North Ayrshire Council has offered jobs to 37 care staff following the liquidation of home care firm Assist Homecare (Scotland) Ltd.

Employees of the firm, which was based in Stevenston and provided care to 43 North Ayrshire residents, were informed last month that their contracts would be terminated with immediate effect.

North Ayrshire Health and Social Care Partnership worked closely with liquidators, providing reassurance to service users and supporting employees faced with unemployment.

This ensured staff were able to continue working over the weekend and this week to provide care to those receiving support from Assist.

All 37 of Assist Homecare’s care staff have now accepted contracts with North Ayrshire Council, with all services to Assist’s former clients being provided by North Ayrshire HSCP.

Councillor Margaret Johnson, Cabinet Member for Health and Social Care at North Ayrshire Council, said: “This has been an extremely distressing time for service users and staff of Assist Homecare.

"Our priority over these past few days has been to ensure the care needs of their service users continued to be met, while supporting staff and working towards a longer-term solution.

“We are delighted that there has been a positive outcome to this situation in being able to offer contracts to all of Assist’s care staff, who will now continue to provide high-quality support to North Ayrshire residents via our in-house care team.”