Providers for elderly lament low Hawke's Bay wages

Providers of in-home support for Hawke's Bay elderly people are being short-changed by the Hawke's Bay District Health Board compared with other DHBs, says the national representative of home health care service providers.
In-home support providers funded by the board had the country's third lowest hourly wage and had remained on that rate for the past three years.
The board paid providers $20.73 an hour for household management services for elderly people, which included cleaning and food preparation, and $23.77 an hour for personal care. Other DHBs had hourly rates of $25.02 and $32.99.
New Zealand Home Health Association chief executive Julie Haggie has urged the Hawke's Bay board to put more funding into the care of elderly people who lived in their own homes.
"Sixty cents an hour can make a real difference," she said. "There's such a slim margin."
Ms Haggie said that providers were "on their absolute bare bones" and that the Hawke's Bay board lagged behind other DHBs by not passing on additional government funding.
"Like other health boards, Hawke's Bay DHB has received over 12 per cent additional funding from the Government for hospital and community services. During that time most other DHBs have passed on funding increases of 1.5 to 2 per cent per annum to providers of community services. But for three consecutive years, the Hawke's Bay DHB has failed to pass on any increase to those who support people to live at home," Ms Haggie said.
However, the Hawke's Bay District Health Board's general manager of planning and performance, Andrew Lesperance, said the increased government funding was used to provide an "overall quality service" for the elderly and the board had "substantially increased its funding; in fact, almost doubling it for community services in the past five years".
That money, rising from $7,708,362 in 2006/07 to $12,467,074 in 2010/11, was funnelled into areas such as dementia, respite care, kaumatua programmes, individual packages of care and daycare plus home support.
Mr Lesperance said hourly rates for providers were driven by market forces, and other services would lose if the rate were raised.
"There are a number of businesses competing to provide this service," Mr Lesperance said. "HBDHB contracts providers who can deliver a quality service at competitive market rates."
Waiapu Anglican social services chief executive Liz Pennington supported any move that could see an increase to caregivers wages.
She said: "we know how high petrol costs are, we know how high foods costs are. Clearly we'd want to pay them the maximum within our means [but] we don't have the funding to do that. Financially, the margins are very slim."
Ms Pennington said that nationally, caregivers were often undervalued and improved remuneration rates was one way to recognise their work.
The number of elderly receiving in-home support through the Hawke's Bay District Health Board had increased by 136 over the past two years.
The board was on the verge of implementing a 15-year project to revolutionise older people's health services in the region. That required an investment of an extra $900,000.