Including… how to find Access to Work clients as a Virtual Assistant.
Written in collaboration with Lyndsey Lee – LCL Virtual PA
Virtual Assistants are seeing a massive increase in enquiries from individuals and business owners who need support now that they’re able to access additional funding, through the UK government’s Access to Work scheme.
Access to Work (A2W), provides funding to help you get or stay in work if you have a physical or mental health condition or disability*.
Grants are often used to supply a claimant with a support worker (e.g. Virtual Assistant) for a set amount of hours a month.
At time of writing, A2W pays up to £33 an hour. This can either be paid to the claimant directly or to their support worker. How much a claimant is awarded very much depends on their circumstances and what they require assistance with. The money does not have to be paid back and does not affect other benefits. It’s incredible and a brilliant lifeline for so many.
Access to Work has opened up a whole new world of potential clients for us VAs. But as it’s still relatively new, Lyndsey and I thought we’d answer a few questions that pop up frequently around working with A2W clients in the Facebook group.
While A2W provides financial support to people with a variety of additional health needs we are finding that many of our clients awarded A2W funding are neurodivergent.
Working with any client with an A2W grant is very rewarding because you’re making a huge positive change to their lives. It can too, at times, challenge you to think outside the box. However, as with many government departments, there are sometimes some things that can seem a little out of date and, let’s say, arduous.
Here are your common questions answered, key tips, and advice that may help as you embark on a journey working with the A2W government department and with A2W Clients.
This is not to put you off at all, but to inform you about the real situation so that you can make an informed decision for you and your business.
What to expect when a potential client with A2W funding gets in touch
Your first step into working with an A2W client will probably come completely out of the blue. We’re not sure if the government department responsible for awarding the funding make suggestions to the claimants to look for a Virtual Assistant (enormous thanks and gratitude if they are) but yeah, enquiries suddenly just come in.
It usually starts with the A2W claimant asking if you’ll provide quote to support them with X number of hours a week / month.
A quote is just an invoice that says ‘quote’ at the top instead of ‘invoice’. Quote your full hourly rate because, as you’ll see below, A2W is very generous.
We know that some A2W claimants are asked to provide 3 or 4 quotes but some are asked to only provide 1 and others don’t need to provide any quotes, as part of their initial claim process. So at this stage your quote is just that, it’s not a guarantee that the claimant will come back and work with you.
Some VAs have also been asked to collate a proposal document stating the support work you can provide to the claimant and what your working parameters are. Remember, you’re not guaranteed this gig so don’t spend too much of your precious time on this.
There have also been occasions where A2W claimants have approached VAs for support completing the forms for their claim. Again, this doesn’t guarantee the claimant will be awarded funding, or that they’ll use you as their support worker, so please charge for your time assisting anyone with their claim!
Getting paid by your A2W clients as a Virtual Assistant
Woohoo. You’ve been asked to work with an A2W claimant as their Virtual Assistant. Now what?
Okay, so we send them a contract and booking form like we would any client but the getting paid part is a little different.
There are two ways the government pay the funding.
- They pay the claimant
- They pay the Virtual Assistant
And this is where it can get a bit messy. The process, as one would imagine with a government department, is inconsistent.
Okay, so where do we start here?
The process, currently, is that invoices get sent to the Access 2 Work team retrospectively and then A2W pay either the claimant or the service provider, however it’s been set up by the claimant when they first applied.
Given it’s a government organisation there should never be any issues getting your money unless!
- The claimant doesn’t submit the claim
- The claimant has used all their funding
- The claimant hasn’t had funding yet awarded
Even if the above is all okay it can, sometimes, take the government department a few weeks to process the claim and get the money sent out. They have a huge amount of people on A2W so I can only imagine how overworked they must be at times.
If you’re being paid directly by A2W it can leave you without payment for longer than you may be able to manage and good luck trying to hurry it along. There’s no ‘I’m gunna charge you interest if you don’t pay’ clause with the government, sadly. If the claimant is being paid directly you then need to rely on them to pay you without delay.
You’re just too reliant on so many outside factors. More and more VAs are finding it’s taking longer to get their invoices paid and thus their own cashflows are being affected.
But there can be a way around it.
