Social care - personal assistants: current data sources and future work

Data Source – 2010 Research Report, Self Directed Support Scotland (SDSS)

Data can be accessed via the SDSS website here.

Background to data collection

Reid-Howie Associates (RHA) was commissioned by the Scottish Government in March 2009 to identify the issues faced by SDS users as employers, and PAs as their employees, including but not limited to, assessing their training and support needs. Amongst the other objectives of the report, one of the main objectives was to provide background on the profile of the PA workforce across Scotland.

RHA identified support service providers across 32 local authority areas which included local authorities, mainstream voluntary organisations, specialist voluntary organisations whose remit is wider than SDS and specialist voluntary organisations whose remit

is restricted to SDS. The support organisations identified the approximate number of employers of PAs in their areas (although the exact number was often unknown).

RHA supplied the organisations with the requisite number of packs, to which addresses were applied. Along with other documents (letter to the employer about the research, postal questionnaire to the employer, freepost return envelope) each pack contained two sealed envelopes which employers were asked to pass to their PAs, each containing a covering letter to the PA, a postal questionnaire to the PA and a freepost return envelope.

Latest findings

It was assumed that the number of PA employers was approximately 1,500 based on the report of local authorities to the Scottish Government and assuming a number for the employers who do not have any contact with the support services.

A total of 495 responses were received from employers suggesting approximate response rates of 33%.

The following table shows the total number of PAs employed by the employers who responded to the survey.

The employers who responded to the survey together employed 1,183 PAs. The report suggests an average of 2.4 PAs per employer, although the actual number employed varies widely. Nearly two thirds of employers in the survey employed either 1 or 2 PAs. Few (6.3%) employed 6 or more. A total of 512 responses were received from PAs suggesting approximate response rates of 20%.

The following table shows the local authority where PAs who responded to the survey work.

Benefits and Limitations of the data

This report was undertaken in 2010 and is the first study on the PA workforce in Scotland which attempted to describe the characteristics of the PA workforce and identify their support and training needs. It provides an insight into the nature of work undertaken by PAs, their working conditions, and their future work intentions.

Due to the fragmented and isolated nature of the work, it was not easy to identify the PA workforce as a group. The report lacks generalisability as there was a lack of confidence about the estimated number of total employers as well as PAs, although it tried to include data from the entire workforce.

Moreover, although a total of almost 2,000 packs were distributed to organisations for circulation to employers, however, a number of them were distributed to SDS users who are not PA employers. There are no records of those accounts. This raises concern regarding data accuracy and resource efficiency due to the probability of overestimation of questionnaire distribution (which is also suggested by RHA), potentially causing reduced survey effectiveness, emphasising the need for improved planning and execution in data collection effort.

Additionally, the report lacks clarity in terms of calculating the number of the total PAs as 1,183 as the calculation from the Table 5, noting the total number of PAs employed according to responses from PA employers, gives an estimation of around 1,179. It is unclear where the additional 4 PAs in the headcount have come from. Moreover, the clarity of the reported count of the PAs by the employers remains uncertain, as it remains unclear whether the figures represent the cumulative number of PAs throughout an extended period or the count at a specific point. For example, it seems unlikely that 1.2% of employers who responded to the survey are simultaneously employing 10 or more PAs Furthermore, it is noteworthy that a significant portion of PAs, approximately 12.9% (with 4.7% opting not to respond), reported being employed by multiple employers, while the majority, constituting 82.4%, worked for a single employer. This aspect was not considered in the report, leading to an omission in reflecting the possibility of individual PAs having engagements with multiple employers. This may have contributed to give a wrong estimation of total number of PAs based on the number of PAs employed by an individual employer. To rectify this discrepancy, implementing a cross-validation process between the data collected from PA survey and the Employer survey while estimating the total number of PAs is recommended. This would have enhanced the accuracy of the estimated number of PAs by considering the diversity in PA employment arrangements.