Healthcare cuts will cause ‘pain and stress’

 

The proposed reduction in home help hours and home care packages would inflict serious pain and stress on hundreds of elderly and sick Clare patients, local organisations have warned.

Health Minister James Reilly is being urged to abandon proposed cuts of 5.5% in the number of home help hours and 3.7% in home care packages for patients amid claims that the health cuts will actually cost the exchequer multiples of the millions of euro it is supposed to save on paper.

A number of local health activists claimed at a public meeting in Ennis on Monday night that the cuts announced by Minister Reilly make no economic sense and would result in increased expenditure by the Department of Social Welfare and Health Service Executive (HSE) in the long term.

Clarecare director Fiachra Hensey said the organisation could keep between seven to 10 people at home with appropriate home help for the same money as the cost of providing long-stay residential care for one patient.
In addition to causing increased hardship for elderly patients, Mr Hensey claimed any cut in funding for home help would result in more people experiencing isolation, depression and suicidal feelings.

It would, he predicted, also result in more demand for assistance from public health nurses, longer stays and later discharges from acute public hospitals and nursing homes and reduced salaries and employment requiring more expenditure on unemployment assistance.

Clarecare were notified on September 4 that no new approvals of home helps would be sanctioned, apart from very urgent circumstances.
Once the cut became public, Mr Hensey said it caused a lot of panic and “all hell broke loose” as concerned home helps, clients and their families contacted the organisation to establish if they would be affected.
“A lot of family members are gone abroad. There is a real shortage of care in some families, who are relying on home help and carers. They are in a very vulnerable position. Funding has been cut for Clarecare for the last three years and yet the demand for our services continues to go up and up.

“Clarecare is in a lot of houses yet no one asked us about ways to solve the problem before the cuts were announced. A person has to be assessed as to their suitability and a home care plan has to be drawn up. We provide a wide variety of care to people, from babies to elderly people. These include a young mother who is coming home from hospital after a serious illness and needs help with her children or a sick single parent. The level of vulnerable people out there is huge. I think funding for home help and home care packages should be increased, instead of decreased.

“I am not a politician but did anyone do a cost benefit analysis on the impact of these cuts? I believe they will actually result in increased cost for the HSE and the Department of Social Welfare,” Mr Hensey warned.

Clarecare delivers 180,000 hours of home help across the county through 400 part-time home helps, which benefits about 1,000 families.
There are 125 eligible people waiting for home helps following assessments, another 30 who needs to be assessed, an unquantified number not yet assessed and new referrals who haven’t come through the public community system yet.

The cuts were condemned as an “attack on Clare carers” by Caring for Carers head of services, Pat Shannon, who claimed they were contrary to the provisions of the current Programme for Government and the Government’s Carers’ Strategy, which was launched recently.

“These cuts don’t make economic sense and will put pain and stress on carers and their families. It will result in earlier admissions to nursing homes and acute hospitals that will cause huge anguish for families. A person getting 10 hours of home care help could have a cut of up to 30 minutes. A home help who is providing two hours for a person doesn’t leave after the two hours. You can’t leave a person half washed.

“Up to 100 people waiting on home care packages will have to wait even longer, as no new packages will be allocated,” he said.
There are 4,800 Clare carers, of which at least 620 are providing around-the-clock care on a ful-time basis. Caring for Carers estimates that 75 children are acting as a carer for their parents and siblings.

Minister Reilly has reversed planned cuts to personal assistant hours but the rest of the savings announced last week by the HSE still seem to be on the cards.
While the exact details of how these cuts will be implemented in the HSE West haven’t been finalised yet, it will result in a 5.5% reduction in home help and 3.7% in home care packages in Clare if they are implemented across the board.

The most controversial cut is a €10.8 million reduction in spending on home help. Some 600,000 home help hours are being cut, on top of a 500,000-hour cut imposed earlier this year. In addition, 200 home care packages are being reduced, out of the total of 5,300 packages provided annually. This is expected to save €1.7 million.