A family led social enterprise for people managing their own support
A family is recruiting 2 Personal Assistants (PAs) to support their 11 year old son who has significant health and learning needs. The family live in the S9 area of Sheffield.
Are you looking for a new and exciting opportunity? Becoming a Personal Assistant in Sheffield could be just the job for you!
We are looking for caring, enthusiastic individuals to support disabled young people on a 1:1 basis in Sheffield. The support depends on what the individual needs and wants, but it can involve taking part in social and leisure activities, finding and trying out new things, spending time at home, communicating and learning from one another, or helping with independent living skills. You will often be working in close relationship with the person’s family. Your working hours will be flexible and they may include evenings and weekends. Hours can vary from 5 to 30 hours a week.
Thank you for contacting IBK Initiatives.
We have received your message and will be in touch with you as soon as possible.
We treat all information you give us in strictest confidence in accordance with our GDPR policy.
Our privacy policy can be read here.
Thank you for applying for a position with IBK Initiatives.
We have received your application and will be in touch with you within the next 5 working days.
We treat all information you give us in strictest confidence in accordance with our GDPR policy.
Our privacy policy can be read here.
IBK offers a payroll service for people in receipt of a Direct Payment or Personal Health Budget who employ Personal Assistants.
We understand that the people for whom we process payroll are in the position of having to be, rather than wanting to be, an employer. We try to make this as easy for you as we possibly can.
It is our job to help with all the different aspects of having a Direct Payment or Personal Health Budget and to explain things to both individual employers and their employees. Helping our clients and their Personal Assistants understand the process is an important part of the work of all those doing payroll at IBK. We personalise our payroll service to meet the needs of individuals. Our payroll team – Kath & Katie – are available to talk with you and explain things.
Standard payroll is a service where we assist an employer by generating payslips for their employees. We also advise them on the payments which they need to make to HM Revenue & Customs.
The employer has control of their own funds and is responsible for payments of wages, tax and National Insurance. We also file year-end figures online to inform HMRC who has worked for each employer over the financial year.
The Managed Account Payroll Service is for people in receipt of a direct payment or personal health budget who require their funding to be managed on their behalf. In contrast to the standard payroll service, all the employers’ funds are held by IBK Initiatives. This package offers the same benefits as the Standard Payroll service, with the additional security that funds are monitored regularly and all statutory payments submitted on their behalf.
If you would like to find out more please get in touch.
For details of current IBK pricing please follow this link to the Sheffield City Council directory page.
When you sign up for support from IBK with your Direct Payment, we will ask you to agree to a contract between us. This helps give both IBK and you clarity about what to expect from one another. Our contracts will address any specific support we agree between us. Please get in touch for sample contracts.
“Can I just take this opportunity to thank you all at IBK for your excellent work this year and for the support you have given to me and my family to help my grand daughter. You have always got time to listen and support me, you are kind, friendly and interested, you never rush me when I call your office, are always professional, highly knowledgeable and I have received some excellent advice.
I feel that nothing is ever too much trouble for you. I have felt very boosted and encouraged by all of you during what has been for us the most difficult year ever for our family, even before the strangeness that Covid has added into the mix! Oh and one last thing, you never make us feel bad about sending in our timesheets at the last minute or late….that is always appreciated as it must be very annoying. So a big thank you once again.”
“Thanks Vicky! That is really helpful. Glad you feel I have my head around everything, that’s reassuring to know! You guys at ibk are so helpful and easy to contact and consult – makes the Direct Payments system much easier to navigate for us as parents. Thank you to the team.”
If you would like to give us feedback, we would love to hear from you. We want to give you the best support we can. So please do let us know what works well, and what we could change to make things better. To do this, please get in touch.
For information on the full range of our policies, please get in touch.
If you are someone who loves to help others, a career in care may be perfect for you! The rewards are many: helping others make the most of their lives; developing relationships built on trust & openness; learning about other people’s lives; broadening horizons; and making a difference.
Unfortunately, Personal Assistants, like others working in the care sector, are generally seen as part of the unskilled workforce and are not given the status or rewards they deserve.
IBK seeks to challenge this view. We work with Personal Assistants helping them to build a fulfilling career. We champion the highly skilled nature of being a caregiver; promote the great work Personal Assistants do; and help them develop a career in care.
Do you need help finding a Personal Assistant? We know how difficult it can be to recruit, manage and retain Personal Assistants. We also know the difference a good match can make to both the PA and the individual/family they support. We take great pride in the matches we make. We want to help you find the right person for you, and we want to help Personal Assistants find the right position for them.
