Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

1698. To ask the Minister for Health the steps that are being taken to increase the supply of home care workers to meet the level of approval of hours for home care by the HSE; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2257/23]

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Commitment, retention, training, career development, and pay and conditions of care workers in these The Government is committed to addressing the critical shortage of home care workers as an urgent priority. For this reason, I established the cross departmental Strategic Workforce Advisory Group in March 2022 to examine and formulate recommendations to address the challenges in frontline carer roles in the home support and long-term residential care sectors. Working closely with key stakeholders, the Group examined the sector.

The Report of the Strategic Workforce Advisory Group on Home Carers and Nursing Home Healthcare Assistantswas published on 15th October 2022. Providing an overview of the work of the Group and its key findings, the report presents a suite of 16 recommendations spanning the areas of areas of recruitment, pay and conditions of employment, barriers to employment, training and professional development, sectoral reform, and monitoring and implementation. I have strongly endorsed all of the Advisory Group’s recommendations and am committed to their full implementation as a priority. This will be overseen by an Implementation Group, which will be chaired by the Department of Health.

On 16th December 2022 the Government announced the authorisation of 1,000 employment permits for non-EU/EEA home support workers, as recommended by the Advisory Group. This promises to significantly reduce the current shortage of home support workers in Ireland.

More broadly, the Health Service Executive has begun the recruitment process for 128 interRAI Care Needs Facilitators to progress the national rollout of interRAI as the standard assessment tool for care needs in the community. InterRAI standardised outputs will be used to determine prioritisation and levels of care required. This will facilitate effective, efficient, fair and transparent care needs assessment, planning and appropriate service delivery. The HSE is also currently undertaking a recruitment process for a number of key posts to support and enable the establishment of a National Home Support Office.