they know the difference between 鈥渃arer鈥 and 鈥淧A鈥... and if they do then they might just be able to find the right people for the job!
In the meantime, if anyone has any other ideas or thoughts about PA recruitment please feel free to share them....
In addition to all of the above I was shocked to find that, in their wisdom, the local Health Authority were paying care agencies about 拢14/hour to send (often untrained and unsuitable) staff that were receiving about 拢7/hour in pay.
In stark contrast to this, when Rick employs his own staff through direct payments, he can not only recruit people according to his own specific needs (with ongoing training, building effective working relationships), but he can pay them 拢8/hour and give them a contract etc.
So if you do the maths, based on 24/7 PA's that's an astonishing 拢6 extra every hour that the Health Authority pays a care agency per service user, compared with direct payments.
Over a year that works out at 拢52,416 per service user that's being spent providing largely inadequate and ineffective services. Wouldn't that money be better spent on training people to work as PA's instead of lining the pockets of care agencies?
Thanks for reading
Dave Clarke
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