PPE for Carers and Personal Assistants in Private Households

The availability of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for the NHS, care homes, and home care agencies during the Covid-19 crisis has rightly attracted a lot of media and public attention. This is clearly a very serious matter.

People who employ Personal Assistants (PA’s) to provide care and support at home, together with those who are cared for by unpaid Carers are equally at risk of infection from Covid-19 in the absence of suitable PPE. There is a danger that this group of people are left out of the national and local conversation when it comes to supply of PPE.

Personal Assistant employers around Merseyside have anecdotally drawn attention to a range of problems that they are experiencing in sourcing and paying for the PPE they need. Similarly carers are concerned that they may be providing care that is unsafe to the person in receipt of care, themselves, and their families. This is very worrying.

We at Advance PSS CIC think that it is extremely important that Councils and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in Merseyside understand what the local needs are for PPE by this group of people during the Covid-19 crisis.

We would like everybody’s help in finding out more about the needs for PPE, and how those needs may have changed during the COVID-19 crisis. So we have designed a survey with the support of Liverpool City Council and Clinical Commissioning Group.

This survey is for people who live in Merseyside who receive care and support at home by way of employing Personal Assistants, or being cared for informally (by a family member or friend). The survey is also for the Personal Assistants and Carers of those people.

We will use the answers we get in the survey to write a report for Councils in Merseyside to help understand what help people may need in terms of information about PPE; needs for PPE; availability of PPE; sourcing of PPE; and use of PPE.

Your survey responses are very important. Your personal information will remain confidential unless you give us express permission to share it.

The survey will only take about 5 minutes to complete. At the end of the survey there are links to some useful resources and important information about PPE and social care.

Thank you very much for your time and support.

Click here to start the survey