Budget 2023 fails to address the urgent need for home care worker recruitment and retention initiatives

HCCI: Budget 2023 fails to address the urgent need for home care worker recruitment and retention initiatives

 

Dublin, 28 September 2022: Home and Community Care Ireland (HCCI), the organisation representing private home care providers, is concerned that Budget 2023 fails to address the critical need for home care worker recruitment and retention initiatives.

 

Joseph Musgrave, CEO, HCCI, said, “The home care worker recruitment crisis continues and the waiting list of people in need of home care remains unchanged. The Cross Departmental Workforce Advisory Group has still not published its recommendations or associated funding requirements. Without a strategic workforce recruitment and retention plan our members will struggle to deliver home care to all who need it this winter. While €50 million has been committed to help deliver 24 million hours of home care that is not doable without a workforce to deliver the care.”

 

“We need the Government to prioritise home care so that our older and more vulnerable citizens can get the support they need to stay in their own homes and communities – which is particularly important during the winter months and the associated flu season. To give one example of reform urgently needed – while nursing homes and hospitals are permitted to recruit carers from non-European Economic Area countries, home care providers are prohibited from doing so. This is despite the EU endorsing migrant workers as being crucial to the care sector. We urgently need this legislation changed before waiting lists grow any longer.”

 

Joseph Musgrave, CEO, HCCI said, “Another example of home care being put to the bottom of the list is the ongoing delay in paying the Pandemic Bonus to home carer workers. This is affecting morale of home carers, who do so much day in day out in every community across the country. We sincerely hope that this will be paid immediately as promised by the Minister.”