Sir, – I read the carers' stories with great sadness (Rosita Boland, November 25th).
Twenty years ago, before my daughter’s death, they could have been mine, although I had more help in terms of respite. So many of us have told our stories in the hope of improving conditions, and yet so little seems to change.
There have been many improvements for the larger group of people with disabilities; but for the small group with profound and multiple disabilities, the picture seems as bleak as it was in the 1990s.
Some residential services (a few indeed less than perfect) have closed or downsized, but the continued demand has not been met by new services, and the burden is left with families.
The HSE seems to have no plan for how care can be transferred from family to care-home in a way that respects the person and their dependence on close relationships with their carers.
Your editorial "Carers – Too often stranded and isolated" (November 29th) called for "a conversation", but the other side – the HSE and the Department of Health – seem to be resolutely silent.
Why in a world of rights for everything are the rights of these people and their parents so disregarded?
Why doesn’t the HSE fund all day-care centres for this category of person to provide sufficient respite and residential places available nearby so that families can hand over care in a way that does not damage them or their much-loved adult child?
Where can these families find the “individualised services and supports” so lauded in report after report but so absent on the ground? – Yours, etc,
MÁIRÍDE WOODS,
Dublin 13.
Sir, – Your editorial states that services provided by family carers save the Government an estimated €4 billion a year.
How does our Government and by extension Irish society acknowledge their contribution? The carer’s allowance is subject to a stringent and to my mind humiliating means test.
Carers have to be available to take care of disabled, ill and elderly family members for 24 hours a day and seven days a week.
They have no entitlement to sick leave or holidays, and for obvious reasons they cannot go on strike.
It is unlikely that many workers would be happy with these conditions. – Yours, etc,
MARY HANNON,
Cabra,
Dublin 7.