Comfort in 26 new jobs as home help hours cut

Cormac Coughlan & Sean McMahon Irish owned company Comfort Keepers Homecare has created over 500 new jobs nationwide, 26 of which will be in Cavan. Within Cavan they are looking for one full-time emplyoee and 25 part-time carers. Comfort Keepers provide people with both medical and non-medical assiantance in people's homes. The news comes as the HSE confirms that there has been a 4.7% reduction in the allocation for home help hours in Cavan and Monaghan this year. The reduction appears to already be filtering down to those who have a home help person calling on a weekly basis. The Anglo-Celt understands that a number of elderly people living on their own in County Cavan have seen a reduction of up to one hour per week in the care being provided to them. This has been spread out over the course of the week and in a couple of instances, three quarters of an hour per day has been cut to half an hour. This effectively means that the person doing the caring also sees the time reduction affecting their weekly payments. The budget allocation for Home Support services in counties Cavan and Monaghan for 2012 is €8.5m. That is made up of an allocation of €3.4m for home care packages, which is at the same level as 2011. However, the allocation for home help is €5.4m - 4.7 per cent less than in 2011. In a statement to The Anglo-Celt this week the HSE for the Cavan/Monaghan area is committed to providing 356,000 home help hours in 2012. "We are protecting home care packages in 2012, as they are the key source of personal and complex care, which keep people at home. Our home care packages (HCP) will continue to support over 600 people in 2012. Our home help service (HH) will continue to 1,000 people in 2012, in addition to those in receipt of home care packages." The statement goes on to point out that any change to existing packages will be on a case by case basis, with careful consideration involving clinical review of each individual case. "Where hours are reduced, the focus will be on reducing hours for household tasks, while personal care will be prioritised. Alternative arrangements for tasks such as meal preparation will be explored." For the month of January, 2012, a total of 41,481 hours of Home Support (either through Home Help or Home Care Package) were provided to 1,618 people in Cavan and Monaghan. Meanwhile, Comfort Keepers, the company creating 26 jobs in the county, is an Irish-owned family-run home care provider that helps people to live independent lives in their own homes. The firm offers an alternative to nursing home accommodation, providing help for people for whom daily tasks have become too difficult to manage either through illness or other reasons. The level of care varies from 30 minutes per week to 24-hour live-in care 365 days a year. These positions will be filled in the next nine months but they are immediately looking to recruit FETAC level 5 trained carers throughout the country in addition to care managers, HR administrators, qualified healthcare trainers and office coordinators. To apply or for more information contact Comfort Keepers through Andrew Mernagh of Mernagh Consulting at 087-2911028.