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Departmental Schemes

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 21 June 2018

Thursday, 21 June 2018

Ceisteanna (172)

John Curran

Ceist:

172. Deputy John Curran asked the Minister for Health the progress made to date regarding the development of a new statutory homecare scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27177/18]

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Freagraí scríofa

The Department of Health is currently engaged in a detailed process to develop plans for a new statutory scheme and system of regulation for home care services. The statutory scheme for home care will introduce clear rules in relation to the services for which individuals are eligible and in relation to service-allocation. For that reason, developing a new statutory scheme will be an important step in ensuring that the system operates in a consistent and fair manner for all those who need home care services. It will also help to improve access to the home care services that people need in an affordable and sustainable way. The system of regulation for home care will help to ensure that the public can be confident that the services provided are of a high standard.  

As an initial step in this process, the Department commissioned the Health Research Board to undertake a review of the home care systems in four other European countries. This review, which was published in April 2017, will help us to learn from the experiences of other jurisdictions and will inform the debate and future consideration of approaches to formal home care financing and regulation here in Ireland. I, along with Minister Harris, also launched a public consultation process in July 2017 which closed in October 2017. The purpose of this consultation was to allow all those with views on this topic to have their say, including older people themselves, their families, and healthcare workers. There was a very high response rate to the consultation process with approximately 2,600 submissions received. I intend to publish a report of the findings of the consultation process next week. 

It is important to note that a significant amount of detailed work remains to be carried out before final decisions are taken on the form of home care scheme and the system of regulation for these services. This is required if reforms are to be successful, affordable and sustainable. 

However, while the new home care scheme is under development, the Department of Health and Health Service Executive (HSE) are continuing efforts to incrementally improve the existing services. The HSE has begun streamlining services in 2018 by bringing together the funding for home help and standard home care packages, which now operate as a single home support service. This new approach will provide significant benefits including making the services easier to understand; streamlining the application and decision-making processes; and facilitating service users to move to changed levels of service as their assessed needs change, without the need for an additional application process.

2018 has also seen a significant increase in the provision of home support services. The HSE’s National Service Plan provides for a target of some 17.094m home support hours to be provided to 50,500 people. This represents an increase of 754,000 hours to 500 more people over last year.  In addition 235 intensive home care packages will provide 360,000 home support hours for people with complex needs. 

The HSE will also continue to encourage local integration of services and build appropriate care pathways, in particular for people with dementia and complex needs.

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