As a personal assistant you are likely to be involved in many aspects of your employer’s life and may be asked to provide support in the home, at leisure or at work. The opportunity to focus directly on the needs of an individual and the diversity of the role and tasks is what often attracts many people to this type of work.
And it’s a growing sector. According to modelling based on Skills for Care’s National Minimum Data Set for Social Care (NMDS-SC) up to one million extra jobs may be needed in the adult social care sector by 2025, which includes personal assistants.
Opportunities to become a personal assistant are growing and few can doubt it’s both a rewarding and worthwhile career. But it’s not without its challenges; not least of which can just be finding out how to get started!
So, working with a number of other support organisations, Skills for Care has developed two new guides.
If you want to know more about becoming a personal assistant and what it involves our guide to being a personal assistant is for you. It covers:
- What the role entails and who can be one
- The recruitment process
- Where to get support and help
- How to find out about training and development
- Plus lots of other useful advice and information.
I have had many roles in the past, but have found none as enjoyable and rewarding as being a personal assistant. Each day is different and as I like a lot of variety to what I do it suits me down to the ground…It was scary to take the plunge into this type of job at first but I am so pleased that I did and have been offered lots of work since.” MW, a personal assistant working with three different employers.
But what if you’re already a personal assistant?
Our practical guide to learning and development for personal assistants shows how you can grow and develop in the role to achieve the best outcomes for both you and your individual employer by:
- Gaining new skills and qualifications
- Reducing risk in the workplace
- Developing a better working relationship with your employer
- And much more
Both of these guides can also be found on Skills for Care’s information hub for individual employers and personal assistants. The hub brings together essential information from lots of different places, including training and funding, as well as news, events, case studies and videos.
Content on this page is produced and controlled by Skills for Care, sponsor of the Guardian Social Care Network leadership, learning and development hub
