Skills for Care Employer & Personal Assistant Funding 25-26

Funded training for individual employers and personal assistants

Applications are now open for individual employers (IEs) to request funds covering training costs to develop their skills as an employer or training for their personal assistants (PAs), including hiring replacement support whilst their usual PA is attending training courses and travel.

This ensures that training is bespoke and personalised to the individual employer and their needs.  

You can apply for up to five training courses per person and once completed you can apply for more. 

The training is bespoke and personalised to the Individual Employer (IE) and their needs. 

The funding is available for IEs living in England, aged 18 and over who employ their own PAs or contract* self-employed PAs, using either:

• their own money
• adult social care direct payments
• NHS Personal Health Budgets. 

'Contracted' refers to PAs with true self-employed status. PAs can check whether they are self-employed online using the check employment status for tax tool. 

They will ask for evidence from self-employed PAs accessing training.

Deadline for applications 

Deadline for all applications is midday Friday 13 March 2026 and all funded training courses must be started before Tuesday 31 March 2026.