Quality and Fairness - A Health System for You

Over the last four years health services in Ireland have benefited from the largest ever sustained increase in funding. Facilities are being developed and refurbished, more staff are being hired and the number of people benefiting from health services has increased substantially. A lot has been achieved, but a lot remains to be done. Very clear deficiencies in services remain which must be addressed. There are unacceptably long waiting times in various parts of the system, important services remain underdeveloped and major demographic challenges must be addressed. By doubling health funding over the last four years, the Government has moved the debate on health funding from resources alone to both resources and reform. Download the Report here

Speech by Mr. Micheál Martin TD – Meeting The Challenges Of Cultural Diversity In The Irish Healthcare Sector

It gives me great pleasure to accept the invitation to address this conference on “Meeting the Challenges of Cultural Diversity in the Irish Healthcare Sector” which is being organised by the Irish Health Services Management Institute in partnership with the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism. The conference provides an important opportunity to develop our knowledge and understanding of the issues surrounding cultural diversity in the health sector from the twin perspectives of patients and staff. Cultural diversity has over recent years become an increasingly visible aspect of Irish society bringing with it both opportunities and challenges. It holds out great possibilities for the enrichment of all who live in Ireland but it also challenges us to adapt creatively to the changes required to realise this potential and to ensure that the experience is a positive one for all concerned but particularly for those in the minority ethnic groups. In the last number of years in particular, the focus has tended to be on people coming to this country either as refugees, asylum seekers or economic migrants. Government figures estimate that as many as 340,000 immigrants are expected in the next six years. However ethnic and cultural diversity are not new phenomena in Ireland. Travellers have a long history as an indigenous minority group in Ireland with a strong culture and identity of their own. The changing experience and dynamics of their relationship with the wider society and its institutions over time can, I think, provide some valuable lessons for us as we seek to address the more numerous and complex issues of cultural diversity which have arisen for us in the last decade. Turning more specifically to the health sector which is the focus of this conference, culture and identity have particular relevance to health service policy and provision in that The first requirement is that we in the health service acknowledge cultural diversity and the differences in behaviours and in the less obvious areas of values and beliefs that this often implies. Only by acknowledging these differences in a respectful way and informing ourselves of them can we address them. Our equality legislation – The Employment Equality Act, 1998 and the Equal Status Act, 2000 – prohibits discrimination on nine grounds including race and membership of the Traveller community. The Equal Status Act prohibits discrimination on an individual basis in relation to the nine grounds while for groups it provides for the promotion of equality of opportunity. The Act applies to the provision of services including health services. I will speak first about cultural diversity in relation to the patient. In this respect it is worth mentioning that the recognition of cultural diversity and appropriate responses to it were issues which were strongly emphasised in the public consultation process which we held earlier this year in the context of developing National Anti-Poverty targets for the health sector and also our new national health strategy. Awareness and sensitivity training for staff is a key requirement for adapting to a culturally diverse patient population. The focus of this training should be the development of the knowledge and skills to provide services sensitive to cultural diversity. Such training can often be most effectively delivered in partnership with members of the minority groups themselves. I am aware that the Traveller community, for example, is involved in in-service training for health care workers. I am also aware that the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism has been involved in training with the Eastern Regional Health Authority. We need to have more such initiatives. A step beyond the sensitivity training for existing staff is the training of members of the minority communities themselves as workers in our health services. Again the Traveller community has set an example in this area with its Primary Health Care Project for Travellers. The Primary Health Care for Travellers Project was established in 1994 as a joint partnership initiative with the Eastern Health Board and Pavee Point, with ongoing technical assistance being provided from the Department of Community Health and General Practice, Trinity College, Dublin. This project was the first of its kind in the country and has facilitated The project included a training course which concentrated on skills development, capacity building and the empowerment of Travellers. This confidence and skill allowed the Community Health Workers to go out and conduct a baseline survey to identify and articulate Travellers’ health needs. This was the first time that Travellers were involved in this process; in the past their needs were assumed. The results of the survey were fed back to the community and they prioritised their needs and suggested changes to the health services which would facilitate their access and utilisation. Ongoing monitoring and data collection demonstrates a big improvement in levels of satisfaction and uptake and ulitisation of health services by Travellers in the pilot area. This Primary Health Care for Travellers initiative is being replicated in three other areas around the country and funding has been approved for a further 9 new projects. This pilot project was the recipient of a WHO 50th anniversary commemorative award in 1998. The project is developing as a model of good practice which could inspire further initiatives of this type for other minority groups. Access to information has been identified in numerous