Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 16 July 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children

Services for People with Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease: Discussion

9:30 am

Photo of Séamus HealySéamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman, Deputy Buttimer and the members of the committee for agreeing to hear about the south Tipperary pilot project, the five steps to living well with dementia. This project has done excellent work in south Tipperary and has been hugely successful. I thank all the delegates for the very thorough, informative and detailed presentations we have heard. The south Tipperary pilot project has been particularly successful. It has reached approximately 340 individuals and families who are touched by dementia, which, as all speakers have acknowledged, is hugely challenging now and will be in the future. The reason the project has been so successful links to what Professor O'Shea said earlier.

It is certainly well on the way to changing the mindset of society in south Tipperary towards dementia. In the past, the initial reaction was that a person with dementia needed residential care sooner rather than later, as they were seen to be a risk to themselves or their family members. That has changed in south Tipperary where people now see services and supports are available which enable a person suffering from dementia to live and be supported in their own homes and their own communities.

One of the reasons south Tipperary was chosen for the pilot project was because considerable work had already been done there in this field. The Le Cairde day centre opened in Cashel in 2006 and the Memory Technology Library in Clonmel in 2008. South Tipperary had form in this area. The three-year pilot has been particularly successful with single points of contact, the website, the dementia support worker and crisis care system all setting a scene whereby persons affected by dementia and their families see a future at home and in their own community, rather than in long-term residential care. The focus is to keep people at home living independently for as long as possible. There was a widespread media campaign undertaken by the pilot project which was supported by the local radio station, Tipp FM. It is to be congratulated on the success of this pilot project. This pilot project, with which Dr. Crowe has been involved, should be supported financially, along with the national dementia strategy, and rolled out nationally. I expect the committee to request this funding from the Minister and the Department and I hope it will do so.

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