Employer and PA Training Opportunities

As a Disabled People’s Organisation (DPO) we feel it is important to empower Service Users and their Personal Assistants to be the best employers and employees they can be; good support, and managing that support well, leads to the removal of barriers for disabled people.

Having worked with a previous DPO and following our survey earlier in the year, we have gained an insight into what training our service users, and their personal assistants, feel would be beneficial to them as employers. As a result, we applied for the DPO funding from Skills for Care to provide training to Individual Employers and their Personal Assistants (PA’s).

Often Direct Payment recipients or people who fund support themselves can feel left out or forgotten about when it comes to the work they do. We saw this during the pandemic when it was very hard for PA’s of direct employers to receive the same recognition as their colleagues who were working in more traditional settings such as Care Homes, even though their impact and importance as such a time was no less valuable.

We feel that everyone who receives support should have access to training for their staff, even if they have one PA for just a few hours per week, or if they have a team and around the clock support. Maintaining standards for the support you receive is crucial to living an independent life.

Equally, PA’s, Carers, Support workers, however you want your employees to be known, also deserve to have personal development opportunities in their workplace, like any other employee. Not only to recognise the skills they possess and use every day to support you, but also so they can progress and get new skills. Providing training to PA’s helps them to understand and engage with their employment, this can lead to less time off work and PA’s staying in post longer as they feel valued.

For the first time we are offering training sessions “in-house”, our business development team will be delivering Disability Equality Training and the SIL advice team will be delivering a session on being a good employer, the dates for these will be announced in the new year.

Our feedback told us the most needed sessions are Emergency First Aid at work, Safeguarding and Moving and Handling. These have now been arranged and can be booked by calling the advice team on 01473 603876 or email suffolk@silmail.org. Places are limited so please book ASAP.

Dates:

1st December 2021, 9am - 4pm - Emergency First Aid at Work Bowthorpe Centre, Norwich

8th December, 9am - 12pm - Safeguarding – Online via Zoom

10th December, 9am - 4pm - Emergency First Aid at work IP City Centre, Ipswich

15th December, 9am - 4pm - Moving and Handling IP City Centre, Ipswich

You can find out more about the courses on our training page here.

Funding is also available for individual employers from Skills for Care, details can be found on their website: Individual employer funding (skillsforcare.org.uk)