Personal Assistants in Social Care: 100,000 People, No Regulation at All

There are roughly 123,000 personal assistant posts in England, held by about 100,000 people, working for around 67,000 individual employers who fund them through direct payments.

None of them is regulated. Not the personal assistant, not the employer, not the arrangement. No register, no protected title, no mandatory qualification, and — in most cases — no CQC registration either.

If you employ a personal assistant, you are the regulator. That is not a figure of speech; it is the legal position, and it comes with real duties.

Why the arrangement sits outside CQC regulation

The regulated activity of personal care is the provision of personal care for people who, by reason of old age, illness or disability, cannot provide it for themselves, in the place where they live. But Schedule 1 of the 2014 regulations excludes the services of a carer employed by an individual or a related third party, without the involvement of an employment agency or business, working wholly under the direction and control of that individual in order to meet their own care requirements.

So a personal assistant employed directly by the person — or by someone with parental responsibility, a power of attorney or other lawful authority, or a trust established to meet that person's needs — is outside CQC regulation entirely. Neither the assistant nor the employer registers.

Three limits on that exemption are worth knowing, because each one pulls an arrangement back into regulation:

• If the carer sets up a limited company, that company may need to register.
• If directly employed individuals provide overnight nursing or personal care in the person's home, that may be the separate regulated activity of accommodation for persons who require nursing or personal care, and may need registration. Shared Lives is excepted.
• The exemption applies only to workers acting alone. CQC's position is that two or more assistants sharing profits, costs, liability or decision-making are almost certainly in a partnership, and a partnership providing personal care must register. Assistants may coordinate rotas without forming a partnership, provided each has a separate contract with the person.

That third one catches people out. An informal arrangement where two assistants cover between them and split the money is a very different regulatory animal from two separate employment contracts.

No register in England. There would be one in Cardiff or Belfast.

The UK Government's list of professions regulated by law contains no care worker or personal assistant entry for England. The only social care profession listed for England is social worker.

Cross a border and that changes. Social Care Wales regulates adult care home workers, domiciliary care workers and residential child care workers. The Scottish Social Services Council registers workers in care at home services and in care home services for adults, among others. NISCC registers adult care home workers and domiciliary care workers in Northern Ireland.

Someone doing substantially similar work in Cardiff or Belfast faces statutory registration. In England there is none. Our guide to Social Care Wales registration and CPD sets out what that looks like in practice on the other side of the line.

The proof that nothing is mandatory

You can assert that no qualification is required, or you can look at what the workforce actually holds. Skills for Care's 2025 report on individual employers and the personal assistant workforce gives the second answer.

48 per cent of personal assistants hold a relevant social care qualification — slightly above the 44 per cent of care workers. About 36 per cent have engaged with the Care Certificate and 33 per cent have completed it. Health and safety awareness, personal care, and basic life support or first aid are each reported by around 60 per cent.

A third of a 100,000-strong workforce having completed the sector's foundation standard is the clearest possible evidence that it is not a requirement. Our guide to the Care Certificate standards covers what it involves and why it remains the sensible baseline even where nobody can compel it.

The rest of the picture from that report: 1.85 assistants per employer, with assistants holding 1.26 posts each. Median hourly pay 12.21 pounds, against 12.00 pounds for independent-sector care workers and a national living wage of 11.44 pounds. Turnover 16.8 per cent against 30.5 per cent for independent-sector care workers — strikingly better. Vacancy rate 9.2 per cent against 10.0 per cent.

And a decline worth noting: individual employers fell from about 75,000 in 2018/19 to about 67,000 in 2023/24, with the sharpest drop in the final year, down 4,000 or 5.6 per cent.

The DBS change in January 2026 — the most useful recent development

This one is genuinely new and solves a long-standing problem.

From 21 January 2026, self-employed people and personal employees — explicitly including people hired directly by individuals through direct payments or personal health budgets — can apply for Enhanced and Enhanced-with-Barred-List DBS checks themselves, through a registered DBS umbrella body, where the role is eligible. Previously only a Basic check was open to them.

