John Lahart
Question:813. Deputy John Lahart asked the Minister for Health if he will expand the home care sector. [8097/22]
View answerTuesday, 15 February 2022
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The HSE has operational responsibility for planning, managing and delivering home support services at national, regional and local levels. Services are delivered either directly by HSE-employed staff, or on its behalf by a combination of private and Section 39 organisations (i.e. voluntary/not-for-profit) providers who operate under service agreements with the HSE.
In 2018 the HSE began streamlining services by bringing together the funding for home help and standard home care packages, which now operate as a single home support service. This approach provided significant benefits, including: making the services easier to understand; streamlining the application and decision-making processes; and, facilitating service users in moving to changed levels of service as their assessed needs changed, without the need for an additional application process. Overall, the 2018 HSE National Service Plan (NSP) provided for 17.4 million home support hours to be delivered to 50,500 people at any time. This includes home support hours provided through intensive home care packages.
The Programme for Government commits to increasing home care hours. During the lifetime of this Government I have secured additional funding of €150 million for home support, to progress the development of a reformed model of service delivery to underpin the statutory scheme for the financing and regulation of home support services, and to provide for up to 5 million additional hours of home support last year. Last year’s target was to deliver 24.26 million home support hours, which included hours to be delivered through Intensive Home Care Packages and I'm pleased to say that the funding to provide these additional hours has been maintained into 2022. Since 2018 the overall target for home support has increased from 17.4 million hours to 24.26 million hours. This represents an increase of approximately 40%.
Preliminary data show that about 2.9 million more home support hours were delivered by the end of December 2021, compared to the same period in 2020. I am aware that delays can arise between funding approval and the delivery of home support hours. Certain regions are experiencing increased pressures due to staff availability. I am committed to establishing a cross-Departmental Strategic Workforce Advisory Group to examine strategic workforce challenges in front-line carer roles in home support and nursing homes. Invitations to join the Group, along with its draft Terms of Reference issued to all relevant Government Departments and agencies on 11th February. It is expected that the inaugural meeting of the Group will be held in the week beginning 28th February 2022.
I am pleased to advise the Deputy that the Pilot for testing of a reformed model of service for the delivery for home support is fully operational. It commenced in November 2021 in east Westmeath, which is the first of the four pilot sites. The three other sites became operational in January 2022. Recruitment of 128 InterRAI Care Needs Facilitator posts to progress the national rollout of interRAI as the standard assessment tool for care needs, has been approved. In addition, a National Home Support Office is in the process of being established.
Question No. 814 answered with Question No. 788.