Debate contribution: Domiciliary Care Packages: Northern Health and Social Care Trust
Debate contribution by Mrs Linda Dillon on .
- MLA
- Mrs Linda Dillon
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 13 February 2024
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Adjournment
- Heading
- Domiciliary Care Packages: Northern Health and Social Care Trust
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4206544
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Congratulations on your new role, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was remiss earlier in not congratulating the Minister on his new old role. I did not want to say "new old Minister" in case people thought that that was a personal reference. Congratulations. I am not going to go over the points that have already been made. I am also a representative for the constituency of Mid Ulster, and the Northern Trust falls into my area. More importantly, two parts of my area fall between the Northern and Southern Trusts, and that is where the real complications happen. We have heard about families who have been sent from one trust to another and told that they are the responsibility of the other trust, and that is unacceptable. At the end of the day, no matter which trust it is, very often, they cannot get a domiciliary care package, and that is because those are both extremely rural areas. We know that, overwhelmingly, the people who work in the sector are women of a certain age. Some have health problems themselves, because they are taking on more work than they should. As has been mentioned, they are not getting the proper pay or being afforded the proper working conditions. For me, that is the focus. We need to have a proper plan in place. I know, from meetings that I had with the permanent secretary before the Assembly got back up, that the Department is going to ask for a decent pay structure and decent working conditions for the staff in that sector — and rightly so. I do not need to repeat the points that have been made. These are the staff who went into homes during COVID. They did not abandon the people who they were looking after. They put themselves and their families at risk, with very little thanks from the community or the rest of the world. They just had to get on with it. However, the people who they went in to, and their families, were grateful, because that was their lifeline. That kept people at home and safe. It kept the families safe and enabled them to function as a family. We need to have that recognition. The workforce is not there. I do not see a multitude of young people coming into that line of work. It is not just about pay. As has been mentioned, what progression can young people make in that sector? No one wants to go into a job thinking, "This is it. I have no possibility of progression. I have no possibility of further training to learn more about how I look after the people I have to look after". It is not about having high-flying jobs; it is about being the best at what you do. A lot of those people are the best, but that is not because of the training that they are getting; it is because they have a wish to be the best that they can be. They are not getting training and additional support.
That is also an issue that we need to focus on, and I hope that the Department will take it seriously.
This falls outside the Northern Trust specifically, but I visited A&E in Craigavon Area Hospital, and many of the patients there will have come from the Northern Trust area. In that A&E, 68 people were on trolleys and 62 people on the wards were medically able to be discharged but did not have domiciliary care packages or anywhere to go. It really is important. That is the impact. It is the knock-on effect. People are dying in our A&Es. They are dying because people who are fit to be discharged cannot be discharged. People who are fit to be discharged, particularly those from the older population and those with dementia, are dying because they become more ill the longer they are in hospital. After a person spends 10 days in hospital, they deteriorate. This has to be a focus. This is about saving lives and giving people — the staff who work in that sector and the people whom they serve — a better quality of life. I will not repeat all the points that other Members have made. The Minister has enough to respond to.
717 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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