An Bord Snip's proposals regarding the carers' allowance may force people into respite care – costing the State money, writes ALISON HEALY.
THERE ARE more than 161,000 family carers in Ireland who look after elderly parents and relatives, siblings and children with disabilities. Some 40,000 of those do this job full time. If they qualify for the carers’ allowance, they receive just over €220 per week.
“No one really thinks they will end up being a carer,” says Enda Egan, chief executive of the Carers Association. Usually a health crisis happens and a family member finds the role of carer has been left to them. “They do it because they love the person. But people are being held over a barrel because of that love. There are some appalling cases.”
Until recently, some carers were being asked to bring in used adult nappies to the local health centre for weighing, to assess how many were needed.
“That happened on numerous occasions, but not so much in recent months. It always shocked me, every time I heard it,” Egan says.
Carers do not believe the Health Service Executive (HSE) values the work they do. Egan estimates that family carers do an average of three million hours of caring per week which is worth more than €2.5 billion a year. “Yet carers feel they are considered to be a nuisance and that they are being demanding if they look for anything. There is no sense that they are saving the State a huge amount of money.”
When people are thrown into a caring role, they find that they have to make several phone calls to deal with one issue. “Nothing seems to happen automatically. It wears them down. I can only assume that it’s a culture, caused by underfunding in the system.”
Earlier this year, Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin said carers would be an “obvious target” when cuts were being considered by An Bord Snip Nua.
As expected, An Bord Snip Nua has recommended that people receiving one social welfare payment, such as a pension or lone parents’ allowance, should not receive another, such as the half-rate carers’ allowance. It also recommends means testing home-care packages, which would be a further blow to people being cared for at home.
The half-rate carers’ allowance was introduced two years ago after 10 years of lobbying by the Carers Association. It allows people in receipt of a social welfare payment to receive half the carers’ allowance, as an acknowledgement of their caring work. Egan says carers have increased living expenses because of issues such as keeping the home warm, taking wheelchair accessible taxis and buying medical supplies.
Up to 16,000 people receive this payment.
The threat to the half-rate carers’ allowance drew a greater volume of calls to the Carers Association than the controversy over the removal of medical cards from the over-70s.
“It would represent a 30 per cent decrease in the income of family carers,” Egan says. “What other sector is being asked to take a 30 per cent reduction in income?”
Inclusion Ireland, the national association for people with an intellectual disability, has also voiced concern at the threat to the allowance.
Its chief executive Deirdre Carroll says the removal of the allowance will hit many of its older members who are in receipt of a pension. Before the allowance was introduced, parents in their 60s who were caring for children in their 40s found they were penalised when their partner died, with the carers’ allowance being removed because they were in receipt of a widow’s pension.
Making life more difficult for carers makes no financial sense for the Government, she says. “Some 64 per cent of people with an intellectual disability live at home. Places in residential services cost the state at least €70,000 a year. If any benefits to carers are cut, carers may have no choice but to stop caring at home.”
The Carers Association agrees. Egan says the lack of support for carers is going to cost the State dearly in the long run as people live longer and the Government tries to implement its policy of having people cared for in their own homes for as long as possible.
“Put those two things together and you will end up with a very high demand for carers. But if we don’t make it more attractive for people to give up work to become involved in family caring, then it’s going to be much more difficult to get people to do this work,” Egan says.
When asked about the criticisms of the HSE, a spokeswoman said carers provide an essential and very valuable service. “Obviously, if these carers weren’t providing the level of service, many more people would be in residential care or relying on additional health and social services,” she said. She listed supports such as home-care packages, home helps, day-care services and respite care and says the HSE has also increased the supports available to the people the carers look after.
She also said the HSE has a robust complaints procedure in place and any specific concerns raised by carers will be treated seriously.
But while carers have their struggles, Offaly carer Anne Hughes says she wouldn’t have it any other way. She cares for her daughter Debbie, who has autism and an intellectual disability.
“You can feel trapped. You can feel alone,” she told a carers’ meeting recently. “But the one thing that keeps me going, and I’m sure an awful lot more carers, is the love I have for my child. She’s my life and she didn’t choose to be the way she is, so all I can do is do the best I can for her.”