Ms Sandra Broderick:

For the year to date, 55,000 people throughout the country are receiving home supports. We have an increasing waiting list, which has gone up to 3,500, for new packages. As Mr. Gloster outlined, we have increased the rate for our private providers that are not impacted by recruitment in the way we are currently challenged. We expect the waiting list to start coming down ever so slowly, but we are prioritising the delayed transfers of care of people in hospital to get them out sooner. Our priority is to get those people who are in hospital and require home support out of hospital. If people are waiting for home support in hospitals, we are using intermediate care facilities so they do not get left in an acute bed while they wait for home support. We appreciate we are very challenged with home support. We are seeing a 4% increase in demand for home support year on year. It is important to say we will deliver 22 million hours of home support this year, which is an increase of approximately 4 million since 2018. The growth in home support is enormous but so too is the demand for it.