To ask the Minister of Health for an update on his Department's plans to address the backlog of 700 outstanding care packages in the Southern Health and Social Care Trust.

There is a regional challenge with the recruitment and retention of domiciliary care staff across Statutory and Independent Sector Providers. The demand for community care packages currently outstrips the supply of available staff to take on this work. The Southern Health and Social Care Trust is currently providing a greater number of Domiciliary Care hours per year than it is funded to do so and there still remains substantial unmet need for packages of care.

There has been an additional investment of £5M allocated to the HSC Trusts for 2023/2024 (recurrently) to specifically target independent sector provision of care packages for the over 65 population.

Following the publication of an Evaluation and Summary Report on the Reform of Adult Social Care Consultation, in May 2023, the Department established the Social Care Collaborative Forum (SCCF) to commence the delivery of reform, with a number of workstreams established across a range of key issues. SCCF workstreams are developing a plan to grow capacity in domiciliary care across the region, develop a new model for domiciliary care and take forward key aspects of social care workforce development.

In addition, HSC Trusts have been allocated recurrent funding of £697,000 to establish Early Review Teams. The Early Review Teams are being piloted currently across all five HSC Trusts and are designed to bring some of the previously allocated domiciliary care hours back into the system by ensuring reassessment of need within two to eight weeks of hospital discharge. Any hours released from the pilot will provide further capacity into the domiciliary care service.

Domiciliary care services continue to experience significant pressures; however, my Department remains committed to the provision of a high-quality domiciliary care service.