It’s all in a name: Employing personal assistants
When I started out employing personal assistants at the age of 12, as a family, we considered all of the different titles the role may be called from carer to support worker and personal support assistant. Speaking to friends who already had paid team members we settled for ‘personal assistant’...
Appointing a team leader, or not!
Whilst I lived at home, then with only a handful of teenagers supporting me one at a time, it wasn’t necessary to have a team leader. I’ve now experienced 4 different scenarios, the team being led by a case manager, led by a team leader I didn’t appoint, led by...
Personality matters – recruiting personal assistants
I mentioned in my blog in June about the importance of having positive relationships with personal assistants. The recruitment process is key to making a good appointment. It is not something we want to rush as it is so important to get this right for everyone including the person choosing...
Starting university with a team of personal assistants
This is the second in a series of 4 posts about employing my own team. Having had personal assistants in my life for 7 years when I went to university I thought the transition to living away was going to be relatively easy. Unfortunately, starting university with a team of...
Employing personal assistants as a teenager
My first personal assistant was employed using direct payments from Social Services when I was 12 years old. In hindsight the decision on who to employ was actually quite easy, although it felt both daunting and exciting at the time. Whilst at primary school (up to age 11) Kate had...
Positive discrimination in boccia
Is it right or fair that a woman should be chosen to represent her nation over a male who has a better competitive track record? Boccia is a mixed gender sport, and definitely in England there are more male players than females. In 2018 the IPC and BISFed decided every...
Communication breakdown and repair strategies
For all communication I prefer my communication partner, if they can, to be on my level, it can be hard to be looking up to lip read (I have a hearing impairment) and then reaching down to use my IT or other communication resources. As an electronic communication aid user...