General
Program Description
Find out about the new role of personal assistants in disability support, and how to improve working relationships in the area.
Improve working relationships between disabled people and personal assistants
Disabled people can now receive funding from their local authority to employ a personal assistant. While this gives them more personalised care in their own home, it also turns them into an employer.
This online course explores the role of personal assistance and the risks and opportunities associated with it.
The course will encourage you to discuss ways to avoid and/or manage personal conflicts, whether you’re a disabled person or a personal assistant. It’s based on new evidence about the close working relationship between disabled people and their support workers – and how to improve it.
What topics will you cover?
- Introduction to Independent Living and Personal Assistance.
- Recruitment: finding the right fit.
- What sort of personal assistance relationship works for you?
- Understanding potential difficulties in personal assistance relationships.
- Understanding and managing practical difficulties.
- Understanding and managing personal difficulties.
- Understanding and managing process difficulties.
- Understanding and resolving conflict.
- Moving forward with personal assistance relationships.
When would you like to start?
Most FutureLearn courses run multiple times. Every run of a course has a set start date but you can join it and work through it after it starts.
- Available now
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to:
- Assess the working relationships between personal assistants and employers.
- Debate your own personal views about the personal assistance model.
- Develop your skills as a personal assistant or employer.
- Reflect on what a good working relationship looks like.
- Identify how you would resolve conflict in a working relationship.
Who is the course for?
This course is designed for disabled people, current or prospective personal assistants, and anyone else who’s interested in disability support and how this new role has evolved in the UK and other parts of the world.
Who will you learn with?
Tom Shakespeare I am Professor of Disability Research at the University of East Anglia, with 30 years of experience of researching with disabled people. I currently teach sociology to medical students. |
Who developed the course?
UEA (University of East Anglia)
The University of East Anglia is an internationally renowned university providing top quality academic, social and cultural facilities to over 15,000 students from over 100 countries around the globe.
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