Call On Government To Restructure Health Budget Toward Community Care

ALONE, the charity that provides services for older people in need, fully supports Social Justice Ireland’s call on the Government to give far greater priority to community care.

Although the government’s policy is to support older people to remain at home, ALONE have long been campaigning that sufficient resources are not being invested, despite the fact that homecare is what most older people desire.

CEO of ALONE, Sean Moynihan said, “With our ageing population, we need to be investing in models of supportive housing to ensure older people can age at home as this is what most older people want and it is the most economically viable option.  At the current rate, we would need to build a new nursing home every 2 – 3 weeks for the next 30 years to meet demand for nursing home places.  This is not viable so it is crucial that we look at new models of supportive housing and services which enable older people to age at home”.

Moynihan continued, “As part of our Home First Campaign we highlighted the fact that 1/3 of older people in nursing homes have low to medium support needs which means that they could technically be supported to live at home if the proper resources were put in place.”

Moynihan concluded, “We support Social Justice’s calls on the government to restructure the health budget towards community care. This is something that needs to be urgently addressed and is not something that we can put on the long finger any longer.”