Health and safety
You have a legal responsibility to make sure that your personal assistant remains safe and healthy whilst doing their job.
What you must do:
- carry out some risk assessments on your home, including pets or any animals you keep
- think about any training your personal assistant needs
- tell your personal assistant about health and safety, including fire safety
- record (and possibly report) any accidents that take place in your home
- take out employers’ liability insurance.
If you employ five or more people you will need a health and safety policy. The Health and Safety Executive website has lots of support and free leaflets, including a model policy.
More information:
Health and Safety Executive www.hse.gov.uk
Insurance
Employer’s Liability Insurance and/or Public Liability Insurance is essential. If you receive direct payments or a personal health budget, you should check that your local authority or clinical commissioning group has included Employer’s Liability Insurance in the amount it gives you.
It’s a good idea to have comprehensive house insurance to cover your property and its contents. You may want to include cover for accidental damage. You should tell your insurer that you are employing people to work in your house. As an employer you have a legal duty to insure against accidents or injury to your staff, or accidents or injury caused by them while they are working for you.
You may also need to think about travel or car insurance, for example if your personal assistant is going to be using your car. If you will be travelling with your personal assistant in their car, they will need to be insured to use their car for work. It is worth looking carefully at what your insurance policy covers and any benefits it may include:
Some insurers specialise in Independent Living Insurance (insurance for personal assistant employers). As part of some of these policies you are given access to employment advice.
Some Independent Living Insurance policies may also help you meet the costs involved in making staff redundant (depending on circumstances) and/or recruitment costs for a replacement personal assistant following a dispute.
Your direct payment adviser local support organisation or the organisation that provides any funding you receive can give you options for taking out insurance.