{"id":426080,"date":"2026-05-05T07:01:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T07:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/426080\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T07:01:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T07:01:06","slug":"domiciliary-care-some-rural-areas-could-lose-out-due-to-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/426080\/","title":{"rendered":"Domiciliary care: Some rural areas could lose out due to funding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Separately, the FoI to the Southern Health Trust reveals sickness levels of more than 41,000 days lost in one year &#8211; the equivalent of 113 staff off every day, and at a cost last year of \u00a32,570,966.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sickness absence meant that around 550 home care visits were missed last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The FoI also reveals the cost of home care services provided by the Southern Trust are double that of the independent sector.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The trust&#8217;s own internal home care unit cost is \u00a339.74 per hour, compared to the independent sector rate of \u00a321.25 per hour.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Shepherd described the rate and cost of sickness among staff in the Southern Trust as &#8220;shocking&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She said the independent sector has proven to be more efficient and can do the job at half the cost compared to health trusts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;At present the independent sector provides around 70% of social care with the health trusts delivering the rest,&#8221; said Shepherd.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;However, we know that a majority of social care staff within the Southern Trust are on zero hour contracts \u2013 if the independent sector was paid the same as their counterparts in health trusts we could deliver better across more areas,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Separately, the FoI to the Southern Health Trust reveals sickness levels of more than 41,000 days lost in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46],"class_list":["post-426080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}