The mechanics matter. If you are hiring a self-employed person or a personal employee, you cannot apply on their behalf. The worker applies. You can ask to see the original certificate and use the free Update Service to keep it current.

For anyone recruiting an assistant for a family member, that closes the gap that used to force a choice between a Basic check that showed very little and an agency arrangement nobody wanted. Our guide to DBS checks in health and care covers the levels and what each one reveals.

What the individual employer is legally on the hook for

If you pay a personal assistant directly, you are the employer — and that remains true even where the money comes from council direct payments or an NHS personal health budget.

The duties that follow: an employment contract and payslips; the national minimum wage, with records; maximum weekly hours; a right-to-work check; registering as an employer and running payroll; deducting and paying income tax and National Insurance; statutory maternity and sick pay; and employers' liability insurance.

And one line worth printing out: you cannot make an employee self-employed. Whether someone is employed or self-employed is determined by the nature of the arrangement, not by what the paperwork calls it. HMRC's Check Employment Status for Tax tool is the place to establish which you have.

The national role description, and the one that makes itself optional

The Department of Health and Social Care's Care Workforce Pathway added a personal assistant role category on 9 April 2025, last updated 16 July 2026. It defines four terms precisely, which is useful because the sector uses them loosely: a personal assistant is directly employed by the person supported or their representative; a self-employed personal assistant is contracted by them; an individual employer is the person who employs an assistant; and an individual commissioner is the person who commissions a self-employed one.

It carries the pathway's standard seven values and nine behaviours, framed around person-led support, positive risk-taking, advocacy, professional boundaries and openness to digital skills.

Then it does something no other role category does: it states that individual employers may ask for all, some, or a different set of behaviours. It is the only category in the framework that explicitly makes its own content optional — which is an honest acknowledgement that the employer here is a private individual with their own priorities, not an organisation with a training budget.

Its most practically useful feature is a "specific areas of practice" model scored at support level 0 to 3 across ten areas: personal care including pressure care and medication; home maintenance; finances; support in the home including moving and mobility; getting out and about; shopping, cooking, eating and drinking; childcare support; work, learning and volunteering; relationships and social life; and any other support. That is a better basis for a job description than anything else published, precisely because it describes intensity as well as task.

Suggested learning includes the Care Certificate at Level 2, the adult care apprenticeship standard, the Level 3 Diploma in Adult Care, the Lead Adult Care Worker standard, medication management, food hygiene, falls prevention, infection prevention and control, Level 2 English, maths and ICT, the Dementia Training Standards Framework and the Autism Core Capabilities Framework.

Note what the page does not carry: it specifies no Adult Social Care Digital Skills Framework level, unlike every one of the pathway's supporting role categories. Digital skills appear only as a behaviour.

Does Oliver McGowan training apply?

A reasonable question with a clean answer. The statutory duty to provide Oliver McGowan training on learning disability and autism was introduced by the Health and Care Act 2022, and CQC assesses it under the staffing regulation. It applies to all CQC-registered providers — all services, all settings, covering all health and care staff plus ancillary staff who may have contact with autistic people or people with a learning disability.

Because a directly employed assistant's employer is not a registered provider, that statutory duty does not bite on personal assistant arrangements. Which is exactly why the pathway lists the training for assistants as suggested learning rather than a requirement. If you want your assistant to have it, you are commissioning it by choice.

What to do if you employ a personal assistant

The absence of regulation cuts both ways. There is no external check on competence, and no register to consult — so the quality control is entirely what you build.

Four things, in order of how much they reduce risk. Get the employment status right, because getting it wrong creates a tax liability as well as an employment one. Use the new enhanced DBS route now that it exists, remembering that the worker has to apply. Build a job description from the ten areas of practice with a support level against each, rather than a generic list of duties. And treat the Care Certificate as your baseline even though nobody will enforce it — two thirds of the workforce has not completed it, which tells you both how optional it is and how much of a differentiator it remains.

For where this role sits among the other seventeen, see our guide to the Care Workforce Pathway role categories.