I have been asked to write this blog post because I have recently been successful in obtaining a grant to employ a Personal Assistant from Access to Work (AtW). It is a tedious process but if you follow the correct steps, it’s simple.
AtW use the term Support Worker rather than Personal Assistant. This is because the grant is to employ somebody for the tasks which you cannot do yourself. As my assistant (Maggie) says herself, she’s my hands and feet.
The first thing I could have done better is having a business plan before I submitted the application form. After submitting the form I had a call from someone at AtW to make a phone appointment to go through my application, the guy only gave me four days to complete my business plan. Having never written a business plan before I found a template online and spent three days completing it. When I went through my application with the guy on the phone, I said my business plan was a draft and needed more work on it. The guy said that he would take my application step by step but a few days later I received a letter from him informing me that my application for a grant had been rejected because my business plan was not viable.
I naturally appealed saying I needed more time to complete my business plan, I needed some help from someone who knows how AtW operates, it took a few weeks to find Start Ability Services who are brilliant, they gave me this simple business plan template and helped me with it. Also they advised me that I needed a business case (the tasks I need of a support worker to do).
There are three things you need to do before you submit the initial application form:
1. Here is the business plan template, all you need to do is answer the questions in it, Kath Sutherland and Jane Hunt can help you with it and your application for a Support Worker
2. Write a business case outlining the tasks you need a support worker to do. It is advisable that it is in AtW language. Click here to download the business case that I submitted
3. Obtain a unique tax reference (UTR), you can do so by phoning: 0845 915 451
Although it may not be absolutely essential to set up a limited company, I would advise you to get advice from an accountant about doing so. My accountant is Yvonne from Frampton & Co.
I hope you have found this article helpful. In my next blog post I will let you know how the grant is paid to you.