Domiciliary Care Providers Northern Ireland
This publication presents information on the Survey of Domiciliary Care Providers Northern Ireland 2008. The survey was carried out by Community Information Branch, Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety. The recent Northern Ireland Audit office’s Older People and Domiciliary Care report (2007) highlighted the lack of information on the quality of domiciliary care in Northern Ireland. The subsequent Public Accounts Committee recommended that the DHSSPS collect information on the quality of domiciliary care. Providers were surveyed on their practices and procedures, whether their decision making was informed by the views of their users and whether they perceived themselves to be meeting regulations and minimum standards of domiciliary care introduced by the DHSSPS.
This survey collected information on general Information about providers, prospective service users, written care plans, service users’ involvement, policies and procedures, staff, training and development and recording and reporting.
For further details click on the internet links below:
Download:
- Survey of Domiciliary Care Providers Northern Ireland (2008) PDF (691KB)
- Pre-Release Access List: Survey of Domiciliary Care Providers Northern Ireland (2008) PDF (13KB)
Key Findings from the 2008 Survey:
General Information about Providers
- Most service users were provided with domiciliary care on 6 or more occasions (64%) and nearly two thirds (65%) received more than 5 hours domiciliary care in the 7 days prior to the survey.
Prospective Service Users
- Nearly half (48%) the providers said a member of staff had visited all new service users in their own homes in advance of service provision commencing in the 12 months prior to the survey. A further 31% said this had happened for some new service users.
Written Care Plans
- Nearly four fifths (78%) of providers said all their service users had care plans, nearly a fifth (18%) said most of their service users had care plans, less than a twentieth (4%) said some of them had and 1% said none of them had.
Service Users’ Involvement
- Almost all (95%) providers said they had, in the 12 months prior to the survey, sought the views of their service users or their representatives about the domiciliary care services they receive.
Policies and Procedures
- Approximately one in three providers with a formal complaints procedure said they included an outline of the role of the RQIA (31%) in the procedure and a similar number said their complaints procedure was available in an appropriate form for a person who is blind or whose vision is impaired (33%).
Staff, Training and Development
- Just over a third (37%) of providers said they had their own occupational health services. A similar number (33%) said they arranged for staff to access external occupational health services and the other third (30%) said they did not provide their domiciliary care workers with any access to occupational health services.
Recording and Reporting
- Nearly all providers (94%) said they had, in the 12 months prior to the survey, checked whether domiciliary care workers were providing the number of hours of domiciliary care they had been contracted to.
