Personal assistants, the job role with the highest wellbeing and work-related quality of life in the adult social care sector
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have published the findings from the first wave of the Adult Social Care (ASC) workforce survey, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with Skills for Care and University of Kent. It set out to measure the wellbeing and work-related quality of life (WRQoL) of people working in the ASC sector. The survey was conducted in 2023 and received responses from over 7,000 participants in a variety of job roles within the sector, including care workers, support and outreach workers, social workers, occupational therapists, registered managers, and personal assistants.
In adult social care, a personal assistant is someone who supports an individual to live more independently, usually in their own home. Personal assistants are usually employed by a person who draws on care and support or their family (known as an individual employer). More rarely, personal assistants may be self-employed.
Skills for Care estimate that there are about 100,000 personal assistants in England. While they make up only 6% of the overall adult social care workforce, they stand out in the survey results. Throughout the survey, personal assistants reported better wellbeing and work-related quality of life than other job roles and the adult social care workforce overall.
Personal assistants score significantly better than the ASC workforce as a whole on life satisfaction (6.42 vs 5.74), happiness (6.6 vs 5.9), and feelings that the things they do in life are worthwhile (7.07 vs 6.42 on average). They also report the lowest levels of feelings of anxiety of all job roles in the adult social care sector (4.21 vs 4.78 on average). This Data was collected using UK Measures of National Wellbeing designed by the Office for National Statistics.
Personal assistants also score better than other adult social care job roles on most work-related quality of life measures, such as:
- Making a difference: thinking how far they are able to support people to lead the lives they want, 84% of personal assistants say they are able to make a difference in people's lives, including 46% who say they are able to make as much difference as they would like. This is significantly higher than the workforce average (69%).
- Having enough time to do their job: over four in five personal assistants say they have enough time to do their job within paid hours (83%), compared with only half of the adult social care workforce overall (52%).
- Worry about work outside of working hours: while over half of the adult social care workforce worry about work outside of working hours (52%), this reduces to just over a third among personal assistants (37%).
- Relationships with people supported: 94% of personal assistants say their relationships with the people they support are good, compared with 86% among the adult social care workforce overall.
- Autonomy at work: 82% of personal assistants say they have freedom and independence to make decisions and carry out tasks as part of their day-to-day work, exceeding the workforce average of 65%.
It is therefore unsurprising that compared with other job roles in adult social care, personal assistants are less likely to state an intention to leave their employer. In the survey, only one in eight (12%) personal assistants agree with the statement ‘As soon as I can find another job, I will leave this employer’, compared with a third of the adult social care workforce overall (34%). In a sector marked by a vacancy rate almost three times the national average (8.3%) and a turn-over rate of 25%, this is noteworthy.
The nature of the work undertaken by personal assistants may contribute to these positive findings. Through their work, personal assistants allow a person with support needs to exercise choice and control over their care and support arrangements; focusing on what is important to them. Their work is highly personalised and also more varied than other social care workers. Personal assistants who have built a close relationship with the person they support may feel a greater sense of job satisfaction knowing that they are making a real difference in that person's life.
It has been known for a long time that personalisation in adult social care provides people who draw on care and support with more dignity, respect, choice, and control over their lives1. It is encouraging and perhaps unsurprising to see from this survey that personalisation also benefits people who work to deliver this type of care and support.
Despite these positive findings, the path to becoming a personal assistant is not necessarily straightforward. Most importantly, it is key for personal assistants to find an employer with whom they get along well. Their employers are people who draw on care and support or their family members, who need to manage recruitment and employment contracts, which can be daunting without the right support. Skills for Care provides guidance for people who want to become personal assistants or individual employers here and here, as well as options to support the learning and professional development of personal assistants – a topic of the survey where their views were similar to or less positive than the adult social care workforce average, with only 40% of personal assistants agreeing that they have opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills in their role, compared with 56% on average.
Skills for care estimate a 11% vacancy rate among personal assistants specifically (higher than the sector average of 8.3%), sources of support for personal assistants and individual employers are essential, and local authorities, user-led organisations and direct payment support teams all play a role in this. Encouraging a shift towards more individualised and personalised care models could improve not only the wellbeing of those who draw on care and support but also the working life of those paid to support them. Another piece in the jigsaw to help reduce staff turn-over and vacancies in adult social care?
1 - See https://www.campbellcollaboration.org/review/personal-budgeting-outcomes-people-with-disability/ and https://www.york.ac.uk/business-society/research/spru/projects/ibsen/
