No young person will have to sleep on the streets of Dublin from this year, the Eastern Regional Health Authority has promised. The pledge comes in the service plan in which it outlines how it intends to spend its allocation of £1.8 billion for health and social services in Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow.
["During 2001 it will be possible to provide a range of accommodation options which will mean that no young person need be out of home at night," it says. Providing suitable accommodation for children and young people living outside their family home would be a key priority.
Two new family support services, one in the east and one in the north of the region, are to be established. Bed shortages were a major problem facing the health services in the region. "Management of this issue is expected to continue to pose a significant challenge for the authority and providers in the region in the immediate period ahead," it says.
It notes that about 22 per cent of theatre time is not used because of staff shortages or lack of beds to which to transfer patients following operations.
At the end of September there were 17,587 people on waiting lists in the region. Arranging for public patients to have surgery in private hospitals has been helpful in dealing with the waiting lists, it says.
Three projects are planned to cope with the growing number of people with acquired brain injury, mainly from car crashes and falls.
The Royal Hospital Donnybrook is to provide rehabilitation for patients in a new 12-bed unit. A hostel for 10 patients will be built in the grounds of the National Rehabilitation Hospital.
Health promotion measures include the implementation of an accident prevention programme for the elderly in long-stay institutions.
Personal assistants for people with physical and sensory disabilities are to be provided. Currently 781 people with intellectual disabilities are on the waiting list for residential care in the region and 284 are on what the ERHA calls the "contingency list" for a day-service place.
This year an extra 414 places for residential, respite and day services will be provided, along with 27 extra residential and respite places for persons with challenging behaviour.
pomorain@irish-times.ie