Caring in Covid-19: Personal Assistants’ Changing Relationships with Their Clients’ Family Members

Context: The impact of Covid-19 on people working as personal assistants (PAs) or directly employed care workers potentially affects not only themselves and their clients but sometimes clients’ family members or carers.Objectives: This interview-based study aimed to hear directly from PAs of their experiences during the pandemic to inform policy and practice.Methods: A sample of 41 PAs working in England were interviewed by telephone during the early months of Covid-19 (April–June 2020) in England. Interview data were analysed thematically and accounts of PAs’ engagement with their clients’ family members were explored.Findings: Study findings illustrate the fluidity of relationships at this time within four dimensions: 1) some family members working more closely with PAs, 2) the development of tensions between PAs and family members, 3) displacement by family members of PAs and other care services, 4) PA accounts of working with clients who had little or no family contact or other assistance during the pandemic. Limitations: This study did not interview family members to hear their views of the relationships and circumstances discussed by the PAs.Implications for research include a need to hear from other care workers operating as live-in PAs and from family members and employers and to follow-up with PAs as the pandemic progressed. Policy implications include the need to encourage contingency planning and to ensure support for PAs. Practice implications are for staff responsible for individualised funding to ensure PAs are known to their systems to enable their support.