Irish Home Care Report

This report is based on insights from an expert roundtable held in June 2021. The roundtable brought together Irish and global experts in health, economics, policy making, and advocacy. Roundtable insights focus on three central themes: equity and the right to statutory home care, home care standards to ensure quality, and person-centred, integrated home care, with participants agreeing to nine key recommendations for the Irish Government across the themes:

  1. Implement a common, evidence-based and needs-based assessment tool as part of the statutory home care scheme,
  2. Invest in needs-based care built on a standard assessment to help provide care recipients and their families with financial certainty and also reduce health system costs,
  3. Implement flexible home support services supported by accessible and transparent to ensure citizens can access the care that best reflects their needs and their wishes,
  4. Implement regulation to strengthen home care safety and quality standards,
  5. Develop regulatory licensing schemes for all home care providers, including the HSE, to ensure standards of care are set, pursued and achieved,
  6. Strengthen governance structures to ensure coordinated care across home care providers, health and social care services and care settings,
  7. Revise governance and promote training to provide service users with choice about their home support services and enable flexibility in care decisions,
  8. Improve home care supports for family carers by increasing the types and availability of services available, and
  9. Strengthen provider governance to ensure service user participation in care planning and outcomes-based, collaborative, personalised care planning across the course of one’s life.

Latest Developments

We keep our members and partners in touch with the most recent updates and opinions in the worldwide dialogue on population longevity and related issues.

Brazil Must Fight Antibiotic Resistance

The threat posed by antimicrobial resistance is urgent and spares no country - including Brazil. According to The Lancet, 63 deaths per 100,000 are associated with AMR in Brazil and Paraguay, a rate that exceeds the average for Latin America and the Caribbean. AMR-associated deaths in Brazil are second only to cardiovascular diseases and cancers.

We Missed 100 Million Adult Vaccines – Here’s How We Get Back on Track

Like other pandemics throughout human history, COVID-19 has caused profound changes that are still rippling through our societies, even as people are understandably eager to move on. In fact, these impacts are all the more dangerous when they are largely ignored or effectively invisible. The decline in adult vaccination may be one of the most significant, as a new report finds that ~100 million doses were missed in 2021 and 2022 alone – reversing global progress towards widespread adult immunisation as a new standard of care in a world of more old than young.

New Analysis Shows Lost Ground on Adult Immunisation During the Pandemic with 100 Million Doses Potentially Missed

New data shared today by GSK, in collaboration with the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science and the Global Coalition on Aging (GCOA), estimate approximately 100 million fewer doses of some adult vaccines (excluding Covid-19 vaccines) were administered in 2021 and 2022 than anticipated, based on the global vaccination adoption trends observed from 2013 to 2020, compounding already low adoption rates pre-pandemic.

Going Beyond Applause: The Potential of Caregiving to Unlock Job Opportunities of the Future

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of caregivers – staff and family who provide care for older and dependent people to carry out activities such as eating or moving - catapulted to the front of our collective conscience. The daily applause for front-line care workers showed a high level of recognition for their incredible work and provided insight into how our health systems must change as our society ages. We need to continue to recognise caregivers as essential to our ageing society.

High-Level Forum on the Silver Economy 2023

Join us for the High-Level Forum on the Silver Economy 2023. Now in its fourth year, the Silver Economy Forum 2023, December 6 and 7, will explore aging at every stage of life, looking at the growing global Silver Economy through a multigenerational lens. Linking to the goals and aspirations of the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing, SEF 2023 will highlight key themes at the intersection of aging at every age, and the Silver Economy.

Global Coalition on Aging Workshop Calls on G7 Countries to Fund Pull Incentives to Spur Antibiotic Innovation

The Global Coalition on Aging, in partnership with JPMA, today announced the release of its workshop report on the AMR crisis facing G7 countries and the world, “The Value of Pull Incentives in Japan to Encourage Investment in Antibiotic Innovation to Solve the AMR Crisis.” If strong action is not taken to address AMR, we will lose the antibiotics we need to cure infections, which is likely to outpace cancer as a major cause of death, killing an estimated 10 million by 2050.