consultative processes as a key factor in enabling people to take a proactive approach to managing their own health and that of their families and in facilitating their access to health services. Honouring our commitment to equity in these areas requires that information is provided in culturally appropriate formats. The National Health Promotion Strategy 2000-2005, for example, recognises that there exists within our society many groups with different requirements which need to be identified and accommodated when planning and implementing health promotion interventions. These groups include Travellers, refugees and asylum seekers, people with intellectual, physical or sensory disability and the gay and lesbian community. The Strategy acknowledges the challenge involved in being sensitive to the potential differences in patterns of poor health among these different groups. The Strategic aim is to promote the physical, mental and social well-being of individuals from these groups. The objective of the Strategy on these issues are: While our long term aim may be to mainstream responses so that our health services is truly multicultural, we must recognise the need at this point in time for very specific focused responses particularly for groups with poor health status such as Travellers and also for refugees and asylum seekers. In the case of refugees and asylum seekers examples of targeted services are screening for communicable diseases – offered on a voluntary basis – and psychological support services for those who have suffered trauma before coming here. The two approaches of targeting and mainstreaming are not mutually exclusive. A combination of both is required at this point in time but the balance between them must be kept under constant review in the light of changing needs. A major requirement if we are to meet the challenge of cultural diversity is an appropriate data and research base. I think it is important that we build up our information and research data base in partnership with the minority groups themselves. We must establish what the health needs of diverse groups are; we must monitor uptake of services and how well we are responding to needs and we must monitor outcomes and health status. We must also examine the impact of the policies in other sectors on the health of minority groups. The National Health Information Strategy, currently being developed, and the recently published National Strategy for Health Research – Making Knowledge Work for Health provide important frameworks within which we can improve our data and research base. A culturally diverse health sector workforce – challenges and opportunities The Irish health service can benefit greatly from successful international recruitment. There has been a strong non-national representation amongst the medical profession for more than 30 years. More recently there have been significant increases in other categories of health service workers from overseas. The Department recognises the enormous value that overseas recruitment brings over a wide range of services and supports the development of effective and appropriate recruitment strategies in partnership with health service employers. These changes have made cultural diversity an important issue for all health service organisations. Diversity in the workplace is primarily about creating a culture that seeks, respects, values and harnesses difference. This includes all the differences that when added together make each person unique. So instead of the focus being on particular groups, diversity is about all of us. Change is not about helping “them” to join “us” but about critically looking at “us” and rooting out all aspects of our culture that inappropriately exclude people and prevent us from being inclusive in the way we relate to employees, potential employees and clients of the health service. International recruitment benefits consumers, Irish employees and the overseas personnel alike. Regardless of whether they are employed by the health service, members of minority groups will be clients of our service and consequently we need to be flexible in order to accommodate different cultural needs. For staff, we recognise that coming from other cultures can be a difficult transition. Consequently health service employers have made strong efforts to assist them during this period. Many organisations provide induction courses, religious facilities (such as prayer rooms) and help in finding suitable accommodation. The Health Service Employers Agency (HSEA) is developing an equal opportunities/diversity strategy and action plans as well as training programmes to support their implementation, to ensure that all health service employment policies and practices promote the equality/diversity agenda to continue the development of a culturally diverse health service. The management of this new environment is extremely important for the health service as it offers an opportunity to go beyond set legal requirements and to strive for an acceptance and nurturing of cultural differences. Workforce cultural diversity affords us the opportunity to learn from the working practices and perspectives of others by allowing personnel to present their ideas and experience through teamwork, partnership structures and other appropriate fora, leading to further improvement in the services we provide. It is important to ensure that both personnel units and line managers communicate directly with their staff and demonstrate by their actions that they intend to create an inclusive work place which doesn´t demand that minority staff fit. Contented, valued employees who feel that there is a place for them in the organisation will deliver a high quality health service. Your conference here today has two laudable aims – to heighten awareness and assist health care staff to work effectively with their colleagues from different cultural backgrounds and to gain a greater understanding of the diverse needs of patients from minority ethnic backgrounds. There is a synergy in these aims and in the tasks to which they give rise in the management of our health service. The creative adaptations required for one have the potential to feed into the other. I would like to commend both organisations which are hosting this conference for their initiative in making this event happen, particularly at this time – Racism in the Workplace Week. I look forward very much to hearing the outcome of your deliberations. Thank you.

