Mental health staff shortages at ‘crisis levels’
Information supplied to the Irish Examiner through the Psychiatric Nurses Association claims that in Ros-common, because of cuts to nursing staff, people living in community houses will either have to dispense their own medication out of hours, or the job will be done by unqualified staff.
There are also too few domestic staff. In one service for older people recently, no cleaning staff were available so patients’ personal laundry was piled up outdoors for a week until staff returned from leave.
According to the association, the service in Roscommon is a poorly resourced, badly organised and understaffed part of a national Cinderella service.
The Irish Examiner has spoken to nursing union representatives from Kerry, Roscommon, Dublin, Clare and Monaghan, all of whom expressed serious concern about staff shortages.
In Kerry, branch organiser Cormac Williams said day hospitals are to see staff reduced by 50%, and other community facilities around Killarney will also be hit.
“With so many retirements pending over the coming months and no recruitment the service is now facing a tsunami of cutbacks,” he said. “We are calling for the recruitment of graduate nurses to cut the overtime bill as this would also have the effect of cutting the dole queues.”
In Clare, a spokesperson said the service is down by 60 nurses since 2009. He said older people with dementia are being treated in the acute unit as a specialist service never materialised.
“The upshot is that community services are suffering. Staff are being withdrawn from day hospitals back to the unit and those who are in the community have bigger caseloads. Continuity of care is gone by the wayside. There is no best practice, it’s what is the best we can do.”
A spokesperson for the country’s largest catchment area, St Loman’s/Tallaght, which caters for 280,000 people, said the service will be down about 35 staff by Christmas.
“This area came about 90% to fulfilling A Vision for Change, the closest in the country to where we should be at. But still we are being cut and community services which have developed are under threat. So it doesn’t matter what kind of service you have, there is a blunt instrument cutting everywhere.”
Orla Barry of Mental Health Reform said the organisation is being contacted by nursing staff complaining that they are being pulled out of the community and put into hospital services.
This is in direct contravention to the principles of reform set down in 2006 by A Vision for Change.
Ms Barry said community services for people with mental health problems are becoming “untenable” in many areas.
