Pensioner stuck in hospital for 6 months as no carers available
PENSIONER Patricia Stokes has been ‘stuck’ in hospital for the past six months awaiting a home care package – and still has no idea how long it will take to get one.
Ms Stokes spent a month in Mayo University Hospital (MUH), in Castlebar, after losing mobility before being moved to a shared ward, in Belmullet Community Hospital, in April.
The 85-year-old is determined to return to her home in Shraigh East, just 10 kilometres away, but she needs help a couple of times a day to get dressed and washed.
Ms Stokes told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘I can’t afford to pay for [a home carer] and keep my home going as well.’
The fiercely independent country and western music fan said she is ‘fedup with people talking to me’ in the hospital, and misses ‘being on my own’.
She said she feels ‘stuck’ in hospital, asking: ‘What else could you call it?’
Ms Stokes, who is originally from England but has lived in Ireland for 25 years, has no family here, but is visited in hospital most days by her neighbour, Mary Deane.
Ms Deane works as a home carer and used to call in to Ms Stokes at home regularly, but is no longer able to meet her neighbour’s care requirements.
‘I have a son with special needs and he has a lot of hospital appointments and stuff like that,’ Ms Deane told the MoS. ‘Before, we used to work our way around it but it wouldn’t be possible now.’
‘Everybody’s been very good here,’ Ms Deane continued. ‘She had physio and was doing well. Then she was ready to go and would need a home care package put in place, but it’s finding that home care package that’s the problem.’
Ms Stokes is one of just under 6,000 people nationally awaiting home care. In the HSE’s Community Health Organisation (CHO) Area Two, which covers counties Galway, Mayo and Roscommon, there are 586 people on the waiting list.
Those waiting lists are expected to get longer – and lead to more hospital beds being occupied – after the HSE announced a recruitment freeze for 2024 last week, blaming a lack of funding in Budget 2024.
The roles subjected to the recruitment freeze include home helpers and healthcare assistants, nonconsultant (junior) doctors and management and administration staff.
Nat O’Connor, policy specialist with Age Action Ireland, said it was ‘a step forward’ that plans to regulate the home care sector in Ireland for the first time are in motion, but said we ‘need to see a package of funding and a significant increase in funding if that’s going to be a reality’.
‘At the end of the day, they know there’s a recruitment and retention issue,’ Mr O’Connor said.
‘There’s no career path for people in care. It’s such a valuable, important thing that people do, and yet it’s very poorly paid and conditions aren’t good. That’s the blockage in terms of getting people to enter into this type of work and therefore provide the care we need.’