It's the end of 2024 - how did that happen?

Shropshire Council sent this bulletin at 13-12-2024 09:55 AM GMT

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Merry Yule from the Direct Payments team

Wishing you the best during this winter period

This time of year is often a time people take leave so please make sure you have the support in place you need to cover any periods of leave that your PAs take. If you need any support with this please contact your local social care team in the first instance by calling 03456789044.

Remember that annual leave needs to be used throughout the leave year which usually runs beginning April - end of March. If you need help to work out how much leave your PA has taken or is owed your payroll provider should be able to help with this. Unused annual leave will not automatically be carried forward. The statutory provision was designed to give employees paid time away from the work environment and there are health and wellbeing reasons for them to have that time, on these grounds it is not possible to provide payment in lieu of leave.

Training

We have provided access to employed PAs to an online training platform called Careskills Academy for the last two years. There has been very little interest in using this platform so we have decided it is no longer feasible to fund this service.

There are providers of similar online eLearning available for free including here from Kingston Centre for Independent Living. Other platforms charge a small fee for individual courses such as Courses - Social Care TV.

If you would like to organise training that has a cost for your PA please contact the direct.payments@shropshire.gov.uk for support to get hold of funding from Skills for Care.

Drop in sessions

We want to continue offering opportunity to meet with each other virtually to enable as many people to join in as possible. We're aware that people would like to be able to join peer support and these drop ins offer opportunity to meet other people who are using direct payments.

The next drop in open for everyone to join to offer support and advice to each other and ask any questions of the DP team will be Thursday 30th January at 11am for an hour. You can use the link here to join Microsoft Teams.

Independent Living Group survey

We have been asked to share a survey with all direct payment users in Shropshire by the Independent Living Group (ILG), who specialise in direct payment support nationally, to try to gather information about how to best support people using direct payments and personal assistants.

If you would like to contribute to the survey this is the link to take you to the online form.

Finally, a shout out to carers from Rag'n'Bone Man

If Rag'n'Bone Man wasn't a famous musician he would be a PA. See here.

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