State commitment to respite care has regressed since 2012 – carers

There must be ring-fenced funding for family carers in the next Government budget in order to continue the progress made under the current cost-neutral strategy, Family Carers Ireland has said.

In its third annual ‘scorecard’ on the State’s commitments to supporting families to care for their loved ones, the organisation highlighted improvements across areas such as engagement with carers and access to advice and information.

However, it noted continuing deficiencies in the areas of respite care and discharge planning, which have regressed since the National Carers Strategy was brought out by the last government in 2012.

At the launch of the scorecard on Thursday, head of communications with Family Carers Ireland, Catherine Cox, said that despite some progress being made just one of the 42 actions attached to the strategy have been fully implemented.

“The big issue is that the strategy is a cost neutral one, so there wasn’t funding allocated to it. We got it in a time of austerity and recession,” she said.

“We have done well given that we didn’t have those resources, what we need to hopefully see in Budget 2017 is that the next phase of the strategy will be adequately funded and we’ll see ring-fenced funding.”

She added that areas of regression or slow progression tended to be those which received inadequate resources, and are consequently most in need of funding in the upcoming budget.

The launch of the scorecard was attended by various family carers, including Damien Douglas from Lucan who, along with his wife Mary, cares for their twin daughters Ailis and Una (21) who both have severe physical and intellectual disabilities.

He had to give up his job as an assistant director of nursing for a mental health service a number of years ago, and he and his family of five children now survive on the pension from that job as they do not qualify for the means-tested carers’ allowance.

While acknowledging the “huge disparity” that exists between the high costs of caring and lesser State supports for carers, his main frustrations lie with the lack of service provision families often contend with.

“Sometimes the people who are there to help you, their hands are tied. But that really is no good to my girls. So the energy that you put into following through with agencies and different services is the energy that’s taken away from enjoying your children and looking after them,” said Mr Douglas.