Speech by Mr Micheál Martin TD at Launch of Pre-Registration Nursing Degree Programme

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I am very pleased that you were all able to accept my invitation to join me here today on this landmark occasion for nursing education. It is fitting that all of the key stakeholders from the health and education sectors should be so well represented at the launch of an historic new development. Rapid and unpredictable change throughout society has been the hallmark of the twenty-first century, and healthcare is no exception. Regardless of what change occurs, no one doubts that nursing is intrinsic to the health of this nation. However, significant changes in nurse education are now needed if the profession is to deliver on its social mandate to promote people´s health by providing excellent and sensitive care. As science, technology and the demands of the public for sophisticated and responsive health care become increasingly complex, it is essential that the foundation of nursing education is redesigned. Pre-registration nursing education has already undergone radical change over the past eight years, during which time it has moved from an apprenticeship model of education and training to a diploma based programme firmly rooted in higher education. The Secretary General of my Department, Michael Kelly, played a leading role in bringing about this transformation, which has greatly enhanced the way students are prepared for entry to the nursing profession. The benefits of the revised model of education are clearly evident from the quality of the nurses graduating from the diploma programme. The Commission on Nursing examined the whole area of nursing education, and set out a very convincing case for educating nursing students to degree level. It argued that nurses of the future would be required to possess increased flexibility and the ability to work autonomously. A degree programme would provide nurses with a theoretical underpinning that would enable them to develop their clinical skills to a greater extent and to respond to future challenges in health care, for the benefit of patients and clients of the health services. The Commission has provided a solid framework for the professional development of nurses and midwives, including a process that is already underway for the creation of clinical nurse specialist and advanced nurse practitioner posts. This process will facilitate the transfer of skills across divisions of nursing. In this scenario, it is clearly desirable that the future benchmark qualification for registration as a nurse should be a degree in nursing studies. A Nursing Education Forum was established in early 1999 to prepare a strategic framework for the implementation of a nursing degree programme. When launching the Forum´s report last January, I indicated that the Government had agreed in principle to the introduction of the proposed degree programme next year. At the time two substantial outstanding issues had yet to be resolved, namely the basis on which nurse teachers would transfer from the health sector to the education sector and the amount of capital and revenue funding required to operate the degree programme. My Department has brokered agreements between the Nursing Alliance and the Higher Education Institutions for the assimilation of nurse teachers as lecturers into their affiliated institutions. The terms of these agreements have been accepted by all four nursing unions following a ballot of their nurse teacher members. I would like to pay particular tribute to all nurse teachers who have contributed to shaping the position, relevance and visibility of nursing through leadership, which embodies scholarship and excellence in the profession of nursing itself. In response to a recommendation of the Nursing Education Forum, I established an Inter-Departmental Steering Committee, chaired by Bernard Carey of my Department, to consider all the funding and policy issues. This Steering Committee includes representatives of the Department of Finance and the Department of Education and Science as well as the Higher Education Authority. The Steering Committee has been engaged in intensive negotiations with representatives of the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities and the Institutes of Technology in relation to their capital and revenue funding requirements. These negotiations were successfully concluded within the past few weeks. The satisfactory resolution of the industrial relations and funding issues cleared the way for me to go to the Government with concrete proposals for the implementation of degree level education for nursing students. I am delighted to announce here today that the Government has approved all of my proposals, and that a four-year undergraduate pre-registration nursing degree programme will be implemented on a nation-wide basis at the start of the next academic year, 2002/2003. The Government has approved the provision of capital funding totalling £176 million pounds for a major building and equipment programme to facilitate the full integration of nursing students into the higher education sector. This programme is due to be completed by September 2004, and will ensure that nursing students are accommodated in purpose built schools of nursing studies with state of the art clinical skills and human science laboratories at thirteen higher education sites throughout the country. The Government has also agreed to make available the substantial additional revenue funding required to support the nursing degree programme. By 2006, the full year cost of operating the programme will rise to some £43 million pounds. The scale of this investment in pre-registration nursing education is enormous by any yardstick. It demonstrates the firm commitment of myself and my Government colleagues to the full implementation of the recommendations of the Commission on Nursing, of which the introduction of pre-registration degree level education is arguably the most important. This historic decision, and it is truly historic, will finally put the education of nurses on a par with the education of other health care professionals. The nursing profession has long been striving for parity, and my own involvement in the achievement of it is a matter of deep personal satisfaction to me. I am also pleased to announce that the Government has approved my plans for increasing