Problem recruiting male personal assistants — Scope | Disability forum
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Problem recruiting male personal assistants

monka
monka Community member Posts: 8 Listener
Hi I am mum to Dan who is a physically disabled electric wheelchair user.  We are having some real problems recruiting male personal assistants. The quality of the people who have applied has been really poor for many reasons, inexperience,  age not right, no personality, and many other reasons.  I am of the opinion that to recruit the right sort of people we have to pay them more.  I would be interested in how other people have resolved this problem.

Comments

  • Paultall77
    Paultall77 Community member Posts: 1 Listener
    Hi, could I ask what area of the country you are in? 
  • monka
    monka Community member Posts: 8 Listener
  • abstractLucas
    abstractLucas Community member Posts: 76 Connected
    edited October 2016
    Unfortunately I think you're right - to get a good PA who is reliable etc you do have to offer a good rate of pay, and with personal budgets etc that isn't easy.  May I ask how old your son is?  One solution is you and your son get a personal budget from children's or adults social care is to (hopefully temporarily) alter the number of hours of care you're getting, in order to be able to pay more per hour - so if you get (for example) £60 a week which you are told will pay for 6 hours of care, instead of £10 an hour, advertise the post offering £15 an hour for 4 hours instead.  If this means you are able to recruit someone who is a better fit for you and your son, put together a list of reasons for this and request a review of the Personal Budget, explaining that you cannot get 6 hours of high quality care for the £60 you get a week, and that instead you need £90.  Document how many people you interviewed when you were offering the lower amount, why they weren't suitable etc.
    Don't know if it will work, but worth a try!
    Also (and feel free to tell me it's none of my business) but is there a reason you feel it must be a male PA?  Statistically, there are less men than women in this sort of work, so have a think about whether gender is an important enough aspect for you to immediately discount the majority of the workforce.  I understand that sometimes when there are personal care tasks a male worker might help your son feel less self conscious, but I worked with disabled teens for some years and often carried out personal care and honestly, if you find someone who is able to behave in a professional but friendly manner I don't think gender has to always be such a big deal.
    Lucas
  • monka
    monka Community member Posts: 8 Listener
    Hi Lucas thanks for your reply.  My son is 30 yrs old with a complex physical disability.  He has been away to another city to university and received 24/7 care. On returning to our home town to study for anMBA,  this was cut to 100 per week.  My son is working on setting up a small business at present so needs personal care and help with other aspects of his life including help with social aspects too.  The rate has recent,y been cut from £8.32 per hours to £7.20 per hour to make the rate of pay uniform in out city.  This has not taken into account my sons additional needs.   He has been told to tell his current PAs who have worked for him for a number of years that they will have to take a 15 percent drop in salary,  I find this an unacceptable,situation as we are really struggling to attract the right sort of person and feel that this hinders  our ability to recruit at the right level.  I am currently proving most of my sons personal care and at 65 I am finding this very challanging.  The council are not interested in the fact the male recruitment is much more difficult and as it is a male carer that my son wants we are at stalemate. 
    Monica. 

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