Katy Etherington runs a website called PA Pool, which matches people with disabilities with personal assistants (PA). “Last year, we had 460 PAs from Poland, and this year we only had 36,” she said. “This is a serious problem.”
Before Brexit, most of the people who served as personal assistants to Etherington were from the mainland EuropeIn the team currently helping her to live and work independently, 3 people are from the European Union and have settled-but if they leave, they must change their minds, she said, “terrible”.
This means that for many people with disabilities who use PA, “there is a crisis. [They assist with] Basic things such as being able to get up, put on clothes, go to the bathroom, eat and drink. If you can’t find someone to fill this role, what can you do? They provide such an important role-it makes life possible. They enable us to live and work, not just exist. “Without the prospect of independent employment, many disabled people will be forced to seek residential care – but “nursing homes are also struggling,” Esselington said.
forward Brexit, Approximately 8% of the social care workforce comes from other EU countries. Some of them will stay, but leaving the EU exacerbates the shortage of personnel. Professor Martin Green, Chief Executive Officer of Care England, stated that there are 167,000 social care job vacancies in England and a staff turnover rate of 30%. If there is not enough staffing, the number of beds in the house will be forced to decrease. “In the learning disability service, you may have to shut down the service completely,” Green said. “In the field of home care, there will be a real crisis in getting enough staff to support people. So this may mean that, for example, someone does not get support for two or three hours, which may mean that they are in their own On the bed, lying in the urine, instead of someone helping them. Or people won’t be full on time. These are the reality of what a shortage of people means in social care.”
He said, “The government didn’t realize that there was a real problem. What they have been doing is saying, “You only need to pay the workers more wages.” Well, people need to remember that our client is the government, and the government is determined. Refusing to pay workers more wages.” For example, care providers are competing with supermarkets for employees, which often offer higher hourly rates. “Supermarkets can pass the cost on to customers. We can’t do this because the government will not pay for real care.”
Finding enough suitable people is also very challenging, because working in social care requires special skills and personalities. “It’s not for everyone,” Green said. “This is not just a question of’if X people are unemployed, they can enter social care’. This requires people with the right values and establishing the right connection with the people who use the service. This is both mentally and physically. Exhausted and low salary.”
Etherington agreed, adding that being a PA—especially a home assistant—will bring additional challenges. “This is a career that is difficult to maintain for a long time because you are really living someone else’s life.” It is often suitable for continental Europeans who only plan to stay in the UK for a few years.; She said some people even commute from their home country and work at home for a few weeks at a time.
For people with disabilities who employ in-home care (a small part of the large social care sector, but still represents approximately 100,000 people), there is also a cost issue. Esselington said that the UK’s Palestinian Authority expects salaries to be much higher than those of the European Union — Boris Johnson viewed these higher salaries as a good thing in his conference speech. Esselington emphasized that nursing staff “really deserve a decent salary”, but many people who pay for nursing expenses through funds “do not have enough capacity to pay for these expenses. Because their country’s cost of living is lower, European PAs are happy to pay lower Work at a higher price, so to a certain extent I do agree that this may reduce wages in the UK, but it allows people with lower budgets to find their support needs. More funds are definitely needed-the government now has excess cash Come to do this?”
For now, Etherington still hopes that her PA team “will exist for some time. I have been getting along well with European PAs, and they are simply amazing,” she said. “We have lost it now.”
