Social care Personal Assistants (PAs) are directly employed by individuals to assist with activities of daily living such as help or support with personal care, shopping, household tasks and community participation. This option is encouraged by UK public funding. In England, disabled people's support organisations initially offered assistance with such arrangements, although numbers doing this have declined. The Covid-19 pandemic provided the opportunity to ask those remaining organisations providing support for PA employers about their activities during this time and the questions being posed to them by PA employers. This paper reports data from 15 interviews undertaken March–July 2021 with disability support organisation representatives. We identified one overarching theme ‘Working to prevent and challenge marginalisation of PA employers’, with three related subthemes: (1) Advocating for the voice of a forgotten group; (2) Needing to be proactive and (3) Adapting to new tasks and ways of working. Participant accounts focused on representing the needs of disabled people to the authorities and providing concise, timely and accurate information to PA employers, particularly around the use of public funds during Covid-19. Remote working amplified the digital-divide, resulting in these organisations working hard to ensure PA employers received important information about their support options. Befriending services and Covid-hubs were established by some organisations to reduce isolation and risks of poor mental health amongst PA employers. Many of the challenges facing PA employers existed pre-pandemic but were perceived to have been heightened during it, reflecting the value of and need for the work of these local support organisations. Our findings suggest areas where effective contingency planning drawn from closer collaboration between disability support organisations and central and local government might usefully be focussed. The potential for specific services or organisations to be commissioned to provide such support is discussed.

中文翻译：

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从 Covid-19 对残疾支持组织工作的影响中汲取的经验教训，这些组织为英格兰社会护理个人助理的雇主提供支持


社会关怀 个人助理 (PA) 直接受雇于个人，协助日常生活活动，例如帮助或支持个人护理、购物、家务劳动和社区参与。英国公共资金鼓励这种选择。在英格兰，残疾人支持组织最初提供了此类安排的援助，尽管这样做的人数有所下降。 Covid-19 大流行提供了一个机会，可以向那些为 PA 雇主提供支持的剩余组织询问其在此期间的活动以及 PA 雇主向他们提出的问题。本文报告了 2021 年 3 月至 7 月对残疾支持组织代表进行的 15 次访谈的数据。我们确定了一个总体主题“努力防止和挑战 PA 雇主的边缘化”，以及三个相关的子主题：(1) 倡导被遗忘群体的声音； （二）要积极主动；（三）适应新任务、新工作方式。参与者账户的重点是向当局代表残疾人的需求，并向 PA 雇主提供简洁、及时和准确的信息，特别是在 Covid-19 期间公共资金的使用方面。远程工作扩大了数字鸿沟，导致这些组织努力确保 PA 雇主收到有关其支持选项的重要信息。一些组织建立了交友服务和 Covid 中心，以减少 PA 雇主中的孤立和心理健康状况不佳的风险。 PA雇主面临的许多挑战在大流行前就已经存在，但人们认为在大流行期间加剧了，这反映了这些当地支持组织工作的价值和需求。 我们的研究结果表明，残疾人支持组织与中央和地方政府之间更密切的合作所产生的有效应急计划可能会有效地集中在哪些领域。讨论了委托特定服务或组织提供此类支持的可能性。