Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. I recognise that it is a very complex issue. I know from personal experience that trying to get carers is a difficulty. It is a key priority of the Government to enable more people to engage in services that allow them to remain independent and to live in their own homes with dignity and independence for as long as possible. In order to advance this, the Government is committed to establishing a new statutory scheme for the financing and regulation of home support.

In July, the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health and older people, Deputy Butler, announced the selection of a number of sites for a new home support pilot project. This pilot will deliver an additional 230,000 hours of home support over a six-month period and will test a reformed model of service delivery for home support. The Community Healthcare Network, CHN, sites selected for the pilot are Tuam, Athenry, Loughrea, Bandon. Kinsale, Carrigaline, Ballyfermot, Palmerstown and east Westmeath. The pilot will underpin the development of the statutory scheme for home support services. A national home support office will be established to support the testing of the reformed model of service delivery. In addition, approximately 130 posts have been funded for the national roll-out of the interRAl Ireland assessment system, which the home support pilot will test as the standard assessment tool for care needs. In parallel, work is ongoing by the Department to make progress with other aspects of the scheme, including the development of a regulatory framework and the examination of options for the financing model.

While this new home support scheme is under development, the Government is prioritising improving access to home support services. An additional €150 million was made available for home support for older people in budget 2021. The national service plan set a target to provide 24 million hours of home support. This is an ambitious target that will increase provision by 5 million hours, or more than 25% above the 2020 target.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented challenges across our health services, nowhere more than in older persons' services. While there have been challenges in the delivery of home support hours, particularly during the third wave of the pandemic, significant progress has also been made. Preliminary data indicate that at the end of July 2021, more than 11.4 million home support hours had been provided to 53,732 people. This means that 1.5 million more hours were provided compared with the same period in 2020 and the number of people waiting for approval of funding for a new or additional service has greatly reduced.

The Department, the HSE and the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, are committed to ensuring that we continue to allocate additional home support hours where they will be most effective coming into the winter period. There has been a sustained focus in recent years on reducing delayed transfers of care and enabling patients to be discharged from hospital sooner. As of 14 September, there were 468 cases of delayed transfer of care. There were 93 people categorised as waiting for a home support service, of whom 57 were approved for funding and waiting for carer availability. The HSE will continue to work towards increasing home support provision. However, challenges remain in regard to capacity and efforts are ongoing to recruit staff across both direct and indirect provision.

The Department of Health is committed to working across Government and with relevant stakeholders to ameliorate these issues. The programme for Government committed to establishing a workforce planning expert unit to work with the education sectors, regulators and professional bodies to improve the availability of health professionals and reform their training to support integrated care across the health services. I take on board the cases the Deputy outlined, involving individuals she referred to as BW and PS, and the letter she wrote in that regard. Their cases are harrowing and I hope we will be able to address those issues in the coming weeks and months. However, there is an issue with both retaining and recruiting staff.

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