If you need help finding a Personal Assistant or are interested in a Career in Care, please get in touch.
See the following website for more about developing great support!
A Direct Payment (sometimes referred to as a Personal Budget) is the sum of money the council assesses that you require so that you can meet your care and support needs.
Personal Budgets are available across the UK and to everyone requiring support including carers, disabled children and people who lack mental capacity.
1) Direct Payment: your local council pays your personal budget funding into your bank account or a separate bank account held by an organisation nominated by you. If you choose to open your own bank account you are responsible for making all payments to those providing your support.
If you choose to have a Managed Account, the money you receive is paid into a bank account managed by an independent agency (like IBK), which will pay any costs incurred. The agency would pay your PA wages, and/or any invoices relating to your assessed care needs.
Whether or not you opt to have an agency looking after the funding on your behalf, the direct payment is to enable you to buy your own support. This may include hiring a Personal Assistant (PA).
A direct payment gives you have full control and choice over who provides your care. You decide who works for you, when and how. If you choose to employ Personal Assistants, you take on responsibilities as an employer.
2) An account managed by the council (as indirect payments): the council will manage your budget and will commission services on your behalf. You can have a say in who provides those services.
3) An Individual Service Fund (ISF): the local authority pays an organisation that provides support services and will follow your instructions in getting the services you need. The organisation will be answerable to you. You will have a say about how and when services are provided to you.
For people over the age of 18, Direct Payments are means-tested so their value is dependent on a person’s income and assets as well as their eligible needs. If you are over 18, and are assessed as being eligible for support from your local council, you will then have a ‘Financial Assessment’. This is where your local council will ask about your finances and income to work out how much you will contribute to your care.
The means test is when the local council looks at your income, savings and property to calculate how much you need to contribute towards the cost of your care and support.
(If you need care in order to stay in your own home, the means test won’t include the value of your property. If you need to move permanently into a care home, the test will usually include the value of your property.)
After the means test the local council should give you a written record of their decision of what you will have to pay and what they will pay, and how they calculated it.
The value of your home is not taken into account when working out how much you have to pay.
Costs that are specific to your impairment (e.g. dietary needs; additional laundry expenses; exceptional clothing expenses, etc) are offset against your income and will be taken into account. These costs are known as Disability Related Expenses.
Each local authority should publish and make available details of its charging policy for home care, how they work out how much to charge you and how much as a minimum income you are allowed to keep for your own use.
For more information about these options and about Disability Related Expenses, see: https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org
A personal health budget is an amount of money to support the identified healthcare and wellbeing needs of an individual, which is planned and agreed between the individual, or their representative, and the local clinical commissioning group (CCG). It isn’t new money, but a different way of spending health funding to meet the needs of an individual.
Personal health budgets give people with long-term health conditions greater choice and control over the money spent on meeting their health and wellbeing needs. As with direct payments via social care, health budgets also bring with them greater responsibility for the person receiving care (or their representative).
A personal health budget may be used for a range of things to meet agreed health and wellbeing outcomes. This can include therapies, personal assistants and equipment.
Adults eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare and children in receipt of continuing care have had a right to have a personal health budget since October 2014 and this became the default option for delivering care to those people eligible from 1 April 2019.
The right to have a personal health budget applies to people who are:
If you are unsure as to whether or not you are entitled to a Personal Health Budget, speak to your local clinical commissioning group (CCG). CCGs make the arrangements for personal health budgets and are encouraged to offer them to diverse patient groups.
In order to see if you are eligible for a Personal Health Budget, an assessment of your needs will be carried out by health practitioners, using something called a National Decision Support Tool. This is intended to paint a picture of your needs across a range of headings (e.g. mobility, breathing, continence). You will be asked lots of questions from the support tool, and the answer to these questions determine a score or ‘weighting’ (for example, low, moderate, high, severe).
Importantly, the decision support tool is not a decision-making tool. The decision about whether you have a ‘primary health need’ will be made by relevant health professionals who interpret all the information gathered together. Therefore, it is not simply the number of high, severe or moderate needs which determine eligibility. It is using those scores to consider the nature, intensity, complexity and unpredictability of those needs.
For more information about Personal Health Budgets, please see: www.peoplehub.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ContinuingHealthCarePack1final-version.pdf
If someone receives a personal health budget and a personal budget for social care, it is possible to join the two budgets together to form a joint or pooled budget. This budget can be used to meet the desired outcomes from the support plan.
This is Katy’s Story. Katy lives in Sheffield and has an acquired brain injury that affects various aspects of her health. This includes her mobility, energy levels and her emotional well-being.
