Care in the home
Homecare Independent Living’s services can play their part in helping tackle some of the community challenges facing the Health Service Executive, writes Managing Director Mairead Mackle.
A close working relationship between the statutory and independent sectors is needed in order to best deliver community care.
The Homecare team provides services which positively impact on the major social issues within our communities including domiciliary care, housing, support services and nursing services. My husband Gerald and I founded Homecare independent living in 1995. Gerald is Executive Director and heads up the company’s housing division.
Our company is all about enabling people to stay in their own home and using our skills to contribute to a better community. This is the ethos Homecare have held onto for the past 17 years and despite the company’s growth has never lost sight of the values it was built upon.
Homecare’s main areas of work are domiciliary care, temporary and long-term housing, community nursing and support services which help people to live independently. Its clients include older people, families, people with mental and physical health needs and young people leaving care.
Working in the community care industry is not without its obstacles. Budgetary constraints and the current challenge of delivering ‘more for less’ requires a fresh approach on how future services will be delivered. It needs a flexible and responsive workforce with new and innovative solutions with a greater emphasis on prevention and delaying hospital admission as well as responding to peoples needs and supporting them. It also requires facilitating people to move from hospital back into their own homes as efficiently as possible whilst keeping a focus on outcomes and well-being.
Planning
An ageing population will be one of Ireland’s major challenges over the next 10-20 years. The Central Statistics Office predicts that the number of older people living in Ireland will rise from 462,000 to 770,000 by 2021.
General Manager Bryan Meldrum explains: “Ireland is already well advanced in its thinking on how technology can assist in the delivery of community care and we can build on that knowledge.”
Homecare is working with partners to create a ‘complete’ cost effective and workable solution to give people choices about staying at home where possible for their care. Given that technology will play a huge part in the delivery of healthcare in the future we believe it’s the working together of both the professional and the practical side that will offer the real solution for people, especially for it to be done at scale.
Gerald Mackle points out: “We invest substantially each year to improve our services and with closer and earlier engagement, our investment decisions could be aligned better to the department’s planning. We would like to see providers like ourselves becoming closer to the Government’s strategic planning stage of community care provision and would like to see more joint working between the public and private sectors.”
Currently, Homecare provide services in 17 counties across Ireland with plans to expand over the next year. Over 1,000,000 hours of care were provided this year to more than 2,600 clients.
The company has invested in technology, training and motor vehicles to enhance its services and get access to rural areas. It has offices in Dundalk, Belfast, Magherafelt and Milford and has plans to open an office in Kilkenny this year. It employs over 950 staff, a figure due to rise to over 1,000 by April 2012.
Integrated care
Homecare have a team of qualified staff who assist busy professionals in the process of discharge planning [i.e. discharging a patient into a safe and competent homecare or home-nursing environment thereby freeing up hospital beds], and in the practical but vital task of ensuring people get settled back into their own homes with a care plan in place.
With the right governance and regulation, people can be cared for in their own home. Bryan Meldrum points out: “Our integrated care model supports intensive domiciliary care and enables more continuing healthcare to be undertaken in the home.”
Homecare’s Housing with Care model offers a flexible and swift response to people with combined Housing and care needs. Many of these clients have physical or mental health needs or learning disabilities that can be addressed in the home by our team of skilled and professional social work staff. Houses can be adapted if necessary to suit a person’s physical needs within a relatively short period of time, which can be a major benefit to people with disabilities.
Gerald Mackle comments: “Homecare Housing offer ‘a home of your own’ supplying accommodation backed up by a team of floating support staff who can help our clients regain their independence in a variety of ways from budgeting or helping sustain their tenancies. These services are so vital particularly in today’s economic climate.”
Quality of support
Quality has always been our focus and as people are our most valuable asset, we achieved ‘Investors in People’ and ‘Excellence through people’ awards. Our strength is that we can complement the professional services in the Health Service Executive in that, at any given time, where necessary, we have the infrastructure on the ground enabling us to respond within a very short space of time.
Homecare’s offering is not a conventional one with its strong involvement in community and voluntary work. Its charity com
mittee, ICARE, draws its name from the company’s five values: integrity, commitment, accountability, respect and enthusiasm. ICARE aims to ‘improve and help’ the communities in which Homecare operates.
Homecare launched a volunteer befriending service in January this year in light of the growing numbers of isolated older people faced with loneliness. Volunteers visit isolated older people and help them take up interests they have enjoyed in the past e.g. gardening and baking. To this end the ICARE committee has managed to secure funding from a cross-border health project, CAWT (Co-operation and Working Together).
Homecare recognises that a restricted budget should not mean poor delivery of services. People deserve to get dignified care when they need it.
In my view, choice, access and quality of services should be there for people both in the statutory and private sector. Having a choice gives people freedom to decide what route they take. It frustrates people when they cannot choose for themselves.
Homecare is set to continue to grow and expand its range of services into the community. It aims to combine the efficiencies of good business practice with the social needs of the community.
We are focused on caring for people and building a strong ethical business that is at the heart of the community it serves.
Homecare Independent Living
Dunany House
7 Seatown Gardens
Dundalk
Co. Louth
Ireland
Tel: 042 932 4688
www.homecareindependentliving.com
