Employing a personal assistant for care: your duties as an employer

1. When you become an employer

A personal assistant, or PA, is a carer you engage directly rather than through an agency. If you decide the hours, the tasks and the place of work, and the person cannot send someone else in their place, HMRC will almost always treat them as your employee. Councils that pay direct payments expect this, and most provide a support service to help families set it up. Skills for Care publishes a free toolkit for people who employ PAs that is worth reading before you advertise.

Being an employer does not mean running a company. It means a short list of duties that repeat every month, and a record that proves you met them.

2. The duties, one by one

• A written statement of employment. Every employee is entitled to a written statement of the main terms on or before their first day: hours, pay, holiday, notice, place of work. Your council's support service or Skills for Care will have a template.
• Right to work. You must check and keep a copy of the documents that show the person may work in the UK, before they start. Keep the date you checked and when any permission expires.
• Pay at least the minimum. The National Minimum Wage, or National Living Wage for older workers, applies to every hour worked, including travel between two of your loved one's addresses if there are two. Sleep-in and live-in arrangements have their own rules; ask your support service how the hours should be counted.
• PAYE and payslips. You register as an employer with HMRC, deduct tax and National Insurance, report each pay run, and give a payslip. Councils usually fund a payroll service to do this for you, but the duty stays yours.
• Workplace pension. If a PA earns above the automatic enrolment threshold you must enrol them in a pension scheme and contribute. Your payroll service will tell you when it applies.
• Employer's liability insurance. A legal requirement for almost every employer. Policies written for PA employers are inexpensive and councils often include the cost in the direct payment.
• Holiday. Workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, pro rata for part-time hours. You need to know how much has been taken and how much is left.
• Sick pay. Statutory Sick Pay applies after the qualifying days if the PA earns enough. Your payroll service handles the calculation; you need the dates.
• Rest and safety. Working Time rules on breaks and weekly hours apply. You also have a duty of care for the PA's safety in your home, which in practice means telling them about risks and listening when they raise one.
• DBS checks. Not a legal requirement for a family employer, but councils strongly recommend one and most families want one. Keep the certificate date.

3. Employed or self-employed?

Some carers prefer to be self-employed and will tell you so. It is not their choice or yours; it depends on how the work actually runs. A carer who works for several families, sets their own hours, can send a substitute and invoices you may genuinely be self-employed. A carer who works your rota, in your home, on your instructions, is an employee whatever the invoice says, and HMRC can later ask you for the tax that was never deducted. When in doubt, use HMRC's online employment status check and keep the result.

4. Help councils usually fund

Most councils will pay for a payroll service, employer's liability insurance, and a direct payment support organisation that helps with recruitment, contracts and the annual review. What they do not provide is the care record itself: who came, what was done, which medicines were given, and the hours that back up the payroll. That gap is the one most families fall into, and the one the next section is about.

5. The record that makes the duties easy

Every duty above either produces a date or depends on hours. Holiday left depends on hours worked. The payroll depends on hours worked. Minimum wage depends on hours worked. Right to work, DBS and insurance each have a date that runs out. If the hours come from a diary filled in at the weekend from memory, every duty is built on sand. If every hour is stamped by the carer at your door, the duties almost look after themselves.

So the one thing to get right in the first week is not the contract. It is the record: a rota the carers can see, a check-in and check-out for each call, notes written at the call, and a medication record if medicines are involved. Everything an employer, a council or a doctor later asks for comes out of that.

6. How Carelo's Personal plan keeps it

One rota, every PA sees their own calls. Plan the week once. Each carer's Carelo app shows only their calls for your loved one. Change a call and their phone changes with it.

Hours from real check-ins. Carers check in and out at the door. Hours this month per carer come from those stamps, not from memory, and timesheets export for your payroll service.

Holiday with the gap shown. A PA asks for leave in the app. You see the gap it leaves in the rota before you approve, and the approved days come off the rota automatically.

Dates that run out. DBS and right-to-work dates sit on each carer's record, and the Carers page tells you when one is close to expiring.

The care itself. Notes at every call, a medication record dose by dose, and the family app so a brother or sister can see the day happen. It is the same system UK care providers use, built around one person.

Carelo does not run payroll, file with HMRC, or arrange insurance or pensions. It keeps the care record and the hours that your payroll service, your council and your conscience ask for.