are we dealing with Healthcare or Politics around healthcare or the young, name it?

i am exceedingly alarmed today.
here is why.

yesterday the minister for health states that he thinks we can afford to offer all under 18's fee gp care.
HUH?
We couldn't afford free healthcare to the under 6's!

this is a political football to me, as we approach an election the youth and young are those  to grab right now, and of course the mothers and fathers of young children.

but this isn't healthy at all!
most of these children are HEALTHY!

we have to put the money where it is needed so badly, its needed where there is sickness, vulnerability and disability.
not into the people who as young are by virtue of this fact HEALTHY and cared for.

we have exceptions and we know that, thats not rocket science.

I ask you to observe for a moment what happens actually the unwell and disabled who are now presently reaching school leaving age or have done so.
they get specialist schooling and special care for all of those years, but once they reach 18th they are now on their own, in every sense of the word, and so too are their parents.

the learning disabled and intellectually challenged leaving school now as adults, there are few places for them to go, less educational opportunities and even less employment opportunities, they still need care, they still need occupation and they still need a good standard of living.

many are facing looking at television 24/7 because there is no placements available for vocational training, school hours are over, they are the lost souls in a system that doesn't cater for them.
parents may have other children, may have a job, may not.
what is to be done for the child turned to the age of reason who is not able due to disability find a place in society or be sheltered in some shape or form within society?

because of cut backs many if not all supports have been eroded or gone in that bracket.
so we can afford now to give free healthcare to every child under 18's?

Let us look at Nursing home care right now.
daily we hear of housing for the elderly who are in residential care, most of the buildings are massive, old, dangerous, ill equipted, sad, dreary and unacceptable as a place for a dog let alone an older person who would have given to society.

the HSE now has ear marked hundreds of millions to upgrade these buildings, start building and renovation programmes and again keep the elderly there, basically under lock and key because i tell you for an elder to wander out is forbidden!

yet for every older person put into a nursing home, the cost to keep them in the community is a mere third of the cost to keep them in a nursing home yearly.
the cost per head, in residential nursing home care if they have no funds or capital, costs the state over 80k each a year.
this is unsustainable.
this on top of having to upgrade all the buildings, provide better care and quality care when the best quality care there is is to keep someone in their own home, with supports.

those who cannot manage in their own homes are usually those who are too sick to and will need residential care but this is a very small proportion of elderly and disabled.
in fact the vast majority of people in irish nursing homes right now need minimum to medium support services.
so why are they in these places?

when 'they say' that community care cannot be provided because they haven't got the money is balls i say, we should be saying, the money is there but is being diverted to upgrade ancient buildings and infrastructure and also staff  within a building, whereas, let these places just be sold off and move forward the original plan, community care, and help them have a quality of life and a far healthier life at home!

it could be provided at a fraction of the cost.
so why are we not going down this route?
by the way this is KNOWN within the circles of healthcare, this isn't hidden from all who are running the show, they know it!
so why isn't it being done?

Minimum support and medium supports mean simply that.
dressing, washing, cooking and keeping home and a bit of shopping and getting the prescriptions and making sure they take meds etc.
maximum care is an entirely different thing.

One hour home help a day can allow the individual to be dressed, have their bed made, the home kept well and some shopping as alternative to maybe that wash and a meal cooked or several days as an alternative to that shopping so we see that a routine can be built up around all of this.

i have no idea what or where the education and the intelligence lies for it is basic common sense.
but we do KNOW this, because if you have not the education or intelligence to know it, they have been told this, from the consultants in the hospitals to the geriatricians all across the land!

we have a problem.
its not money, its how its used and where its put that is the problem.
the HSe has also a massive workforce a lot of whom could be done without, because we have doubling up all over the place and this isn't the main players, the community professionals are run off their feet, they should stay, most of the managers should go, so too should the burocracy and by upgrading the IT systems would be money well spent and release even more for the much needed care of the sick, where the money should be.

But again they KNOW this, so why isn't it being done?

we have brought in ten per cent more managers in the past two years i believe and yet the HSE is still running up enormous overruns, so there is something dysfunctional in management.
there is utter chaos.
if you put in a manager who is not fit for the job we have whats called 'the peter principle'
this my friends works like this.
its not how good you are but how long you have been in a job.

you may be a very good nurse, but you may be a bloody lousy manager!
but if you have been in the job long enough you will get to be a manager or you get to be a complaints officer, which is worse and everyone in the HSE is a complaints officer by virtue of being in the hse, go onto the website of the HSE in your local area and look at who is a complaints officer.
so not only are they expected to do the full whack of a job of investigating complaints (which they have no training in and have no expertise 'I AM AN OCCUPATIONAL THERAPIST  ffs!' is the reality.

we recently saw a person moving from decades in mental health and children move to the post of a disability manager, well less than a year into it she isn't any more.
i bet she was very overwhelmed and didn't know where she had landed up in because to be honest to be suddenly put in charge of an area managing the disability portfolio after all your life working in mental health is a whole different ball game.
if you do not know how to roll a bandage, make a sling, diagnose cellulitis on a leg or ever dressed a sprained ankle then you cannot ever hope to understand far greater problems within the physical and sensory disability fields, in order to 'manage' all that that involves.
this makes absolute sense but again they SHOULD know this.

maybe that person felt she could do with a change, maybe it was a promotion.
well its not helpful to do this to the disability sector.

regarding how we try and inform next the general population of the farce that is management within the HSE, i hope this blog goes some way to inform.
the frigthening thing being, when an 18yr old sees they will get free gp care and their parents see this, thats a big woopsie a freebie for our taxes and yet the understanding then that ACTUAL sick suffer if this occurs isn't understood or isn't believed.

it should be, its reality, you cannot spend something on healthy people in an economically stressed society and healthcare system and expect that the sick be provided with care as well because what it means to budget means something has to give.
if the political farce coming up to election is to make many vibrant people happy, voting people happy by doing this , they will do it, at the cost of the care of the elderly, the sick and the disabled.  The just gone 18 intellectually disabled left at home bored out of their tree and the parents at their wits end.
you cannot see it any other way.
this is reality.
its not nice to say the last statement of fact...IT IS WRONG TO ELECTIONEER AND PLAY WITH SICK PEOPLE'S LIVES, ITS IMMORAL AND WRONG AND THERE ISN'T ANY OTHER WAY TO SEE THIS.
by trying to grab the votes of the upwardly mobile you are giving pain to an even greater number of people, the sick, elderly, challenged, mentally ill, disabled and sensory deprived and very ill people as well.

i hope that people will begin to become political animals and work for the very country they preport to love and belong to by saying what i believe is the truth, this isn't the way we work our healthcare system which was devised to care for  - WAIT FOR IT....THE SICK!