the number of nursing training places to coincide with the implementation of the degree programme next year. Ninety-three additional places in mental handicap and psychiatric nursing will be created at Athlone, Letterkenny, Tralee and Waterford Institutes of Technology. This will yield 392 extra places over the four years of the degree programme. A total of 1,640 places annually on the new degree programme will thus be available. This is an all-time record, and maintaining the annual student intake at this level for the foreseeable future is a key element of my overall strategy for ensuring that we produce sufficient “home-grown” nurses for our health services. I am aware that the Nursing Alliance were anxious that some funding would be provided for the further academic career development of nurse teachers who transfer to one of the six Universities that will be involved in the delivery of the degree programme. I am happy to confirm that up to £300,000 in total per year will be available for this purpose over the first four years of the degree programme. In line with a recommendation of the Commission on Nursing, my Department will have responsibility for the administration of the nursing degree budget until the programme has been bedded down in the higher education sector. A primary concern will be to ensure that the substantial capital and revenue funding involved is ring-fenced for nursing studies. It is intended that responsibility for the budget will be transferred to the Department of Education and Science after the first cohort of nursing degree students have graduated in 2006. In the context of today´s launch, it is relevant to refer to a special initiative that I introduced last year to assist registered nurses wishing to undertake part-time nursing degree courses. Under this initiative, nurses are entitled to have their course fees paid by their employers in return for a commitment to continue working in the public health service for a period following completion of the course. This initiative has proved extremely popular with large numbers of nurses availing of it. I want to confirm here today that the free fees initiative will continue in operation until 2005, at a total cost of at least £15 million pounds. I am giving this commitment in order to assure this year´s intake of nursing students to the final diploma programmes that fee support for a part-time nursing degree course will be available to them when they graduate in three years time. The focus of today´s celebration is rightly on the landmark Government decision to implement the nursing degree programme next year. As Minister for Health and Children, and as a former Minister for Education, I also have a particular interest in the educational opportunities available to other health service workers to upgrade their skills. I am pleased to announce that the Government has approved my proposals for the introduction of a sponsorship scheme for suitable, experienced health care assistants who wish to become nurses. This new scheme will commence next year and will be administered by the health boards. Successful applicants will be allowed to retain their existing salaries throughout the four years of the degree programme in return for a commitment to work as nurses for their health service employer for a period of five years following registration. Up to forty sponsorships will be available annually. The new scheme will enable suitable applicants to undertake nursing education and training without suffering financial hardship. The greatest advantage of the scheme will be the retention by the public health service of staff who are supported under it, since they will have had practical experience of working in the service and their own personal commitment to upgrading their skills will be informed by that experience. I am confident that the sponsorship scheme will be warmly welcomed by health service unions representing care assistants as providing an exciting new career development path for their members. Education and health are now the two pillars upon which the profession of nursing rests. We must continue to build bridges, even tunnels where needed to strengthen this partnership. We must all understand partnerships donâ?Tt just happen they are designed and must be worked at. The changes outlined here today are powerful incentives for those in healthcare agencies, academic institutions and regulatory bodies to design revolutionary programmes capable of shaping a critical mass of excellent practitioners. You have an opportunity, greater perhaps than has been granted to any other generation in history to make certain those changes are for the good. Ultimately changes that will make the country a healthier and more equitable place to live. The challenge relates to building a seamless preparatory programme which equally respects both education and practise as an indivisible duo whilst ensuring that high tech does not replace the human touch. This is a special day in the history of the development of the Irish nursing profession, and I would like to thank everybody for their contribution. I want to express my particular appreciation of two people who by this stage are well known to all of you – Bernard Carey of my Department and Siobhán O´Halloran of the National Implementation Committee. Bernard and Siobhán have devoted considerable time and energy to the project on my behalf over the past fourteen months or so. That we are here today celebrating the launch of degree level education is due in no small part to their successful execution of the mandate that I gave them. We live in a rapidly changing world, one in which nursing can no longer rely on systems of the past to guide it through the new millennium. In terms of contemporary healthcare, nursing is no longer just a reciprocal kindness but rather a highly complex set of professional behaviours, which require serious educational investment. Pre-registration nurse education will always need development and redesign to ensure our health care system meets the demands of modern society. Nothing is finite. Today more than ever the health system is dependent on the resourcefulness of nursing. I have no doubt that the new educational landscape painted will ensure that nurses of the future will be increasingly innovative, independent and in demand. The unmistakable message from my Department is that nursing really matters. Thank you.

