HSE to cut childcare costs 7% for 2012

The use of expensive private care arrangements for children in the care of the HSE is to be reviewed as the executive seeks to reduce costs in childcare services by 7% in 2012.

These private placements, which can cost €8,500 per week, are a significant drain on the childcare services budget, which ran up a deficit of €14 million in the HSE South in 2011. The budget overrun means the €3.1m increase this year for childcare services does not represent a net gain, reducing the deficit to €11m.

Ger Reaney, area manager for the HSE in Cork, said an external review of staffing levels in child residential centres is determining how best to reorganise staff rosters to achieve greater efficiencies and reduce the use of agency staff, while maximising the number of children that can be accommodated in such centres.

The HSE also will be looking at reducing the level of enhanced foster care payments and placing limits on discretionary payments in excess of standard weekly foster care payments. There will also reduced funding for voluntary agencies, according to the HSE South regional service plan, unveiled this week.

Cost-cutting measures by the HSE South go beyond childcare services, as it enters the year €115m worse off than 2011. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation is up in arms over cuts at Cork University Hospital and Cork University Maternity Hospital.

During the week, CUH finance officer Terry Kiely wrote to staff saying that, because of the CUH group budget deficit of €20m, management had to review “every item of secondary expenditure” to find where savings could be made.

“In this scenario, it has been decided that the supply of free catering supplies to staff, which currently cost the HSE in excess of €84,000 per annum, can no longer be sustained. Accordingly, it is proposed to discontinue the free supply of milk, bread and all other catering provisions to all CUH departments with effect from Monday 20 February next.”

INMO spokesperson Patsy Doyle described the measure as “cottage hospital economics in a corporate facility” and said the measure ignored the fact that staff did not have access to a canteen at night and she questioned the savings put forward by management.

The HSE said they were “not for rowing back” on the matter, because they could not afford to.