Annual funding for nursing home reduced by 2k a year

Hello All,

I am just looking for some advice.

Dependant relative is in a nursing home 5+ years. It has come to our attention that the funding provided by the HSE will be decreased by just over 2 grand a year. They are in the fair deal scheme. We only got informed through the nursing home last week with the reduction to come into play in January 2012. They themselves looking at the letter - were only just informed too.

My father is a dependant on my mother. He gets 311 euro a week to support the 2 of them. At the moment he has to contribute 225 euro a month to the cost of the nursing home. With the new reduction in contribution he now has to pay another 50 euro a week to the nursing home.

The nursing home have reported that 6 families are effected by this.
They have said that they will not pay the arrears which is just over 600 euros starting back from Jan to March, but they have said that they will cover half of the reduced funding so in effect he now as to pay just over 25+ euros a week towards the nursing home, which makes it around a total of 325+ a month coming from their social welfare.

We have a meeting with the HSE next week to discuss this. We are looking to know what the calculations were based on and why were we not informed as a family to the reduction.

Is their anything we should get ourselves ready for before the meeting - so that we can be prepared for what they throw at us ? In effect we are looking for the funding to be re-instated back to what it was !

Any advice would be greatly appreciated !

I have just had a quick look at the Fair Deal scheme again to check for changes in the scheme and there are none listed, so if there is a change in the amount your mother is now receiving I think you should be asking for the reasons for the increase.

Request a written explanation from HSE.
Read over the fair deal scheme before you meet with them just to refresh, or bring a copy with you.

As your mum has been in receipt of this payment for some time now any changes and their reasons should be informed in advance.

I suspect you will get the usual answer of rising costs and recession but try to get something more specific