Employing Personal Assistants during the Covid-19 pandemic
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Employing Personal Assistants during the Covid-19 pandemic: lessons for social care practice
IRAS ID
293521
Contact name
Kritika Samsi
Contact email
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
v1.0. 18.01.2021, Protocol version
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 0 days
Research summary
What happened to people employing their own care workers or Personal Assistants (PAs) during the Coronavirus pandemic? How did they manage? This study, focusing on the experiences of people employing their own care workers, will help answer these important questions. They are important for social care practice now and in the future in case of new outbreaks of the virus or for another similar emergency. We have already asked PAs about their work during the Coronavirus pandemic. This new study will ask people who employ PAs about their experiences during the time of lockdown and beyond. We want to talk with both people who pay for a PA by Direct Payments from the council and people who pay their PA independently. \n\nIn this 17-month study, we aim to interview 70 individual employers (care users) and family members (if they are the employer because their relative cannot manage these arrangements), to learn from their experiences. We will interview people from different backgrounds and circumstances. For example, some may have ‘shielded’ themselves or have particular risk factors (we now know these include ethnicity). We will recruit people from different parts of England and who need different types of support. The interviews will be done by phone or by video. We will examine and compare people’s experiences so that we can learn from them and use them to develop guidance for local councils, voluntary sector organisations, social care workers and for other people in this situation. We plan to talk about the main pandemic period and beyond (if the virus declines) and to produce reports that are useful.
REC name
Social Care REC
REC reference
21/IEC08/0010
Date of REC Opinion
20 Apr 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion