The Sheffield School for Social Care Research (SSCR) is delighted to be supporting a successful proposal for an NIHR SSCR Practice Evaluation Scheme award!
SSCR Practice Evaluation Scheme projects are led by social care practitioners in local authorities, care providers and community/voluntary organisations. Alongside academic partners, they carry out evaluative projects that test new approaches, frameworks and ideas in their own organisations.
The successful project is led by Mike Thackray, Direct Payments Support Adviser from Sheffield City Council (SCC) and aims to evaluate SCC’s Personal Assistant (PA) workforce development initiatives which are designed to strengthen personalised care and direct payment support.
Of the project, Mike says, "As part of my work in the Direct Payments team I noticed different levels of awareness and engagement with the initiatives Sheffield City Council has introduced to support Personal Assistants and their employers. I thought the Practice Evaluation Scheme would be a great opportunity develop my skills as a researcher, gain a deeper understanding of how social care initiatives like this are evaluated and make real improvements to our offer to PAs and their employers in Sheffield."
The bid was supported by Sheffield SSCR’s Deputy Director and Lead for Capacity Building, Professor Liz Croot from SCHARR, alongside Dr Alice Dunning also from SCHARR, and Mary Gardner, Andy Buxton and Liz Howard from Sheffield City Council.
Liz says, "This is an innovative funding scheme that pairs practitioners with academics so they can learn from one another. I am pleased to be able to work with Mike to evaluate the initiatives to support the PA workforce. In Sheffield, personal assistants are one of the main ways people use their direct payments to get personalised support. PA roles can be enjoyable and rewarding but few people know they exist so this work is much needed. Mike’s project fits well with my research focussing on social care for people with learning disabilities so he has joined my research advisory group and we are learning from his practice expertise, so it is a win-win relationship. "
Project aims
Direct Payments are central to personalised social care, enabling people to have greater choice and control over how their support is arranged. However, workforce challenges, including difficulties recruiting and retaining Personal Assistants (PAs) can undermine the effectiveness of this approach and affect people’s independence, wellbeing and continuity of support.
Personal Assistants (PAs) are employed directly by the people they support, or by someone acting on their behalf. This direct employment relationship is what makes the PA role unique. This evaluation will explore ways of addressing the challenges faced by this often-overlooked workforce, including PA recruitment and retention, awareness of the PA role, and support for PAs and people employing them.
Sheffield City Council has developed a range of initiatives to strengthen the PA workforce, but there is limited evidence about which approaches are most effective. Working with people who use services, PAs, employers and stakeholders, this evaluation will identify what works, co-produce a logic model, inform improvements to practice and commissioning, and generate transferable learning to help local authorities strengthen personalised care and workforce sustainability.
If you want to know more about this project or are curious about how you or someone you know might be able to get involved, please email: EmployPAs@sheffield.gov.uk.
