Wanted : A Very Personal Assistant

BBC Three recently produced a two part documentary entitled “Wanted : A Very Personal Assistant” in which four young, ambitious, disabled people were charted recruiting people their own age to assist with their care. Following the airing of part 1 on 24th July 2015, Liz Hutchins of PASS wrote an article commenting on the same for Community Care website.  Following publication of the article, Russ Smith of CarePair, who was instrumental in the making of the documentary and also featured prominently in it, posted a response. The original article and Russ’s response can be viewed here.  

As you will see, in the interest of representing the perspective of Personal Assistants, PASS are keen to address the various points in Russ’s response in full – so here goes!

Good evening Russ.

Firstly, let me say I really enjoyed watching “Wanted : A Very Personal Assistant”.  Not just allowing a stranger into your life to assist with such personal matters, but also a camera crew to give the world a window into your life takes impressive courage.  Also, whether the partnerships succeeded or otherwise, it was really interesting seeing how CarePair can assist people needing to recruit a PA and how the employer/employee relationship can change over time.

Turning to your response to my article on Community Care’s website, although you quite rightly say you know nothing about me or what I do, your assumptions that I have never had to employ care services for myself or have someone look after my personal needs are correct. However, I would not consider myself a spectator.  I, like you, have worked alongside and assisted many hundreds of employers with recruiting, employing and retaining Personal Assistants in addition to providing those PAs with training and support. Further, the team at PASS can count supporting people with learning disabilities and over ten years of working with Direct Payments recipients in various ways amongst their experience.

Whilst I had intended to deal with each of the points you make in your response in turn, I’m not sure this is entirely necessary.   In short, it is important to emphasise that we are coming from two very different angles. I understand that the programme was intended to be from the employer’s perspective and think this was portrayed well and in a thought provoking way, identifying the extent of the challenges of employing a PA. However, as a representative of PASS, for me it is a case of flipping each scenario on its head and asking the question: ‘So what about the PA?’

The driver behind many of the comments in my article which you have taken issue with, is my background in Direct Payments.  Having been involved in supporting the resolution of a number of grievances and employment tribunal cases, I can see how much of what was covered in the documentary could lead to a difficult situation arising between an employer and their PA.

In PASS’s experience, blurred boundaries are one of the most common causes of issues between employers and PAs.  At one point in the documentary, Jasmine comments that she’s “happy for my carer to get absolutely hammered, because it makes it more fun.  But if I get ill I need someone to be serious and to look after me”.  Statements such as this highlight where choosing a PA based on the potential for friendship can cause difficulties.  Whilst knowing when to be a friend and when to be a professional could be considered to be a life skill, it is one which is easier to master when your personal/professional parameters are more clearly defined.  It is also not a life skill which comes naturally to everyone.  Your own relationship with your PA, Russ, appears to be one which works extremely well.  You have managed to recruit someone who has not only become your friend, but who assists you, where required, in a capable and professional manner, no doubt in part due to your expert guidance.  (It’s worth mentioning here that at no point did I suggest that you are incapable of training your PA.)  However, it’s important to remember that not all PAs are fortunate enough to work for a “correctly supported and decent employer” such as yourself.  It is particularly in these cases where formal training, and support, can assist a PA to maintain a better working relationship.

The points I have made about training were obviously not intended to imply that a PA’s lack of formal training equates to their providing a poor service.  However, PA roles come with great responsibility in many respects.  At one point in the documentary, Josh’s father highlights this when he says “having a disabled child means you have to learn lots of new stuff and there’s a risk attached to that, because the penalty for failure is that they fall on the floor and damage themselves”.   Providing PAs with formal training not only ensures that situations such as a fall can be handled in the safest way possible, but it helps alleviate the worry that comes with the possibility of such a situation arising, for both the PA and the employer.  This can be said for many other aspects of a PA’s role.  For example, hoisting someone and assisting with medication carry a significant responsibility (and concern) for many PAs even if these are perhaps non-complex and standard caring activities from the perspective of the employer.

In terms of the comparisons you make to on the job training in other sectors such as supermarkets and bars, it’s worth bearing in mind that in neither of these situations does the employee work in isolation (as a PA often does) without a group of colleagues that they can call on to assist them if they experience difficulties.   

I think you misunderstand me in regard to the comment made around supporting vulnerable people. I was simply highlighting here the importance of the role PAs perform.  Without Personal Assistants many people would be forced to make alternative care arrangements that would be far less personalised and lack the freedom of choice that the PA workforce provides.

To sum up, I would suggest that rather than being “shaky”, my argument comes from an angle you lack familiarity with.  I am hoping that it’s only your connection to the programme which makes you sensitive to my article and that re-reading it from the perspective of PASS might make it clearer and less disagreeable to you.

Essentially each of us represents two sides of the same coin, and whilst I suspect this may result in our views differing on a number of points I also see that there are commonalities.  For instance, we both agree that there are many occasions where the employer/PA relationship is extremely successful, providing both parties with exactly what they are looking for in terms of work for the PA and personalised support for the employer. I also completely agree that the role of employer and carer can be a tricky thing to navigate.  I hope that from reading the information on our site and within our blog, it is clear that it is often the lack of understanding around the uniqueness of this working arrangement which leads to problems arising.

I would like finish by saying, with great conviction, that I am in no way seeking to put anyone off being a PA, in fact quite the opposite.  At PASS we have experience of how emotionally rewarding a career as a PA can be.  That’s why we are working to make being a PA a career choice with long term employment benefits equal to that of any other career.  I hope that this is something that PA employers are also looking to achieve.

Liz Hutchins, Director of PASScard