Caring for the aged - We need a new strategy

THE Health Service Executive’s cash problems have been well aired but until services are cut and someone is left to fend for themselves the debate remains academic.It is no longer academic for the older people who, as the HSE has admitted, will have to make do without the help of a home support worker.

The HSE’s own Performance Monitoring Report (PMR) for January shows that 186 fewer elderly people received home help packages than had been planned. Many thousands more had their services reduced.

Though the numbers define the story the isolation of the people involved is the real issue. The reality is that some elderly people who, with minimal support, could sustain independent lives, are now more vulnerable and alone. Some may no longer be able to live at home.

As the HSE’s budget, the Department of Health’s budget, the Government’s budget — and nearly everyone else’s budget too — comes under increasing pressure we will have to re-imagine how we can fulfil our obligations to older people. If the dire warnings about pensions come true this is a problem that will get bigger and bigger. We can no longer rely on government or the pensions industry to deliver that we have come to expect as a right, we can’t rely on them to deliver what we believed we were saving and paying for.

We have to reshape our lives to give more attention to parents and elderly neighbours. We will have to become involved in organisations that accept these challenges as it seems neither the State nor the pensions industry can deliver on promises we imagined inviolable.