There’s No Place Like Home – A Cost and Outcomes Analysis of Alternative Models of Care for Young Children with Severe Disabilities in Ireland -
New report launched today endorses the Jack & Jill homecare provision for sick children, recommends more State funding for home nursing care & an extension of Jack & Jill’s service to support children up to the age of six years old.
According to a new report launched today in Buswells Hotel in Dublin and online at www.jackandjill.ie, the average annual costs falling on the State to deliver acute hospital care for a severely disabled child are estimated to be €147,365 – almost nine times higher than the average cost of €16,422 per child for the homecare provision currently supported by the Jack & Jill Children’s Foundation. Entitled “There’s No Place Like Home – A Cost and Outcomes Analysis of Alternative Models of Care for Young Children with Severe Disabilities in Ireland” and written by the Centre for Health Policy and Management at the School of Medicine in Trinity College Dublin, the report surveys Jack & Jill’s families nationwide and examines international evidence on the alternative models of care for severely disabled children. It recommends that the State increases its financial contribution to the Jack & Jill Foundation to ensure the sustainability of services which will achieve a net saving for the public purse.
The Foundation currently receives only 19% of its funding through the State and raises most of the €3 million budget it requires annually through the recycling of mobile phones – a situation which, according to Jonathan Irwin, Founder & CEO of Jack & Jill, is “unsustainable longer term no matter how many mobile phones we collect”. The report also recommends that the HSE fill the estimated €1,970,640 per annum financing gap to enable the expansion of Jack & Jill’s provision to children up to the age of 6 years old – the age at which children begin to receive care through expanded government programmes, rather than cutting off the service at the age of 4. Jonathan Irwin, CEO of the Jack & Jill Foundation said today that, “What makes the Jack & Jill model work is that we start off with the needs of the child and the family and we design the home nursing care model around that. We’re keen to get into a 50/50 partnership with the HSE in relation to funding Jack & Jill over the next 5 years which makes financial sense, as well as being the right thing to do and to extend our service to support children up to the age of 6, because that’s what our families need. Now that we have this report, our priority is to get into see the real decision makers in the HSE and the Department of Health & Children within the next 6 weeks.” The Jack & Jill Foundation, an Irish children’s charity established in 1997 by Jonathan Irwin, has supported over 1,200 families nationwide with home nursing care and respite for children up to the age of 4 years old who are born with or who develop brain damage and who suffer from severe intellectual and physical developmental delay as a result.
