Welcome to our newsletter. We are pleased to publish our new corporate plan this week, which outlines our ambitious agenda to drive safety and quality in Ireland’s health and social care services.
As set out in the plan, we are focusing our work on areas of risk and collaborating with other organisations on key issues such as safeguarding, the implementation of standards, involving citizens in our work, and developing an increased evidence base for the work that we do and the impact that it has on our health and social care services.
One key initiative that we have commenced this year is the development of new standards for children’s social services. This constitutes a new approach to standards development which is based on research we carried out in the last two years. Critically, we want to hear from our stakeholders at the outset and have this morning issued a survey seeking views on what should be included in those standards. I would encourage you to take part in our survey and tell us what the standards should address to ensure the interests of the child are always put first.
Recently we published an overview of the first five years of our work regulating disability services. While regulation has brought about increased awareness of the rights of people with disabilities and substantial improvements have been made in meeting people’s social care needs, safeguarding issues continue to be regularly raised by our inspectors. Better protections need to be put in place to safeguard residents from abuse and we await the Minister for Health’s approval of the National Standards for Adult Safeguarding, developed by HIQA and the Mental Health Commission.
Protecting and safeguarding people at risk in health and social care services remains at the forefront of our objectives over the next three years, as evident in the development of our new guidance on promoting a human rights-based approach, in collaboration with Safeguarding Ireland. We are currently finalising the document based on your feedback and intend to publish this later in the year. We have also commenced a new restrictive practice thematic inspection programme which aims to drive improvement in how people’s rights are upheld in social care services.
We also continue to work in collaboration with other organisations to influence the delivery of safer, better services for the Irish public. These initiatives include the National Care Experience Programme, which includes the National Patient Experience Survey and the new National Maternity Experience Survey. Recently, in collaboration with the Health Service Executive (HSE) and Department of Health, we have agreed that future surveys will expand into end-of-life care and a survey of older people in receipt of health and social care services.
In addition, we are in the process of establishing a citizen forum to enable increased public and service user involvement in our work. I look forward to updating you on this new piece of work in future issues.
Until the next time, best wishes.
Phelim Quinn