How Did We Get Here ??

In 2011, I started my journey in Care as a complete novice. My first position was working as a Personal Assistant within a single package of care which utilised the Direct Payments scheme to assist the Service User to employ their own team of staff to fulfil their requirements. After a year finding my feet and developing a genuine passion for delivering a high quality of person-centred care, I started to notice some problems within the sector. My Employer and Service User at the time, was a wonderful mentor and was vastly experienced and well versed in the contemporary social care model due to his life experience within the care system, as well as his successful and insightful academic studies surrounding Disability Studies. My argument was that the two options available came with far too many negatives; While direct employment and management of PA’s came with an element of personalisation and control over your staff team, it also came with a host of legal and employment responsibilities as well as operational issues that the Service User was expected to deal with. This often resulted in a large amount of the Service Users time being engaged with these matters and a considerable amount of undue stress and anxiety placed upon the Service User, simply to achieve the level of involvement desired, and naturally justified within their package of support. ​The second option available to Service Users at the time was to choose from one of the larger Domiciliary Care Agencies recommended by the local authority and while I cannot speak for all, the general feedback I received, was that these options often resulted in sporadic and inconsistent care that was not person centred or at all tailored to the individual Service User. Care was often delivered at inconsistent times and staff members were not consistent either, preventing any possibility of establishing professional relationships with staff to facilitate a linear delivery of high quality and consistent care and support.

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