Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter which I am taking on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Mary Harney.

The Department of Health and Children has led the development of the National Strategy for Service User Involvement in the Irish Health Service and the office of consumer affairs in the HSE is now responsible for implementing it. The Deputy will also be aware that last year, the Minister for Health and Children was responsible for the publication of the report of the Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance. That report made the following recommendation: "The proposals in the National Strategy for Service User Involvement in the Irish Health Service should be implemented as a matter of urgency to ensure that patients and their families can influence policy development, service delivery and health service development and evaluation".

Subsequent to the publication of the report the Minister has appointed an implementation steering group led by the Department's chief medical officer. This group will oversee the various projects needed to implement the recommendations of the report. One of the projects is specifically directed at driving service user involvement in the health services.

The HSE has spent considerable time communicating and raising awareness of the National Strategy for Service User Involvement and has developed a dedicated web page with various on-line resources. The office for consumer affairs in the HSE has also established a database of contact details of service users and community group representatives who are interested in participating in local or national events relating to the design, development and-or delivery of Irish health and social services. Since its development in May, it has over 200 service users and community groups registered.

Within primary care, 19 projects are currently being supported under a joint funding initiative between the HSE and the Combat Poverty Agency, the purpose of which is to support and enable disadvantaged communities and groups to participate in local primary care teams and networks. Within the hospital setting, the HSE has committed in its service plan to the following: making available high quality information to service users about their treatment and care; involving service users as much as they want in decisions about their treatment and care; ensuring service user involvement leads to service improvements; guaranteeing service user involvement in service development; and promoting the HSE comments, compliments and complaints policy, "Your Service Your Say" to all service users.

The Department of Health and Children is committed to engaging service users in its policy development work and the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs has shown considerable leadership in the engagement of young people. The HSE is currently focusing on ways for services users to comment on the quality of care in a national patient survey programme. This is to be piloted in October and preliminary results are to be made available in early February.

Other developments include the following: service panel guidelines are currently being circulated for consultation and will be disseminated across the HSE in October 2009; draft national guidelines for service users outlining what service users can expect from the HSE and what the HSE can expect from service users are also being developed and will be available for consultation shortly; and 30 volunteer patient advocates have been trained through the National College of Ireland and will be working in both the private, public and voluntary sectors.

This demonstrates the considerable commitment that the Minister and the Department of Health and Children, including my office, have given to the importance of involving service users in all areas of our work.

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