When the Safety Net Frays: Living with the Shortage of Personal Assistants
In the weeks leading up to Christmas, many people who draw on care and support and family carers were already holding their breath. Not because of the festive rush, but because of the quiet calculations: payroll dates, holiday pay, benefits thresholds, whether there would be enough cover, and how to plan for unseen events.
Those fears were well founded.
Christmas came and went, but the strain didn't lift. Families have shared their weariness of the impact of snow days, sickness, and the inevitable bugs that move quickly through households, support teams, and communities. When the person needs support, when a PA is unwell, and when family carers are also sick or exhausted, the system has no give. Plans unravel fast. Or as one parent said to me recently: "Plans! What are they?"
This is the reality many people and their families face. A single illness can collapse an already fragile rota. A bug that might be inconvenient in another household can become a full blown crisis in another. Especially when there are no replacement PAs available, no emergency cover, and no margin for error.
Snow closes roads and schools, sickness removes people from duty, and suddenly families are doing everything. Again.
For the person at the centre, the impact is immediate and personal. Support hours are lost. Plans are cancelled. Routines that provide stability disappear. Independence narrows. Life becomes smaller, not by choice, but by circumstance.
For families, especially unpaid carers, the load quietly doubles. And they don't complain. And anyway, who's listening? They step in because they must: covering shifts while sick themselves, taking time off work, managing anxiety alongside fatigue. The mental labour of constant contingency planning becomes relentless. There is no off switch.
This is not an individual problem or a series of unfortunate coincidences. This is a national crisis. It's been known about for a long time. Stellar work by the Sheffield City Council team has raised the profile of personal assistants as an important and valued role. They are spotlighting the positives and are innovating in their approach to suggesting solutions. We should get behind them #EmployPAs
Families don't need to be told it's a crisis. They already know it. Quietly, privately, they share their worries with one another: in messages late at night, in mutual check ins, in solidarity and understanding. The understanding that good support is incredibly hard to find. And once you have it, you protect it. You mind it. You hesitate to speak too loudly about the cracks, afraid that any disruption could make things worse.
What's often missing from public conversations about workforce shortages is this hidden human cost. This isn't just about recruitment and retention. It's about people getting through winter. It's about families holding everything together with goodwill and exhaustion. It's about living in a constant state of alert, hoping no one else gets sick. And then we wonder why family carers' health deteriorates. Running on empty.
Personal assistants are not a ‘nice to have’. They are a key part of the scaffolding that enables people to live full, ordinary, meaningful lives, and that allows families to remain families, not emergency services.
As winter pressures get headlines, it's important to understand what many are living with every day. Snow, sickness, and shortages of staff have simply made visible how fragile the system has become.
People don't aspire to have good care. They aspire to have a good life. And right now, too many families are being asked to carry the weight of both. Alone.
If you are a carer and need a friendly ear, reach out to Karen McCormick and Jacqui Darlington for a virtual coffee and a listening ear.
Karen McCormick - inCharge Founder and CEO
Jacqui Darlington BEM - inCharge England Ambassador
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