As we all know, one can buy very little for £1. However, in the Western Health Board area an elderly person can be looked after for one hour for £1. For this money home helps will take care of an elderly person, light the fire, tidy the house, buy the groceries and do the washing. Home helps provide a vital service to patients and the community. Given that more people now work outside the home, elderly people need someone to take care of them. We must ensure that they are looked after by people who care about them and who, in turn, are looked after by us. The service provided by home helps has enabled many infirm and elderly people to stay in their homes and remain close to their relatives and friends. We all know people who have been moved from their homes to institutions and back again and how confused this makes them.
Home helps save the State the enormous costs involved in providing residential care. Yet in the Western Health Board area they are paid only £1 per hour. This rises to a miserly £1.46 per hour in the Southern Health Board area which caters for a huge population, many of whom are elderly. Home helps visit elderly people even on Christmas Day. In the Eastern Health Board area the rate rises to between £2 and £4 per hour. This ignores the saving to the State and the wonderful care given by home helps. It is estimated that the number of people over 80 years will increase by approximately 23 per cent by the year 2000, thereby placing a greater demand on the services for the elderly. Home helps are central to this service. When one looks at Barry Desmond's aspirational document, "Planning for the Future", one realises the importance of providing care which makes elderly people feel safe and secure in their homes. We deal with the needs of elderly people in a disjointed way — for example, in terms of security and free fuel — but never deal with all their needs.
Home helps provide a community-based home centred service which enables elderly, ill or infirm people to remain in their home environment. It also provides an essential element of social contact for many immobile and isolated elderly people who are no longer able to participate in the life of the community. How often have we heard people say they look forward to hearing the knock of the home help on the door every morning? Members will be familiar with cases where home helps visit patients not only during work hours but also at night and during weekends to ensure that they are all right.
There is an urgent need to standardise the hourly wages paid to home helps and to ensure that they reflect the central role played by them in delivering a community-based health service. Up to now home helps were viewed as unskilled auxiliary workers and this was reflected in their pay and conditions. As the number of elderly people in society increases and the concept of community-based health care is developed, the role of home helps should be reassessed to ensure they are fully integrated into the health service and treated the same as other workers. We cannot afford to ignore this problem any longer.
If we are determined to care for the elderly in their homes then we must give recognition to the work done by home helps and ensure they have proper conditions. We should start by paying them a decent wage for a job for which one could probably never adequately be paid.
