Comhairle nan Eilean Siar PRESS RELEASE 22 November 2001 For Use: Immediately

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NEW NIGHT-TIME CARE SERVICE

Home-based personal care is now being extended to a through-the-night service to be run by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar. The scheme, funded through the Health Board from a special cash allocation to deal with winter pressures on the NHS, will initially run for a 4-month period in the Stornoway, Broadbay and Point areas.

Director of Social Work, Malcolm Smith, explained the development to the Social Work Committee.

“People want to be cared for at home where that is possible. The consultation on care services for older people, undertaken on our behalf earlier this year, confirmed this view very clearly. We know that some people come into residential care, or are unnecessarily delayed in hospital, because they have personal care needs that cannot be delivered by existing services. An example will be the person who needs assistance to the toilet at midnight, or maybe at 6 in the morning.

“Relatively small additional care needs like this are sometimes the ones that trigger a permanent move away from home. Yet it is difficult for services to deliver care of this kind.

“The night service will employ two qualified carers for each shift, a total of four, to deliver the service through this trial period. They will provide personal, practical care to people who have other help from the home care service, day care and community nursing during the day. The team will also be linked to Faire, the community alarm service, to be able to respond to short-term emergencies, perhaps where a person living alone needs monitoring but doesn’t need to be admitted to hospital.”

The director confirmed to the Committee that the effectiveness of the trial period would be carefully assessed. If it proves its worth, then the Social Work Department and Health Board will look to extending the service throughout the year and to some other parts of the Western Isles.

An investigation of patients whose discharge from hospital has been delayed has shown that a lack of respite care and the absence of support at unsocial hours were two important contributory factors to that position. The new respite facilities in the dementia unit at Dun Eisdean, also jointly funded with the Health Board, and this new night-care initiative are designed to begin to fill these gaps.

Brian Liddle, Depute Chief Executive at NHS Eilean Siar, welcomed the development. “I think the approach we’ve taken here demonstrates our commitment to joint working. This scheme has moved very quickly from being an outline plan to being implemented. That only happens because of the working relationship the two organisations have developed. The Director of Social Work and I will take direct responsibility for evaluating the operation of the mobile care service”.

Ends

Issued by Nigel Scott
Communications Officer

Tel: 01851 709389 (Work)
Tel: 01851 706412 (Home)
Tel: 07884 236103 (Mobile)
email: nscott@cne-siar.gov.uk