Dementia day care centre in Mullingar can’t reopen

The arrival of Covid brought an end to the daycare services that were a crucial support to people in Westmeath suffering from dementia.

“The premises that we were in Mullingar was shared with a crèche and that is not suitable, with the new Covid guidelines,” says Pat McLoughlin, CEO of the Alzheimer Society of Ireland (ASI).

Westmeath is one of 11 counties currently unable to run day care centres for people with dementia, and the crisis is affecting hundreds of people and their family carers, says the ASI.

Together with a number of recommendations, the ASI want an investment of €15m in Budget 2022 in their submission ‘Dementia: The Continuing Crisis’.

About Mullingar in particular, Mr McLoughlin said the ASI have been in discussion with the HSE: “There is no doubt, we would like to get services up and running as quickly as possible because, equally in Longford, we’re in difficulty, because we had one day a week in a HSE building and we haven’t been able to restore that.

“We restored our service in Birr from August 24 but Mullingar and Westmeath, as of now, don’t have a day care centre we can open – we are in touch with the HSE to see if we can resolve that and try to get another premises.”

Before Covid, the area of Cavan, Oldcastle, Mullingar had 33 people using daycare services, but Athlone is also in need of a service: “We haven’t been able to get our service open in Roscommon either so the midlands is a blackspot for us,” Mr McLoughlin said, adding that the intention is to secure a number of premises if the government provides capital funding.

“The number with dementia is increasing and unfortunately, the number of days centres or day care places have not kept pace with that, so 80% of people were only able to get a one- or two-day service across the whole country,” he says.

The day centres provide therapies and diversion for clients – and breaks for carers.

“For the person with dementia, it’s a safe place, and for the carer, it’s often the only break they get,” says Pat.

“It’s important: it helps keep people in their own homes, so it is a hugely important services as well as our homecare service and our new daycare at home service because when our 47 centres closed what we did was, we developed a new service where the staff went into people’s houses and carried out those sorts of activities in blocks of maybe two hours: that became very important to keep people stimulated but having said that, Covid had a massive impact on people who had dementia and their carers.

“People with dementia became very withdrawn, weren’t able to go out and many of them deteriorated, and a very large number, went into long-stay residential care in nursing homes. “The need for funding to address capacity challenges in dementia day services is urgent and serious. Further to the centres that cannot reopen, the capacity of the reopened centres is reduced by one third due to new Covid-19 compliant guidelines. A further increase of €3m in funding is required to address this.”

The ASI provides 82% of all dementia-specific day care services across the country. Prior to the pandemic it ran 47 Day Centres servicing approximately 1,100 people, with a waiting list of 400. The budget submission sets out an overall requirement of €29m for dementia services.

Mr McLoughlin said: “Since coming into office, Minister Mary Butler has shown an understanding of the challenges faced and has engaged with these issues – however, there has been no capital investment in dementia day care by successive governments. Covid-19 has not so much created this crisis, but exposed years of under investment that must now be addressed. There is no county in the country that meets the minimum recommended standards for dementia supports.”

• The Alzheimer Society of Ireland National Helpline is open Monday to Friday 10am–5pm and Saturday 10am–4pm at 1800 341 341. The public can also email helpline@alzheimer.ie, or use Live Chat at alzheimer.ie.