Results 3,881-3,900 of 11,404 for speaker:Mary Butler

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: That is unusual because the majority of children are provided with transport , certainly in my area. However, there seems to be an anomaly there.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: I will come back on that. I need to look it up on my phone.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: I thank the Senator and the committee for their continued interest. This is one of the stand-out new committees. It is a really important one we did not have previously. I welcome the opportunity to put a lot of what we are trying to achieve, and the work we are doing into the public domain. It is very helpful. Going back to ADHD, the current situation is that this was launched in 2021....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: I thank Deputy Hourigan for her questions. The ICPOP team is part of the enhanced community care, ECC, programme so they technically come under the Minister for Health's funding stream. We have 22 of the 30 teams and dedicated funding in place. The challenge is not funding but, again, workforce planning. Some 60% of posts have been recruited.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: Yes.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: I will give an example. One of the first pilots started in Waterford in 2017. We call it Waterford integrated care for older people, WICOP, and we are very proud of the programme. It has a huge interaction with the community nursing unit in Waterford. A multidisciplinary team is put in place and sometimes there are vacancies on that team. While we have 60% of people in place, some teams...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: Yes.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: The total is 30. My understanding is that we are at 22 at the moment. It started as a pilot project in 2017-18. Recruitment is under way in Galway at the moment. Ms McArdle has the details of that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: One can get a simple referral from a GP to an ICPOP team. ICPOP teams work very closely with local community older persons services. They also help develop end-of-life care pathways. I have only heard good things about these teams. I have spoken to many people who avail of their services. It simplifies that people do not have to go to six different clinics in six different weeks....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: For somebody living at home who is ageing and starting to develop different health issues, the first port of call in the context of receiving home is the public health nurse. If the person involved is not in hospital, the public health nurse will carry out an assessment. They will then make an application in respect of what they believe are the relevant care needs of that person. That is...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: The ICPOP teams are for older people. There has to be----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: The whole purpose of the ICPOP teams is to try to prevent people having to go to hospital. Their work is pre-emptive. When a person attends, they are given a raft of tests. A team will look at frailty, falls, dementia and nutrition. It will then try to support people with a social worker, a physiotherapist or whatever is required.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: In the context of age-friendly homes, I was asked to provide further funding next year. As a result, €5.2 million was provided in the budget in order to roll this out across the 31 local authorities. If you are an older person living at home without family support or an immediate next of kin, there is a dedicated person within the local authority. If you want to rightsize, because...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: The dementia advisers are very much to the fore and I met some of them recently who had taken part in LGBT+ training so they could also recognise the symptoms. Well, I do not mean the symptoms. The point I am trying to make is that I met a gay woman one day and her only fear was that if she developed dementia, nobody would know she was gay because she could not remember. The dementia...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: I thank the Chair, who I know has been a strong advocate for home care for many years. We see the challenges especially at weekends in rural areas, like Saturday and Sunday. Home care works really well from Monday to Friday in a lot of areas but if you are in a particularly isolated area and you need two carers three times a day on a Saturday and Sunday, it can prove problematic....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: The previous mental health policy did not include dual diagnosis.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: I will try to get through as many of the Deputy's questions as possible. If I forget any, she should come back to me. On her first question, it is a complicated area but there is huge overlap as well. I was struck by what was said earlier, that just because a person is an older person, that does not mean that his or her disability fades away. What we are doing for home support workers? I...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: We do not have a timeline but we will work out the timelines on all the recommendations shortly. Many of the CHOs are recruiting at the moment and they are finding it difficult to recruit staff, even on €16 per hour plus mileage. We are seeing that across the board.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters: Disability, Mental Health and Ageing: Engagement with Minister of State at the Department of Health (17 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: There has been a huge amount of outreach around dementia, so we have dementia-friendly communities. A huge amount of work has been done with libraries so the signs of dementia are recognised. It is one area where there has been a reach out to first responders in respect of dementia. I can remember a case I was aware of, where a person in a shop was really disorientated and she started to...

Seanad: Private Nursing Home Sector: Statements (16 Nov 2022)

Mary Butler: I would also like to welcome my friends from Waterford, five ladies who are up to visit me today.