Ask the client to pay you directly, within your terms of payment, out of their own money. Then the claimant can be reimbursed by the government.
A bit more on why this method is the only one we recommend:
If your client is not paying you directly themselves and instead waiting for the support payments from the government to pay you it could take ages. Also, the first payment registration can take up 3 months (uh-huh three months!) to complete before receiving your first payment.
Upon speaking to the A2W team in the past, it appears that registering your bank details for payment can take, on average, 10 business days before it’s sent back to the A2W team. Ouch.
From then on, your monthly payments are received IN ARREARS, approximately 28 days from the monthly claim form and your Invoice and supporting documents arriving with A2W to payment being received. Remember, you’re reliant on your client submitting your invoice in a timely manner and, as we all know, most of our clients are not very – let’s say – organised!
There is also a paper claim form that claimant’s can complete if they’re not used to using IT. This, as one would imagine, takes even longer and well, the Post Office can’t really be trusted right now, can they?
It needs to be completed and signed by both you and your client and then sent in the post to the A2W. I had my client sign one form without any other details completed and scanned over to me. Each month I would then print and complete the form with that month’s billable hours and costs and post to A2W myself. This seemed to be the easiest way to do this at the time. The form alone used to take me about 30-45minutes to complete as you have to note each day’s billable time separately. You will also need to include a printout of your billable hours report for each month. I (Lyndsey) use Toggl so this was fairly straight forward to do. But as with most government agencies you do have to repeat yourself on their form as well.
But in summary, to avoid the delay getting paid by Access to Work it would be better if you agreed, before you start any work, that the claimant pays you directly on receipt of invoice or in advance, and they claim the money back themselves from the DWP.
Communicating with Access to Work
In our experience talking directly to A2W is not always a simple process and, like any government department, there seems like there’s never an easy way to get firm answers.
Depending on the issue, if the query is anything about your payments or registration as a support worker then they’ll speak to you. But if it’s anything to do with your client’s account they won’t – and of course this is to be expected for data protection purposes.
When we last checked; there is an option for your client to give permission (via A2W) for you to contact the A2W team on their behalf.
Specialist Software for Access to Work Claimants
One of the challenges for us as VA’s and working with clients who use A2W has been about using their preferred method of communication which you may not have used before, but they need to use it as it links in with other programmes and software they use.
These programmes are often funded by A2W too. Also, depending on the needs of the client, you may need to look at how you communicate and how often, you might have more meetings using Zoom so it is face to face rather than via the written word – it is all about what makes it easier for your client to express their work needs.
My (Lyndsey) preferred methods of contact is via email or WhatsApp, but my previous A2W clients found these too overwhelming so we had to allow for weekly zoom calls and communication via a different platform.
Catherine here! You do not have to adapt or break your boundaries. You are always perfectly entitled to decline the offer of working with any client.
Take time to think about how to make A2W work best for you and your business – it will not suit everyone but for some this could be the best choice they have ever made and lead you to work with some amazing people!
Access to Work is a Wonderful Opportunity for Virtual Assistants
We by no means intend for any of this information to put you off. We’re just hoping it gives you an insight to allow you to avoid any issues you might experience.
As VA’s we are here to help support businesses and individuals to grow, so working with a client who uses A2W could mean guaranteed monthly income for your business and a wonderful sense of fulfilment as you enable someone to progress.
How to find Access to Work Clients as a Virtual Assistant?
Many ask how do Virtual Assistant’s find Access to Work clients? You don’t. They find you!
Think about what A2W clients might be Googling to find support? Perhaps phrases like:
- Access to work scheme – How can a virtual assistant help me?
- Virtual Assistant Support for Clients with Access to Work Funding
- How do I find a support worker for my Access to Work claim?
- Who supports Access to Work claimants?
- How can I get a quote for my Access to Work claim?
- What Virtual Assistants work with Access to Work claimants?
- How can I find a Virtual Assistant for Access to Work?
I am sure you’ll think of more questions claimants will search for. Make a list and then add these questions to your website and social media content so that when people do search for those phrases Google eventually pulls up your website (that’s SEO!)
But to answer the question… Access to Work claimants find YOU through the keywords you use in your marketing.
For more information:
Fact Sheets for more information about A2W