Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 8 November 2022
1075. Deputy Róisín Shortall asked the Minister for Health if the recommendations from the report of the strategic workforce advisory group on home carers and nursing home health care assistants will be included in the updated tender process for homecare, due to be implemented in January 2023; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [54802/22]
View answerI established the cross-departmental Strategic Workforce Advisory Group in March 2022 to examine, and formulate recommendations to address, the challenges in front-line carer roles in the home-support and long-term residential care sectors.
The Report of the Strategic Workforce Advisory Group on Home Carers and Nursing Home Healthcare Assistants was published on 15th October 2022. Providing an overview of the work of the Group and its key findings, the report presents a suite of 16 recommendations spanning the areas of areas of recruitment, pay and conditions of employment, barriers to employment, training and professional development, sectoral reform, and monitoring and implementation.
I strongly endorse all of the recommendations and can confirm that their implementation has commenced. This will be monitored on an on-going basis to ensure that the recommendations are enacted in full in a timely manner.
Discussions between the HSE and the Department of Health in relation to the tender process for home-support, to be implemented in January 2023, are on-going. The HSE published stage one of its ‘Invitation to Participate’ on eTenders on 1st September 2022 on behalf of Services for Older People, setting 26th September 2022 as the deadline for the receipt of submissions. The evaluation of applications is currently being undertaken, further to which stage two of the process will commence.
While acknowledging that there are costs associated with the implementation of the recommendations of the Strategic Workforce Advisory Group, it is my expectation that these recommendations will be advanced as relevant through the HSE’s tender process.
