What a personal assistant does, and how you take one on

None of that is a fixed list, and the person being supported is the one who says what the job is. It helps to write down a fortnight of an ordinary week before writing a job description, because the things that are hard to explain to a stranger tend to be the ones that matter most.

Where the person has a learning disability or is autistic, the support is often less about tasks than about predictability and prompting. Care at home for adults with a learning disability covers that, and support for a disabled adult is the wider picture. Where the support follows a spinal cord injury, the routine a personal assistant is taken on to hold covers what belongs in the job description.

Continuity is what households ask for most and what a rota is least able to give. When the same person comes for years they learn how a transfer is done safely in that bathroom, and they notice when something is not right. Private carers and agency carers sets the two side by side.

The other difference is what the hour is for. An agency worker carries out listed tasks in a set time, while a personal assistant can spend Thursday afternoon at a hospital appointment and Friday morning at the supermarket. Where a condition such as MS makes energy the thing in short supply, which jobs cost the most energy is a useful way to decide what the hours are for. Where a direct payment pays, the boundary is the care and support plan, and what a direct payment buys covers it.

This is not a choice you make by writing a word into an agreement. Employment status follows from how the work happens: whether the household sets the hours and directs each task, whether the person has to attend themselves or could send somebody suitable, and whether they work for anybody else. If an arrangement looks like employment, it is employment, and calling it something else leaves the household owing the tax. How HMRC decides has the test.

That does not make employing somebody the safe answer in every case. Plenty of disabled people are supported well by self-employed carers who work for several households and arrange their own cover. What nobody should do is take somebody on for fixed hours, direct exactly how the job is done, and pay them as though they were in business. HMRC's Check Employment Status for Tax tool is free, and HMRC stands by the result where your answers were accurate.

The statutory guidance says the direct payment should include an amount for employer's liability insurance and any other insurance the arrangement needs, so if the budget offered has nothing in it for that, say so. It also says the household carries all the costs of employment, redundancy included, and that the personal budget must be enough to meet them. Keep the records as you go, and tell the council when things change.

The money here is a wage rather than a price. Skills for Care put the median hourly rate for personal assistants at £12.21 as at February 2025, and the floor is now £12.71, but a wage is only part of what an employed hour costs once holiday, pension and National Insurance go on top. Employing a carer: the legal and financial side has that arithmetic, and personal budgets and personal health budgets covers NHS money.

1. 1

   Write the job down before you write the advert

   A week before you look

   A fortnight of an ordinary week: hours, tasks, driving, lifting, the difficult parts. Then the things that are not tasks at all, such as a shared interest.
2. 2

   Look in more than one place

   Two to four weeks

   People who already know the household, a local advert, a council or user-led organisation with a list, or an online search where you read profiles first.
3. 3

   Interview at home, with the person being supported there

   Allow an hour each

   Ask what they would do on a bad morning, and what they liked and did not like about their last job. Let the disabled person ask their own questions and decide.
4. 4

   Take references and see the certificates

   Before anybody starts

   Ring two people they have worked for and ask about reliability. Check their right to work, and ask for the DBS and dated training certificates.
5. 5

   Agree a trial period, and say what it is for

   Four to twelve weeks

   A probation period written into the terms, with a date in the diary to say how it is going from both sides. Saying at the start that the first weeks are a trial is kinder than raising it in week nine.
6. 6

   Write down how the support is to be done

   The first fortnight

   A short plan written with the carer rather than handed to them: the routine, what matters, what to do if something goes wrong, and who to ring.

Interviewing is the part people find hardest, because it feels rude to ask a stranger searching questions and ruder to say no. It is neither. Questions to ask a carer at interview has a list to take into the room, and writing a care plan together covers the written plan. If you would rather read about people before meeting them, search for carers near you and compare experience, rates and reviews. What a carer says about their experience is their own account, for you to check with them.

The statutory guidance is explicit about cover. Where a direct payment is used to employ a personal assistant, the council should make sure there are clear plans for meeting needs when that person is absent through sickness, maternity or holiday, and those plans belong in the care and support plan. Ask at the planning stage what happens on the Monday your personal assistant rings in sick. When your carer is ill or on holiday has the practical side.

The other half of this is harder to plan for. Being somebody's employer at home means having conversations most people never have to have, about lateness or about work that has slipped. They are easier if there was a written job description at the start, and easier again if small things were said as they happened. Acas gives free advice on employing somebody, and handling problems with a private carer goes through the conversations. Where support is needed at night, live-in care for a younger adult with a disability sets live-in against hourly.

Sources: Care and support statutory guidance, chapter 12, Check employment status for tax, National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates, Holiday entitlement, Employers’ liability insurance, Workplace pensions for employers, Written statement of employment particulars, Checking a job applicant’s right to work, Enhanced DBS checks for personal employees, Skills for Care: what is a personal assistant, Skills for Care: individual employers and the personal assistant workforce, 2025.