The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
INVESTMENT is urgently needed to deal with chronic staffing shortages in the Clare Mental Health Service, according to a nursing union.
Psychiatric Nurses’ Association representative Denis Meehan is becoming increasingly concerned about the difficulty recruiting part-time staff to fill vacancies in the service.
When contacted by The Clare Champion, he confirmed that the number of community nurses in the different sectors had fallen by six in total – from four to three in the west, four to two in the south, four to three in the north and five to three in the east.
Despite of the allocation of €35 million nationally last year for acute psychiatric services, he claimed none of this funding was spent on recruiting nurses for Clare adult mental health teams or service.
He also posed the question about what is happening to graduate nurses who were let go from Clare Mental Health Service but couldn’t get hired by agencies, despite the difficulty recruiting agency staff to fill shortages in the local service.
He confirmed 60 psychiatric nurses have left the Clare Mental Health Service since 2009 and noted the Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) level is changing on a weekly basis.
“Morale in the service is so low once nurses reach the age of service, they are gone. Very few nurses are staying on past the retirement age.
“A skeleton staff has been operating in the acute unit, Cappahard and Cois Mhara for some time and it isn’t getting any better due to staffing shortages. When the service is unable to hire agency nurses, it has to continue without them,” he said.
Commenting on the resourcing of Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs), the Mid-West HSE pointed out the full allocation of resources required has not been given to services, despite the identification of staffing numbers for CMHTs as outlined in the national strategy – Vision for Change.
However, the authority noted the Government is incrementally addressing this issue in Clare where an additional six allied health professional posts were approved and filled from the national €35 million 2012 indicative funding allocation in their adult and child/adolescent teams.
In the National Service Plan for 2013, a further allocation of €35 million has been provided to mental health services and it is anticipated that 15 posts will be approved for Clare.
These posts will be allocated to the adult and child adolescent mental health teams, Mental Health Services of Older Persons, Mental Health Intellectual Disability Community Team and for the new clinical programmes, where the majority of these posts will be nursing posts.
In total, the Mid-West area will have been allocated 38 new posts from the 2012 allocation and it is anticipated that 35 new posts will be allocated from the 2013 allocation, to bring the region more in line with the Vision for Change target.
“The moratorium is still in place in the public service and it is challenging for all services to continue to provide the same service within reducing budgets and staff numbers.
“However, in spite of this, approvals have been given to fill new development posts and also to fill some other posts which prove to be more cost effective to fill by full-time staff rather than via agency. Changes in practice will also facilitate us to manage these challenges,” the HSE stated.
