HSE does U-turn on cuts to home care
THE Health Service Executive has reversed a plan to cut its spending on home help care services to pensioners and other vulnerable people.
The U-turn was made a day after the Irish Mail on Sunday revealed last weekend how the health authority was targeting elderly people as part of a bid to reduce its €2bn deficit.
The MoS has also learned the HSE decided not to proceed with a proposal to reduce payments to home help carers the day before chief executive, Bernard Gloster, appeared before he Oireachtas Health Committee on Tuesday.
When Mr Gloster was quizzed alongside Department of Health secretary general Robert Watt and other senior health officials about the HSE’s €2bn spending overrun, he insisted the number of home help hours would not be reduced.
He made his remarks four days after the MoS submitted a detailed list of questions to the HSE about proposed changes to the service.
But despite repeated requests to clarify the situation, the HSE declined to do so.
Social Democrats health spokeswoman Róisín Shortall last night said she will raise questions and seek clarification about the home help service when the Dáil returns from its October recess on Tuesday, November 7.
The Dublin North-West TD told the MoS: ‘I want to know what’s happening with the home help provided by the HSE and that provided by outsource. Home care is so important.’
Last year, following recommendations by an advisory group set up by Minister for Older People, Mary Butler, the terms and conditions of home help carers working with private firms were changed so that they would be paid mileage, travelling time to clients and an hourly rate of €12.90.
However in a controversial move, it subsequently emerged that no additional funding would be provided by the the Department of Public Expenditure. As a result, Deputy
Shortall said, the number of home help hours was cut by 1.9m.
In response to queries from the MoS, a HSE spokeswoman said: ‘We expect to provide approximately 22 million hours of home support this year. New tender arrangements, which significantly increase the rates paid to home support providers, have recently been introduced which should assist in the sourcing of additional hours to address current unmet need within the total budget allocation. No instruction has issued asking HSE staff to reduce the level of care being provided to home support users to a level below their assessed needs.’