Tom Hayes (Tipperary South, Fine Gael)
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Question 143: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the way in which she intended homecare packages to be used for persons in the community; the services they were meant to cater for; if recommendations for allocating homecare packages and relevant criteria for individual assessment, as well as for assessing the groups providing these packages was provided to the Health Service Executive; if she is satisfied with the differences in using this funding here; if she has plans to change the way this funding is managed; her views on the fact that homecare packages are unavailable, recycled among persons, or simply subsumed into home help funding in some areas. [43815/09]

Áine Brady (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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Government policy in relation to older people is to support people to live in dignity and independence in their own homes and communities for as long as possible and where this is not feasible for whatever reason, to support access to quality, long-term affordable residential care.

The Home Care Package Initiative was introduced in 2006 and rolled out by the Health Service Executive (HSE) over 2006-8. This year, the HSE will invest in the region of €120m to provide packages to some 8,700 people at any one time or around 11,500 people during the course of the year. The purpose of such packages is to provide supports over and above existing mainstream community services to help maintain older people at home and in their communities. They are targeted particularly at older people at-risk of inappropriate admission to acute hospital or long-term residential care, or those requiring discharge home from acute hospital. They were designed to be as flexible as possible to best meet the needs of each individual. These criteria were indicated to the HSE when packages were introduced and have been the basis for administering the programme since.

A recent report by the National Economic and Social Forum, entitled "Implementation of the Home Care Package Scheme" indicated that while the HSE was successful in implementing HCPs from a policy point of view, and such packages made a difference to individual recipients, further improvements could be undertaken on a more standardised approach to the planning and delivery of packages.

In accordance with both a recommendation of the Long Term Care Working Group, and a commitment under "T 2016", the Department earlier this year commissioned an independent Evaluation of Home Care Packages. This report, by PA Consulting, was received recently in the Department and will be published in the coming days. The report will help inform future policy and service direction for services for older people generally, including improvements to be introduced in 2010 to the Home Care Package Initiative provided by the HSE.

The Department is satisfied that the funding for HCPs has been used as intended by the HSE but accepts the need for a more standardised approach to various aspects of the programme. Home Care Packages are a limited resource involving by their nature a significant Home-Help component, and the need to recycle packages to new recipients as resources allow.

The Department, and the HSE, are at present finalising the implementation of the recommendations of the PA report on Home Care Packages in 2010 including: agreeing national standardised access and operational guidelines for delivery of Home Care Packages; and the adoption and dissemination by the HSE of a voluntary code of Quality Guidelines for Home Care Support Services for Older People, which will apply to public and private providers.