Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Cullinane for tabling this motion on home care. It is important that this crisis in home care be discussed openly and as often as possible. It is one of the many areas of healthcare that are affected by the recruitment and retention crisis and it is playing havoc with people’s health, particularly that of elderly mothers and fathers.

I support the 12 demands set out in the motion calling on the Government to resolve the issue, particularly the demand to "modernise the tendering and funding model for providers of home care to prevent a race-to-the-bottom in costs and quality, to be underpinned by a collective agreement on employment standards in the sector that ensures a level playing field, high care standards, and fair remuneration for workers." I also support the amendment from the Social Democrats, which "further calls on the Government to set out, before the 31st December, 2022, a timeline for full implementation of the 16 recommendations in the Report of the Strategic Workforce Advisory Group on Home Carers and Nursing Home Health Care Assistants".

A woman contacted me last November when a home care package from the company Care for Me, which had been place since May 2017, for 31.5 hours per week was suddenly withdrawn on 17 September last year. No other agency took up the care package due to lack of capacity. The daughter was given a list of agencies to ring herself to see if she could source private care. Around the same, a number of people rang into a well-known radio show on RTÉ with similar heart-rending stories. She had to get family and private care, etc., to help keep her mother at home. This case was raised with the Minister. Throughout December and into January, the daughter was left abandoned to care for her mother.

I have also just recently been contacted by one of the hundreds of families who have been given caring hours but cannot access them. The email I received was from a daughter, whose name I will not give. She wrote that the biggest problem she has is that her mother is very unwell and in chronic heart failure. At this point in time, she continued, her mother is getting quite anxious and distressed and desperately wants to come home. All the family is asking is that somebody can come in the morning to shower and dress the mother and in the evenings to help her get ready for bedtime. The 21 hours have been approved from the HSE. Surely, she asks, it is in the interest of the HSE not to be paying huge expenses in a nursing home when all the family is looking for is 21 hours. At this point in time, it is a matter of urgency for the mother to come home where she can get palliative care as well. I tabled a parliamentary question on this issue two weeks ago. Yesterday, I got a call from the daughter saying that the only home care the family could get is from one company that is willing to provide 12 hours. They just cannot manage that and really need 21 hours of home care.

This is only one of many families who are desperately waiting for home care hours to come through. The Minister of State has committed to a great deal but these 6,000 people have been allocated hours they are not getting. The situation the families concerned find themselves in is horrendous. I strongly support the motion.

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