Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 27 Jun 1995

Vol. 455 No. 1

Written Answers. - Care of Persons with Disabilities.

Mary Wallace

Ceist:

67 Miss M. Wallace asked the Minister for Health the efforts, if any, his Department has made to assess the number of people currently receiving support for institutional care who might be assisted to live independently. [11682/95]

Minister for Health (Mr. Noonan,

Limerick East): Developments in the provision of services in recent years for persons with disabilities have been, in the main, community based. The principle behind the development of the services has been to enable persons with disabilities to live as independent a life as possible within their own communities.

The Report of the Review Group on Mental Handicap Services —Needs and Abilities endorsed the establishment of community based services which enable persons with mental handicap to live as independent a life as possible. Most agencies would review, on an ongoing basis, the needs of the clients for whom they provide residential accommodation and where the opportunity arises, would try to enable individual clients to move to more community based accommodation.

In the case of people with mental handicap currently accommodated in psychiatric hospitals there has been an ongoing programme to transfer them to more appropriate care settings. A Nursing Adviser from my Department has been assisting the health boards to work out details of the transfers. He is also advising on ways in which accommodation and programmes for those residing in the psychiatric hospitals can be improved. Additional funding of £600,000 has been provided in 1995 to continue this programme.

In the case of services for people with physical disabilities, the policy also is to provide the necessary community supports to enable people to be as self-reliant and independent as possible and to facilitate their integration in all aspects of community life.

The Review Group on Physical and Sensory Disability which will report to me shortly is expected to endorse this policy and provide a blueprint for the development of community based services in the future. In addition I recently received a report from an Advisory Group on the provision of personal assistants to people with physical disabilities. However, even in advance of these reports, there have been significant developments in the provision of supports to enable people with physical and sensory disabilities live in the community. Services such as home care attendants, the provision of independent living units of accommodation, and the expansion community based physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy have done much to promote independent living by people with physical and sensory disabilities.

The policy document on the development of mental health services —Planning for the Future— which was published in 1984 and which has been accepted by successive Governments, advocated a shift in the delivery of services from a predominantly institutional to a community based approach in caring for and treating persons with mental illness.

Significant progress has been made by health boards in developing appropriate community residential accommodation for such persons. This progress was most recently highlighted in the statutory report of the Inspector of Mental Hospitals from the year ending 31 December, 1992, the most recent report published. In the report, the inspector noted that community residential accommodation of a generally high quality continued to be provided in increasing numbers.

These developments are evidence of the substantial progress being made in the reorganisation of our mental health services and a high priority is attached to continued progress being made in the coming years in the development of services for persons with mental illness.