Following a referral by her social worker, she was introduced to the team at IBK initiatives and had their help in employing a Personal Assistant (PA) to support her with everyday living. Initially Kate, IBK’s PA Recruitment and Development Worker, advised Katy how a PA could meet her needs, then together they compiled a list of interview questions to find the most suitable person, “Would you do arts and crafts with me? Can we have girly film days? How would you be able to help in situations where I am stressed?”. Katy instantly connected with Abby after chatting about shared interests and they have happily been employer and PA for over a year.
Katy told us that having Abby visit her 2-3 times a week had made a significant difference to her quality of life and self-esteem, “When Abby first started with me I was having loads of low days all the time where I just couldn’t be bothered to get up, to get out of my pyjamas or anything like that. I was very anti-social; I wouldn’t leave the flat or anything”. Slowly, with Abby’s help this changed. The pair made a plan to get “adulting” done and out of the way each day, from food shopping to paying bills and have a “happy project” to look forward to afterwards, for example upcycling furniture or building gerbil cities for Katy’s six (!) gerbils. This new routine, Katy says, has given her, “more of my happy days compared to what I used to be like… [Abby] adds all sorts to my life and it’s just amazing”.
Abby’s assistance extends beyond the practical, to being a consistent source of emotional support for Katy. Katy feels comfortable being open about any worries or concerns she has with her and they both “have that sisterly understanding when girls just need to vent”. For Abby, this is where IBK Initiatives sets itself apart from other similar organisations; by ensuring one dedicated, carefully matched PA, “[you make] relationships that you can build trust and confidence in… [being a PA is] more than just doing jobs and… being checklist focused, it’s being there to have somebody to listen to”. Katy agreed with this and said Abby “was there for me when it felt like no one else was”.
Through having a PA, Katy has developed her life skills such as eating healthier and managing her shopping budget. She used to find shopping stressful, relying on online shopping that sometimes led to overspending. However, with Abby’s help she has started pre-planning meals, buying ingredients using the supermarket Scan and Go machine to work to a set budget. This, alongside buying diced frozen vegetables to overcome problems Katy has manually chopping, has resulted in a more manageable, healthier diet that she enjoys, “before I just had takeaways because I wouldn’t be up for preparing food or anything whereas now, I have Abby and she helps me prepare things. I have to go and cook them or put it in the slow cooker. My favourite is healthy chicken lasagne.”.
Katy and Abby have shared lots of happy times together including a visit to Yorkshire Wildlife Park to celebrate Katy’s birthday. Katy remembered, “I was in my wheelchair and this wallaby came up to me and showed me its baby and put its head on my leg and I was just like I want it! So, I wanted to bring that one home. Actually, I wanted to bring them all home. There were ring tailed lemurs as-well, they were amazing”. Besides this, the pair have enjoyed visits to the Deep, York Christmas market and Graves Farm and regularly go out playing wizards unite, exercise that has improved Katy’s mobility. Above all, Katy enjoys arts and crafts, a pastime that has thrived in the last year with her flat adorned in paintings, such as fish made by melted wax crayons – a technique using Katy’s tremor to create beautiful art.
Our training and consultancy service is entirely bespoke, based on the needs and aspirations of an individual, family or organisation. The way we work will be different every time, but our approach is based on human rights, equality of value and being experts in our own lives.
We provide training on issues such as:
Our Consultancy work includes:
All our training is based on ‘Changing Perspectives’ – a unique programme based on the family experience of living with impairment and disablement. We provide insight into the hopes, aspirations and everyday experience of disabled families.
Our courses inspire participants to change their perspective of living with impairment in a disabling world so that they can develop their own creative response to meet the needs of the people they are working with. We help people take a creative approach to the challenges they face, and to return to their work reconnected to a sense of purpose about what they are trying to do.
We have established courses and we design and develop new courses to meet the needs of our partners.
We bring together specialist teams to carry out consultations with disabled children, young people and their families.
We help organisations develop tools so that they can feed the voices of disabled children and their families into the development of the service they offer as a matter of course. We help commissioners in Children’s Services use the voice of children and families to inform future developments.
Listening is more than pointing your ears in someone’s direction and computing the words which come out of their mouths. Listening can mean going for a walk with someone and noticing what captures their interest. It can mean learning to recognise situations in which a person becomes upset, or becomes animated; it can mean watching a person’s movements, or the activities they choose over others; it can mean creating opportunities for that person to experience new things and observing their response. It can mean holding a person when they cry.
Micheline Mason
For more information about our training and consultancy programme, please get in touch.
