About Rainbow Ripples

Our Research

Good Practice in Service Provision

Good Practice E-Network

Introduction	Government & Service Providers	Education & Training	Employment	Housing	Transport	Technical Aids & Equipment
Personal Assistance	Advocacy	Counselling	Health	Leisure	Community & Social Life	Safety, Harassment & Discrimination

Good Practice Recommendations - Personal Assistance

1. Homophobic comments or ways of behaving by “care staff “ or personal assistants should be unacceptable. This should be made explicit in induction training for staff and in information given to disabled people.
2. The mandatory training of all social care staff, through NVQs should include training on LGB equality and disability equality issues, alongside other equality issues.
3. Preventing homophobia in social care provision should be an integral part of the independent inspection processes by the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI).
4. More needs to be done to deal with abuse by “care staff”; such as early detection and protection of disabled people who report abuse.
5. As more services are contracted out, Social Services Departments need to take a stronger role in monitoring equality issues by contractors, alongside the role that CSCI takes.
6. Providing a “culturally competent” service to LGB disabled people includes recognising the need for interaction with LGB communities. This should be reflected in assessment processes to prevent the disabled person having to rely on partners or friends or even having no access to their community.
7. Advocacy services should be offered prior to any assessment. For LGB disabled people, the advocate should be culturally competent in LGB issues (see advocacy section).
8. There should be training and supervision of assessment staff to ensure consistency of assessment and competence in dealing with equality issues.
9. Disabled people need to have more control over the tasks that workers carry out, even when they are not receiving Direct Payments.
10. The range of support roles and tasks that personal assistants/ care staff may carry out should reflect the need that LGB disabled people have for interaction with other LGB people.
11. Staff awareness of Direct Payments needs to be improved.
12. There needs to be an alternative to Direct Payments for disabled people who do not wish to be employers but still want to have control over the times and tasks that their personal assistant carries out. A Brokerage Scheme for Leeds should therefore be investigated.
13. There needs to be more work in recruiting Personal Assistants available for disabled people to employ, possibly through establishing a “Personal Assistants Bank” in Leeds. For some people, it would be important that the PA was a lesbian or a gay man; this information could be held by the bank and would not necessarily contravene the legislation around sexual orientation and employment.