What is a Personal Assistant?

What the role is

A Personal Assistant — PA — is employed directly by the person they support, or by a family member acting on that person's behalf, usually funded through a Direct Payment or a Personal Health Budget.

The defining feature is not the tasks. It is the relationship. A PA works for one person, in that person's life, on terms that person has a real say in. There is no rota rotating them somewhere else next week and no office deciding they are needed elsewhere.

That single difference changes almost everything about how the support feels — and it is why people who have had a good PA arrangement are rarely willing to go back to anything else.

What a PA actually does

It depends entirely on the person. That is the point of the role, and it is why a generic job description produces a bad appointment. Broadly, PA work falls into a few areas, and most roles combine several:

Personal care

Support with washing, dressing, using the toilet, continence, oral care, and getting up or going to bed. Where a PA is employed directly by the person they support, this is provided as part of that employment relationship rather than by a registered provider.

Practical support at home

Meals, shopping, laundry, cleaning, managing post and bills, keeping the house running.

Health-related support

Prompting or assisting with medication, supporting exercises set by a therapist, attending appointments, and keeping an eye on how someone is. Anything clinical requires appropriate training, and for some tasks specific instruction and sign-off from a health professional.

Getting out and doing things

Driving or travelling with someone, support at work, college or a training course, sport, hobbies, seeing friends, holidays. For many disabled people this is the most valuable part of the role and the most often overlooked in a care plan.

Communication and organisation

Supporting someone to be understood, making calls with or for them, arranging appointments and keeping things in order.

Being there

Sometimes the support is simply presence — someone in the building overnight, or company on a difficult day. It is real work even when it does not look like a task list.

A well-written PA role starts from what the person wants to be able to do, and works back to what help that requires. A badly written one starts from a list of tasks and produces someone who completes them all while missing the point.

How it differs from agency care

Neither column is better in the abstract. They trade control against responsibility, and different people are in different places on that trade. Our comparison guide goes into it properly.

What makes the arrangement work

From what people tell us, and from how these arrangements tend to succeed or fail, four things matter more than anything on a CV.

The right person, not the most qualified applicant

Someone will be in your home, involved in your day and possibly helping you wash. Competence is necessary; temperament is decisive. Plenty of excellent PAs came from retail, hospitality or childcare rather than from care, and plenty of experienced care staff are not suited to working alone in one person's home.

Honesty at the start about what the job is

Including the unglamorous parts, the difficult days and anything about the household someone should know before accepting. People leave roles they were misled about, and recruiting twice is much worse than a frank conversation once.

Clear boundaries, agreed early

What is in the role and what is not. Whether family tasks are included. What happens if someone is asked to do something outside the agreement. Boundaries feel awkward to set at the start and prevent most of the problems that arise later.

Treating it as a proper job

Paid on time, correctly, with holiday and sick pay handled properly. A written contract. Training when the role needs it. Somewhere to raise a concern. PA roles that feel informal are the ones that end badly, usually for both sides.

What it is not

• Not a nurse. A PA can be trained for specific health-related tasks with appropriate instruction and sign-off, but is not a registered health professional and should not be treated as one.
• Not a regulated care service. A directly employed PA arrangement is not a CQC-registered service. The safeguards come from the checks, the training, the contract and your own oversight, which is why doing those properly matters.
• Not an informal favour. Even when the relationship is warm and long-standing, the legal position is employment, with all the duties that entails.
• Not a free choice about pay. National Minimum Wage, working time rules, holiday entitlement and pension duties all apply.

For people considering PA work

If you are reading this as someone who might do the job rather than employ someone, it is worth knowing the shape of it.

The good parts: you work with one person and actually see the difference you make; you avoid the fifteen-minute-call model that drives people out of domiciliary care; the relationship is usually far better than agency work allows; and hours are often more stable and more predictable.

The parts to go in with your eyes open about: you frequently work alone, without a team in the building; the employer is an individual rather than an HR department, so clarity from the start matters; the role can be personal in a way agency work is not; and you need to be comfortable raising things directly.

Whatever the arrangement, you are entitled to a written contract, at least the minimum wage, paid holiday, statutory sick pay where you qualify, appropriate training for what you are asked to do, and a safe place to work. If any of that is missing, it is reasonable to ask for it — and our guidance for candidates covers how.

Where Oakline fits

We recruit Personal Assistants for individuals and families, and we handle the employment administration that comes with the role.

That means defining the role around what the person actually wants to be able to do, advertising it, sifting applications, arranging meetings so the employer chooses, running right-to-work and DBS checks, taking up references, preparing contracts, running payroll, coordinating training and recruiting again when someone moves on.

What we do not do is become the employer or provide the care. The PA works for the person who employs them, and Oakline is not registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide regulated personal care.

See how our PA recruitment works, or tell us about the role you need to fill.

General information, not advice.Employment duties and what a PA may be asked to do depend on the specific arrangement. Take suitable advice on employment matters, and confirm with your funding body what your plan covers.