Also in this section Having a personal Assistant Buying your support from an agency Unpaid support

Your Personal Assistant CAN be someone you knew before. They CAN be a member of your family, as long as they don’t live in the house with you.



If you have a Personal Assistant you are their employer – “the boss”. There are lots of things you need to do when you are an employer. Some of them are the law.

You have to be fair with people.They have to have a written agreement, that says what they do. This is called a Support Contract.

You might also want to have a job description to say
how you would like to be supported.


You have to pay them on time. This might be every week or every month.
You need to make sure their taxes and national insurance are paid. This is the law. Everybody who works must pay taxes. This is money taken off their wages and sent to the government.

You can ask someone to help you do this. There is plenty of help available.You could go to the National Council for Independent Living website to find out who can help in your area:
www.ncil.org.uk

If you want to employ a Personal Assistant, there is a website with everything about that:
www.panet.org.uk
If you are not happy with your Personal Assistant, you can’t just sack them. They have rights too.
If there is a problem, you need to try and work it out. If you can’t work it out together, you will have to explain why you want them to leave.

This will usually be because they haven’t done something in the Support Contract, or because they haven’t supported you in the way you want.