When Possible.
Published on: TrustedElderlyCare.ie | Category: Home Care Advice, Family Caregiving
Making the decision about how to care for an ageing parent or relative is one of the most important — and emotionally charged — choices a family can face. While nursing homes play an important role in supporting those with very complex needs, the evidence increasingly points to home care as the preferred option for most older people in Ireland. Here are ten compelling reasons why keeping your loved one in the comfort of their own home is often the better choice.
1. It’s What Most Older People Actually Want
The most important reason of all: the vast majority of older people want to remain in their own home for as long as possible. This is known as “ageing in place,” and it is a cornerstone of Irish elder care policy.
The HSE’s Sharing the Vision framework and Ireland’s Programme for Government commitments have both explicitly recognised the right of older people to live with dignity in their own communities. The HSE Home Support Service was expanded significantly in recent years precisely because the Government acknowledges this preference — allocating over 24 million home support hours annually to help older people remain at home.
Ignoring an elderly person’s wish to stay at home can cause significant psychological distress. Respecting that wish, where it is safe to do so, is an act of dignity and love.
2. Better Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing
Leaving a home filled with decades of memories, familiar surroundings, and a established daily routine can be deeply traumatic for an older person. Nursing home admission — even to an excellent facility — is frequently associated with increased rates of depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline, particularly in the initial months.
Research published by the National Centre for the Protection of Older People (NCPOP) has highlighted that social connectedness and continuity of environment are critical protective factors for mental health in older age. Remaining at home preserves these anchors: a person can wake up in their own bedroom, sit in their own chair, look out at their own garden, and feel a continued sense of identity and control.
Home care visits also provide meaningful human interaction that is personalised and one-to-one — very different from the group-living environment of a residential facility.
3. Significantly Lower Risk of Infection
The COVID-19 pandemic shone a brutal light on the vulnerability of nursing home residents to infectious disease. In Ireland, nursing homes accounted for a disproportionately high share of COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic — a fact acknowledged by HIQA (the Health Information and Quality Authority) in its reviews of the sector.
But infection risk in congregate settings is not limited to pandemics. Respiratory illnesses, gastrointestinal bugs, MRSA, and urinary tract infections all circulate more readily in shared-living environments with multiple residents, shared facilities, and frequent staff movement between rooms.
Home care dramatically reduces this exposure. Your loved one interacts with a small, consistent group of carers and family — not dozens of fellow residents and rotating nursing staff. For elderly people with weakened immune systems, this reduction in infection risk can be life-saving.
4. Personalised, One-to-One Care
In a nursing home, staff must divide their attention and time across many residents. Care, by necessity, follows institutional schedules — mealtimes, bathing, medication rounds — not the individual preferences of the person.
Home care is fundamentally different. A professional home carer working with your loved one can tailor every aspect of the day to that person’s routines, preferences, likes and dislikes. Breakfast at 9am instead of 7:30am. A preferred brand of tea. Watching a particular TV programme. These things matter enormously to a person’s sense of dignity and quality of life.
Ireland’s National Standards for Home Support Services, developed by HIQA, specifically emphasise person-centred care as the foundation of quality home support. Finding a vetted, experienced carer who understands your family member’s individual needs is straightforward through platforms like TrustedCarers.ie, where you can browse profiles of qualified home carers across Ireland.
5. Stronger Family Involvement and Relationships
When an elderly relative lives at home — either independently or with appropriate support — family members can visit freely, at any time, without the constraints of visiting hours or institutional environments. Grandchildren can call in after school. A daughter can pop by for a cup of tea. A son can join a parent for Sunday dinner in familiar surroundings.
This continuity of family relationships is enormously beneficial for older people. It reinforces their sense of belonging, identity, and being valued.
The Healthy Ireland Survey has consistently found that social connection is one of the strongest predictors of wellbeing in older age. Keeping an elderly person in their home environment — embedded in their local community, neighbourhood, and family network — actively supports this.
Nursing homes, despite the best efforts of staff, can create a degree of social isolation from family life that is difficult to overcome.
6. More Cost-Effective for Many Families
Nursing home care in Ireland is expensive. Private nursing home fees typically range from €800 to over €1,500 per week, depending on location and level of care. Even with the support of the Fair Deal Scheme (the Nursing Homes Support Scheme, administered by the HSE), families often find their loved one’s assets — including their home — assessed as part of the financial contribution calculation.
