The home help service is a core community service supporting older people to remain in their own homes and communities for as long as possible, with the aim of best meeting their preferred wishes, and reducing pressures elsewhere on the wider care system. The demand for the home help service, and for additional supports such as Home Care Packages continues to grow as the population, and the complex needs, of older people increases.
The capacity of the Health Service Executive to provide approved levels of home help services is reviewed in the context of overall resources available. The latest estimated number of home helps that may potentially retire under the current initiative is in the region of 210 nationally, but the actual number that will retire cannot be confirmed at this time as some applicants may yet withdraw their applications.
It should be noted, however, that the majority of HSE employed home helps are part-time workers and that the impact on service delivery of retirements will be managed carefully by the Executive, within the remaining staff resource. In addition, should a situation arise that HSE employed home help staff are not available for whatever reason, it is possible for individual areas to make alternative arrangements as appropriate. This could include, for example,the use of indirect service providers, with whom areas already have partnership arrangements to provide services. In this way, it is planned that any impact on individual home help clients can be kept to a minimum.
The target for people expected to avail of home help services nationally at any time in 2012 is around 50,000. This represents a reduction of 1.2%, when compared with the projected out-turn for 2011. It is anticipated, therefore, that while overall service levels are being reduced due to resource constraints, the service reduction on home help client numbers will be minimised.
This approach will obviously require a stringent on-going review of resources and evolving service pressures. Local Health Offices will therefore regularly review the home help service to ensure that existing applicants receive supports aligned to their assessed needs, and that new applicants can, insofar as possible, continue to be processed and allocated appropriate supports in line with resources available.