This article is from page 16 of the 2007-11-20 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
UP TO 500 elderly people from east and south east Clare are to lose their local HSE centre that provides serv- ices such as home help, physiother- apy and other aids for independent living.
Staff at the care and case manage- ment provision centre in Raheen who had 500 east Clare people on their database are now being centralised to Ennis.
Clare Fine Gael TD Joe Carey has written to the HSE General Manager in Ennis expressing his concern at the withdrawal of direct care and case management provision from the residents.
“Care and case management is vital in allowing many elderly resi- dents receive the home help and care they require. The plan to centralise services in Ennis will mean that resi- dents in east Clare will have longer journeys to travel for assessment and consultation appointments,’ he said.
“This project has been running suc- cessfully in Raheen for many years,” said Deputy Carey.
Care and case management is in- volved in many areas of home assist- ance from arranging physiotherapy sessions, assessing clients for home help, providing aids for independent living and organising respite in day-
care centres.
‘This scheme has provided eld- erly people with invaluable resources since its inception in 2001,’ said Deputy Carey.
“It is not acceptable that elderly people will now be asked to travel to Ennis for these services. Trans- port will be a major issue for many of these elderly residents. In my view
the system wasn’t broken, so why is there a need to fix it?”
“What we have here is another ex- ample of the HSE using the current recruitment freeze to rush needless changes through the backdoor of our health service. Front line patients will be most affected.”