The cost of domiciliary care in Northern Ireland has increased by £69m over the last five years, figures have shown.
In 2019/20, the cost for more than 13 million hours of domiciliary care was £225.2m
By 2023/24, over 14 million hours of care were provided at a cost of £294.5 – a difference of of more than £69m
SDLP MLA Colin McGrath asked the Health Minister Mike Nesbitt for a breakdown of domiciliary care in the community, broken down by health and social care trusts.
The most expensive was the Southern trust with a cost of £77.4m for 3.1 million hours of care in 2023/24 – a jump of £19.7m for roughly the same amount of care at just over three million hours.
The Northern trust was second with a cost of £69m in 2023/24 for 3.2 million hours of care – up £15.3m from 2019/20 for just over three million hours.
The South Eastern trust spent £55.8m in 2023/24 for 4.1m hours of care in 2023/24 – nearly £6m more than for 3.3 million hours of care in 2019/20.
In the Western trust £50m was spent for 1.7 million hours of care, a large jump of £12m despite providing the same hours of 1.7 million in 2019/20.
Belfast trust had the lowest spend at £41m for 2.5 million hours of care - £16.3m more than in 2019/20 for 1.8m hours of care.
A Department of Health spokesperson said the department remained committed to providing “a high-quality home care service” to support older people to remain in their home.
They added that demand for home care continues to outweigh capacity, with all HSC Trusts providing more hours than five years ago.
“Regional recruitment of home care staff continues as all Trusts have unmet need for home care packages. With current demographics, it is clear that the expenditure on this service will only continue to grow in the coming years,” they said.
In March, the former Health Minister Robin Swann announced a £70m package across a range of provision including home care.
This was to ensure independent sector providers had enough funding to cover increases to the national living wage in April, with the money including an increase in the regional home care rate paid to independent sector providers.
The spokesperson said work was ongoing to move the sector to a real living wage employer base and build a case for extra funds.
“The number of individuals awaiting a package of care, either full or partial, is decreasing month on month. This is an encouraging sign, and the Department will continue to work to ensure that capacity to deliver care packages is increased.”
Last month, a financial assessment from the department warned that one of the likely impacts of the latest Stormont budget would be a reduction of around 1.1m hours of homecare/domiciliary care provincewide over the year.
Other projections were a reduction of 400 acute hospital beds in Northern Ireland, 500 less care home beds, a reduction in staffing of 1,200 which would lead to a 4% reduction in staffing costs - which the department said would “significantly reduce the ability of Trusts to maintain existing services”.
A recent survey from the Department also gave a snapshot of domiciliary care over a week in September.
It showed that the statutory sector provided a quarter (24%) of domiciliary care contact hours, with the rest from the independent sector.
HSC Trusts provided domiciliary care for 23,249 clients, up by 674 (3%) from the previous year.
Most clients were elderly at over 18,000, 2,500 with physical disabilities, over 1,100 with a learning disability and almost 800 with mental health issues.