Personal Assistant recruitment in crisis

LCiL recently published a blog post and newsletter article looking at our experiences, as a support organisation, of the current crisis in PA recruitment. We, and SDSS, would be keen to hear your thoughts on the subject in order to reach a clearer understanding on the issues facing PA recruitment across Scotland. You can read the article via the LCiL website here: https://www.lothiancil.org.uk/pa-recruitment-in-crisis/

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Hi Iain,
Really interesting post and just shows that Personal Assistant recruitment and retention is still challenging even in some of Scotland’s urban areas like Edinburgh, as well as more rural ones like East Lothian. Would there be any variation across Local Authority areas in terms of recruitment - or anything that differs in approaches locally?
There has recently been an urgent call from the Fife Health and Social Care Partnership, to recruit up to 35 full time equivalent staff due to the staffing crisis locally. You can see details of the open letter from Nicky Connor (Director of Fife Health and Social Care Partnership and Chief Officer of the Fife Integration Joint Board) here: https://www.fva.org/news.asp?id=15142
So the challenge seems to be happening everywhere at the moment.
Thanks,
Mark

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hi Mark,

Thank you. We’re not finding much difference across the four local authorities we support people in- City of Edinburgh, East, West and Midlothian- despite the different population sizes, impact of geography etc. In some cases, smaller communities in East and Midlothian for example, we do see people having more success with recruitment via accessing local networks and connections but it’s a fairly universal problem. The issues caused by the pandemic, Brexit and rate of pay are consistent across all the areas we work in.

Iain

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Hi Iain, have you an interest in the Recruitment sub-group of the PA Programme Board? Might be an opportunity to help progress recruitment work or at least be in the loop?