Prompt Payments by Government Departments pursuant to Government Decision No. S29296 of May 2009

Prompt Payments by Government Departments pursuant to Government Decision No. S29296 of May 2009 Click here to download PDF 22kb

Report to Secretary General on: Travel associated with Management - Union Partnership Activities, and in which Department officials participated, and Funding for Management -Union Partnership activities other than SKILL

Report to Secretary General on: Travel associated with Management – Union Partnership Activities, and in which Department officials participated, and Funding for Management -Union Partnership activities other than SKILL Download this document as a PDF 58KB Also… Subsistence Allowances PDF 1.19MB Extracts from the Health Service National Partnership Forum’s Financial Statements for the year ended 31 December 2000 PDF 338KB Foreign Travel claims relating to Skills & Partnership PDF 13KB Details of Funding Provided to Nursing Unions from 12/6/2000 – 5/11/2004 PDF 360KB Partnership Investigation PDF 428KB

Value for Money & Policy Review: Allocation & Utilisation of Funding in Acute Services in the Southern Hospitals Group in 2006 - Final ReportRelated Documents

This report is a Value for Money (VFM) evaluation, conducted by the National Hospitals Office (NHO) of the Health Service Executive (HSE) on the allocation and utilisation of funding for expenditure in the Southern Hospitals Group (SHG) in 2006. The SHG consists of nine hospitals in the HSE South region. The 2006 expenditure for the SHG covered by the evaluation was 590.1 million. Performance trends were studied over the period 2004 to 2006. Download document here Value for Money & Policy Review of Allocation & Utilisation of Funding in Acute Services in the Southern Hospitals Group (in 2006) – Department of Health and Children Response & Implementation Plan

Research Strategy for Nursing and Midwifery in Ireland 2003-2008.Review of Attainments

The Research Strategy for Nursing and Midwifery in Ireland (Department of Health and Children, 2003) was a response to the Commission on Nursing's (Government of Ireland, 1998: p114) suggestion that a national strategy be developed to guide and support the emerging need for the professions of nursing and midwifery to develop a research base as a fundamental to practice. The Commission itself had found a dearth of published Irish nursing and midwifery research (Government of Ireland, 1998; Condell, 1998) due to a lack of policy direction and funding availability. Download document here

Funding: North Dublin City & County Regional Drugs Task Force

The North Dublin City and County Regional Drugs Task Force invites applications for this once-off funding which will be provided through four pillars by way of a grant up to €3,000 for innovative initiatives: • Prevention, Education & Awareness – to develop programmes and supports in the community which offer information and education in order to generate awareness. • Treatment & Rehabilitation – to develop additional short-term supports for those undertaking treatment for drug misuse or innovative rehabilitative supports. • Research – to undertake local research into drug misuse in North Dublin within the RDTF area. • Supply Reduction – to reduce access to all drugs, in particular those that cause most harm, among young people in neighbourhoods where misuse is most prevalent. Terms and conditions apply. To request an application pack or for more information contact 01 813 1786 orThis resource was contributed by The National Documentation Centre on Drug Use.

