Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 83: To ask the Minister for Health and Children her views on the way home help services are run in our communities; her plans to extend these services to cater for elderly persons to enable them to live independently in their homes; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [41889/10]

Áine Brady (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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The Home Help Service is one of our core community services enabling vulnerable people to remain at home. The Service is a critical support to older people in particular, facilitating prompt discharge from Acute Hospitals or preventing inappropriate admissions to such hospitals or long stay residential care. Significant progress has been made in developing this service since 2006, as set out in the following table, with a noticeable impact in terms of numbers of people benefiting, as well as providing support to the acute hospital sector. The HSE is committed to achieving the targets for 2010 set out in its Service Plan.

The capacity of the HSE to provide approved levels of Home Help services continues to be reviewed in the context of overall resources available to the Executive. It is incumbent on each Local Health Manager to ensure that Home Help services are delivered within allocated budgets. This requires a stringent on-going review of the application of the resources.

Service Improvement

The Home Help Service has emerged over the years from what was essentially a "friendly neighbour" service within the old health board structure and, as it is a discretionary service, different approaches emerged in different areas. The service is becoming more professional and demanding as increased numbers of clients with significant and complex needs are maintained at home. In 2010-2011, work is underway to roll out improvements to ensure that applicants are treated in a similar way regardless of where they live in the country.Given the large numbers benefitting, it is critical that the National Guidelines for the Home Help Service, now being finalised by the HSE are available to assist staff in managing the service in an equitable way. The Guidelines which will be implemented nationally over 2011 will incorporate flexibility to allow professional staff allocating the service to take full account of the particular care needs, abilities and dependencies of the individual client. In this way, a client in Mayo or in Wexford can expect to be able to apply, and be assessed, for the service in a similar way and, subject to resource limits, have appropriate services allocated to support their individual requirements.

Home Care Packages

Home Care Packages (HCPs), are enhanced supports over and above existing mainstream community services, with the objective of maintaining older people at home and in their communities. They are also targeted towards those at risk of inappropriate admission to long-term care or acute hospitals, or those who require discharge home from acute hospital. In order to maintain people at home for as long as possible and to support discharges home from acute hospitals there has been considerable investment over the past few years in Home Care Packages, as set out below.

The following table sets out the considerable investment in HCPs since 2006. The HSE is committed to achieving the targets for the HCP Scheme as set out in its Service Plan 2010.

Deliberations by the Government on the expenditure allocations for next year are likely to continue up until Budget time, and it would not be appropriate for me to comment further at this stage, pending the outcome of those deliberations. The very difficult financial position facing the Exchequer will obviously require very careful management across all areas of expenditure. Notwithstanding this difficult financial environment, the Government is determined to do everything possible to protect the services referred to by the Deputy, to respond to priority demographic and other needs, and to support ongoing reform of the public heath services within the resources available for health.