Mental handicap nurses angered at care assistants' wage agreement

EDWARD MATHEWS does an invaluable job, but he feels distinctly unappreciated. He is one of 1,600 Registered Mental Handicap Nurses (RMHN) angered by a wage agreement that will see non-nursing care staff earn 2,000 more than him.

Referred to variously as residential programme assistants, house parents and care assistants, depending on your place of employment, these non-nursing staff, the RMHN’s claim, are unqualified and under their supervision.

The reason they stand to earn more than the RMHNs is because their unions secured improved pay for them, at a time when the Government was desperate to boost staffing numbers at residential units for troubled children, who had come before the courts. IMPACT will argue the RMHN pay claim is spurious, that care staff in many cases do not report to the RMHN and that many of these care staff have qualifications, but in 22-year-old Edward Mathews workplace, this, he says, is not the case. A staff nurse at St Mary’s, Drumcar, Co Louth, home to over 200 severe to profoundly mentally handicapped adults, predominantly male, he is responsible for daily supervision of up to nine clients and up to five care staff.