Whole-person care: from rhetoric to reality. Achieving parity between mental and physical health.

The report presents evidence on a range of factors affecting disparity between mental and physical health, and includes case studies and examples of good practice to illustrate some of the key issues and solutions. It should be seen as the first stage of an on-going process over the next 5"10 years that will deliver parity for mental health and make whole-person care a reality. It builds on the Implementation Framework for the Mental Health Strategy in providing further analysis of why parity does not currently exist, and the actions required to bring it about. A parity approach should enable NHS and local authority health and social care services to provide a holistic, whole person response to each individual, whatever their needs, and should ensure that all publicly funded services, including those provided by private organisations, give people's mental health equal status to their physical health needs. Central to this approach is the fact that there is a strong relationship between mental health and physical health, and that this influence works in both directions. Poor mental health is associated with a greater risk of physical health problems, and poor physical health is associated with a greater risk of mental health problems. Mental health affects physical health and vice versa. The report makes a series of key recommendations for the UK government, policy-makers and health professionals. Recommendations include: The government and the NHS Commissioning Board should work together to give people equivalent levels of access to treatment for mental health problems as for physical health problems, agreed standards for waiting times, and agreed standards for emergency/crisis mental healthcare. Action to promote good mental health and to address mental health problems needs to start at the earliest stage of a person's life and continue throughout the life course. Preventing premature mortality " there must be a major focus on improving the physical health of people with mental health problems. Public health programmes must include a focus on the mental health dimension of issues commonly considered as physical health concerns, such as smoking, obesity and substance misuse. Commissioners need to regard liaison doctors (who work across physical and mental healthcare) as an absolute necessity rather than an optional luxury. NHS and social care commissioners should commission liaison psychiatry and liaison physician services to drive a whole-person, integrated approach to healthcare in acute, secure, primary care and community settings, for all ages. Mental health services and mental health research must receive funding that reflects the prevalence of mental health problems and their cost to society. Mental illness is responsible for the largest proportion of the disease burden in the UK (22.8%), larger than that of cardiovascular disease (16.2%) or cancer (15.9%). However, only 11% of the NHS budget was spent on NHS services to treat mental health problems for all ages during 2010/11. Culture, attitudes and stigma " zero-tolerance policies in relation to discriminatory attitudes or behaviours should be introduced in all health settings to help combat the stigma that is still attached to mental illness within medicine. Political and managerial leadership is required at all levels. There should be a mechanism at national level for driving a parity approach to relevant policy areas across government; all local councils should have a lead councillor for mental health; all providers of specialist mental health services should have a board-level lead for physical health and all providers of physical healthcare services should have a board-level lead for mental health. The General Medical Council (GMC) and Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) should consider how medical and nursing study and training could give greater emphasis to mental health. Mental and physical health should be integrated within undergraduate medical education.This resource was contributed by The National Documentation Centre on Drug Use.

In-depth assessment delivers the verdict on the Government�۪s promise of a more equal society

An independent and detailed expert analysis of a decade of reforms (published 25 February) takes up the challenge made by Peter Mandelson in 1997 to “judge us after ten years of success in office. For one of the fruits of that success will be that Britain has become a more equal society.����”Commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the study, by a team led by LSE’s Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, shows sharp contrasts between different policy areas. Notable success stories include reductions in child and pensioner poverty, improved education outcomes for the poorest children and schools, and narrowing economic and other divides between deprived and other areas.But health inequalities continued to widen, gaps in incomes between the very top and very bottom grew, and poverty increased for working-age people without children.����In several policy areas there was a marked contrast between the first half of the New Labour period and the second half, when progress has slowed or even stalled.John Hills, one of the leaders of study, said, “Whether Britain has moved towards becoming a ‘more equal society’ depends on what you look at, and when. Where clear initiatives were taken, results followed. But as the growth of living standards slowed, even well before the recession, and public finances tightened, momentum seems to have been lost in several key areas.”Kitty Stewart added, “The government can take heart from achievements such as the reduction in child poverty up to 2004.����Recent data show that by then, child well-being in the UK had begun to move up the European league table from its dismal showing at the start of the decade that formed the basis of UNICEF’s damning 2007 report. But even with improved figures, Britain was still left with one of the highest rates of child poverty out of the 15 original EU members, and the latest figures show it had increased again by 2006/7.”����The study concludes that the decade from 1997 was favourable to an egalitarian agenda in several ways: the economy grew continuously; the government had large majorities and aspired to create more equality; and public attitudes surveys suggested pent-up demand for more public expenditure. But that environment now looks very uncertain, not just in the near future, but also in the longer term.����Fiscal pressures from an ageing society could further constrain resources available for redistribution, and public attitudes towards the benefit system have hardened while support for redistribution has declined.Hills added, “The 1980s and 1990s showed that hoping that rapid growth in living standards at the top would ‘trickle down’ to those at the bottom did not work.����The period since 1997 has shown that gains are possible through determined interventions, but they require intensive and continuous effort to be sustained.”JRF Chief Executive Julia Unwin added, “We know the potential impact the deepening recession will have on those already living in poverty. This book provides an important, timely and comprehensive assessment of where we are and what remains to be done.”

