Carers strategy ‘by end of the year’

A NEW carers strategy will hopefully be published by the end of the year alongside plans to cut the wage bill in the disability sector by 10%, Minister Kathleen Lynch said yesterday.

The Minister of State with responsibility for Disability, Older People, Equality and Mental Health was speaking at the official opening of a Caring for Carers office in Dublin.

Ms Lynch said of the €1.5 billion spent in the area of disability every year, just 20% went on services, while the remaining 80% went on wages.

She said ultimately she would like to see a 60:40 split, but that this was unlikely within a five-year period. Instead, she said the aim should be to take another 10% off the wage bill so the money can be diverted towards services.

However, she said this could be achieved through a re-ordering of the system of service provision, where there is an “over-medicalising” of some patients to more community-based services.

Work continues on a carers strategy but Ms Lynch said it would not be cost neutral. She said work was ongoing on removing people with mental health issues and disability from larger institutions, yet “we are driving the elderly back into these same institutions”.

“I would hope that it would be completed by the end of the year, but the era of false hope and false promises are long gone,” she said.

“What I would be hoping for is to drag around the budget, to take the 10% off the top and put it towards the delivery of services.”

She also said there was a need to stop talking about the recession and the lack of funds, as “you can talk yourself into a depression, instead of a recession”.

The minister also said €74m had been put aside in the HSE’s capital budget for work on the new site for the Central Mental Hospital, which is to relocate from its present site in Dundrum.

The new Caring for Carers Centre in Dublin, based in the Carmichael Centre on North Brunswick Street, will help provide an outlet for the estimated 27,000 carers in the capital.

Caring for Carers chairwoman Eilish Smith said she knew of carers who were left needing counselling after that loved one had died, as they felt isolated and unable to mix with other people.

Pauline Geaney, head of the new Dublin Centre, said the services it would provide, including respite for carers, were now more important than ever before.