Minister of State for Mental Health and Older People, Mary Butler TD, has today announced a call for submissions to identify key issues in the recruitment and retention of carer roles in home support and nursing homes. This consultation process will inform and support the establishment of a Strategic Workforce Advisory Group on this fundamental issue.
Minister Butler said: “I have engaged with many industry stakeholders to discuss the challenges they are facing in terms of staff capacity and to identify potential solutions in order to meet the current and longer-term health and social care needs of people using home support and nursing home services”.
“While significant progress has been made in the delivery of additional home support hours through increased investment and the reduction in waiting lists for funding approval, I am acutely aware that delays are arising in the delivery of home support due to a lack of available carers.”
Minister Butler continued: “This call for submissions will serve as a critical scoping exercise to gather further information and evidence of the issues impacting the sector and will provide a valuable opportunity for national stakeholders to input into this process. This consultation will be undertaken by officials in my Department and is an important first step in the establishment of a Strategic Workforce Advisory Group and the setting of terms of reference and engagement for this Group”.
The Department will be contacting stakeholders in the coming days, including service provider and employee representative organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors. I encourage all relevant stakeholders to engage with this process, to provide the necessary data and information to support evidence informed consideration of the challenges and potential responses, and critically, to have their voices and views heard”.
The call for submissions will be emailed to relevant stakeholders with a closing date for receipt of submissions of 22 December 2021. The Department’s project team will analyse submissions received to inform the setting up of a Group in early 2022.
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Notes for Editors:
Last year additional funding of €150 million was secured for home support to progress the development of a reformed model of service delivery to underpin the statutory scheme for the financing and regulation of home-support services and to provide 5 million additional hours of home support. The HSE National Service Plan sets a target to provide 24 million hours of home support this year and it is estimated that at the end of September some 15 million hours had been provided to over 53,000 people. This is about 2.2 million more hours compared to the same period last year.
The funding secured in Budget 2021 to provide these additional 5 million hours has been maintained for 2022.
Significant inroads have been achieved in reducing waiting lists for funding approval for new or additional service from over 7,800 in January 2020 to just under 400 last September. This has been achieved through a combination of validation of the waiting list and availability of funding to address those waiting.
However, there is a delay between the approval of funding and the delivery of home support hours and the numbers of people in this category have increased steadily this year. At the end of September 2021, there were 4,933 people assessed and waiting for a carer to become available, in January 2020 there was about 1,300 people in this category. Certain areas that are experiencing increased pressures, due to workforce availability, are particularly affected.
Despite the increase, it is important to note that the total number of people waiting for home support across both categories has reduced from over 9,000 at the start of 2020 to approximately 5,300 at the end of September.
The HSE is aware that there are increasing capacity issues across both direct and indirect provision, and it continues to advertise on an ongoing basis for Health Care Assistants and recruits as many suitable candidates, where possible. The HSE conducts its recruitment through a variety of channels both locally and nationally.
Due to the nature of Healthcare Support Assistants posts, this recruitment is normally conducted at a very local level and is on-going continually across the HSE. Approved Home Support Providers also continue to recruit home support workers.