Further Education and Training Strategy 2014-2019

he first ever strategy for the Further Education and Training (FET) sector is being launched by the Minister for Education and Skills, Ruair�_ Quinn T.D., and Minister of State for Training and Skills Ciarn Cannon T.D. The overall aim of the Strategy is to develop a world-class integrated system of further education and training in Ireland, which will promote economic development and meet the needs of all citizens. The new strategy was developed by SOLAS with assistance from the ESRI which was commissioned to carry out evidence based research and assist in the development of the Strategy. Five high level strategic goals have been identified: -Skills for the Economy: to address the current and future needs of learners, jobseekers, employers and employees and to contribute to national economic development -Active Inclusion: to support the active inclusion of people of all abilities in society with special reference to literacy and numeracy -Quality Provision: to provide high quality education and training programmes and to meet the appropriate national and international quality standards -Integrated Planning and Funding: FET provision will be planned and funded on the basis of objective analysis of needs and evidence of social and economic impact -Standing of FET: to ensure a valued learning path leading to agreed employment, career, developmental, personal and social options. The Strategy follows a radical overhaul of the structure of the sector by the Government which includes the streamlining of 33 existing VECs into 16 Education and Training Boards (ETBs), the abolition of F́S and creation of SOLAS, the Further Education and Training Authority. Speaking at the launch in the Chester Beatty li

Policy Options for New Student Contributions in Higher Education - Report to the Minister

The Government’s Framework for Sustainable Economic Renewal- Building Ireland’s Smart Economy, launched by the Taoiseach in late 2008, establishes Ireland’s ambition to become internationally renowned as an Innovation Island. At the core of achieving this ambition will be our capacity for producing highly skilled graduates and fostering a climate of creative thinking and advanced research and development. This relies on the quality of undergraduate provision right across the sciences, arts and humanities in our third level institutions. The development of a new national strategy for higher education is now underway. The strategy will aim to identify a vision and objectives for the development of the sector over the next twenty years. Leading higher education systems internationally are characterised by wide revenue sources that, in many cases, include a form of direct student contribution through a tuition fee or student loans system. If Ireland’s higher education system is to develop and meet future demands in an environment of increasingly tight public resources, then it is appropriate that the sector’s level of dependence on Exchequer funding should come under review.

Examining the sustainability issues in UKOER projects : Developing a sustainable OER ecosystem in HE

The development of open educational resources (OERs) is becoming a strategic priority for governments and education institutions around the world, in response to funding cuts and rising costs in educational provision. In the United Kingdom, a government-sponsored Pilot Programme on Open Educational Recourses (JISC/HEA, 2009) was launched in 2009 with an initial budget of £5.7m. This paper reviews the key sustainability issues identified by the projects including the different approaches and models that have been adopted in order to sustain the continuing development and release of OER once funding has ended. The analysis also considers the challenges relating to the development and implementation of policies and processes for sustainable OER practice within institutions and among academics. The paper concludes by drawing on the experiences from the wider United Kingdom and international OER communities to develop a sustainable OER ecosystem model that can facilitate discussions on future development of OER initiatives.