Thinking Tools
Matching Staff


Primary use

To create a job description and personal profile when you need to hire someone to support you or someone in your family.

Who can benefit?

You save time by letting people know in advance who should apply. You can make the decision who to employ much quicker. You can quickly give feedback if an applicant is asking for it. You can reduce the staff turnover.

When can you use it?

When you need to hire someone to be a support worker or if you need to decide if someone should support you or anyone in your family

How can it help in the SEN system?

If your child should have a key worker this tool can help to choose the best candidate.
Rating:
Many children with special needs don’t need a support worker or a personal assistant. You may however be in a situation when you will need to decide who will support your child.
It may happen when:
  • you decide to employ a personal assistant for your child
  • you choose a service provider and you want to make sure that the team working with your child is suitable

Remember that if your child is in a residential school it is a good sign if the school uses this tool to find the key worker for your child.

The way this tool works is probably very familiar to you if you recruit people in your job. In order to find the best candidates for a position companies prepare 2 documents: a job description and a person specification. When these documents are ready it is much easier to advertise the position and to discuss the job with the people who are interested.

Hiring a personal assistant is the same recruitment process. Before you hire someone you need to make sure that you know what their duties will be. It will also help if you know what personal qualities you are looking for.

Here are some reasons you may want to use this tool:
  • to reduce the staff turnover – the process of hiring people is very time consuming and it becomes very expensive when you need to go through this over and over. “Matching Staff” can help you minimise the chance of hiring someone who will not be suitable.
  • To feel more in control when you advertise a position and go through interviews – you may feel under pressure to employ someone even if you feel that none of the candidates is suitable. “Matching Staff” can help you stay focused on your priorities. This way making decisions will be much easier.

When your child receives support at school based on a statemtent you will not go through a recruitment process like this to find the most suitable teaching assistant, but this tool can still be useful.

How useful is this?

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