Under the Fair Deal Scheme, a person contributes 80% of their assessable income and 7.5% per year of the value of their assets (including their principal private residence, although this is capped at three years for the family home). This can significantly erode the family home’s value over time.
Home care, by contrast, may be partially funded through the HSE Home Support Service, which provides free home support hours to eligible older people. Additional supports such as the Carer’s Support Grant (€1,850 per year, tax-free) and Carer’s Allowance (a means-tested weekly payment) are available to family members providing care at home.
For many families, a blended model — some HSE-funded home support hours, supplemented by privately arranged home care — is considerably more economical than full-time residential care. Qualified, vetted home carers available for private hire can be found at TrustedCarers.ie.
For more information on financial supports, visit the HSE’s home support page at hse.ie or Citizens Information at citizensinformation.ie.
7. Preservation of Independence and Cognitive Function
Maintaining a sense of independence — the ability to make choices, manage one’s own space, and participate in daily tasks — is strongly linked to better cognitive outcomes in older age. Occupational therapists and geriatricians consistently emphasise that routine, meaningful activity, and environmental familiarity help protect against cognitive decline.
When an older person moves into a nursing home, many of the small but significant tasks they previously managed themselves — making a cup of tea, choosing what to wear, deciding when to go to bed — are often taken over by staff due to the demands of running a large facility. Over time, this learned helplessness can accelerate physical and cognitive decline.
A skilled home carer, by contrast, will support a person to do as much as they can for themselves, stepping in only where genuinely needed. This approach — known in care as enablement or reablement — is central to the HSE’s model of home support and is far easier to implement in a home environment than in residential care.
8. Continuity of Community and Local Connections
A person’s neighbourhood, parish, local shop, GP, hairdresser, or weekly card game — these community threads are part of who they are. Relocating to a nursing home frequently severs these connections entirely, particularly if the facility is not in the person’s local area (a common issue, as nursing home beds are not always available locally).
Remaining at home allows an older person to continue attending their local Mass, meeting neighbours, being visited by friends, and engaging with the community they have been part of for decades. These connections are not trivial. They are a major source of meaning, identity, and mental stimulation.
Ireland’s Age Friendly Ireland programme — a national initiative supporting older people across all 31 local authorities — specifically identifies community connectedness as a key pillar of healthy ageing. Staying at home supports every one of these pillars in a way that nursing home placement simply cannot match.
9. Reduced Hospital Admissions and Better Health Outcomes
Counterintuitively, older people who receive good quality home care often have fewer hospital admissions than those in nursing homes. This is partly due to reduced infection exposure (see point 3), but also because consistent, attentive home carers are well placed to notice early warning signs — a change in appetite, a new confusion, a fall risk — and respond before a situation escalates into a medical emergency.
HIQA has noted in its reports on older persons’ services that early intervention and community-based supports are key to reducing avoidable hospital admissions among older people. The HSE’s Integrated Care Programme for Older Persons (ICPOP) is built on exactly this principle: keeping older people well at home, with multi-disciplinary support, rather than defaulting to acute hospital or residential care.
A good home carer becomes a familiar, trusted presence who knows the person they support — their baseline, their quirks, their early warning signs. That knowledge is clinically valuable and very hard to replicate in a high-turnover residential setting.
10. It Respects Dignity at Every Stage of Life
Dignity in care is not just about physical safety — it is about being treated as an individual, having your preferences respected, maintaining privacy, and retaining a sense of self even as you need increasing levels of support.
HIQA’s National Standards for Residential Care Settings for Older People in Ireland and the National Standards for Home Support Services both centre on dignity. But the structural reality is that it is far easier to deliver genuinely dignified, individualised care in a home setting — where one person is attending to one individual — than in a residential facility managing 50, 80, or 100 residents simultaneously.
Home care also allows older people to maintain their privacy in intimate moments: personal hygiene, dressing, medical care. In a nursing home, privacy in these moments can be compromised by the demands of shift work, shared rooms, and the logistics of institutional care.
At the end of life, the ability to remain at home — or to die at home if that is the person’s wish — is deeply important to many Irish families. With the right support in place, this is achievable, and increasingly supported by HSE palliative care services and community nursing teams.
Finding the Right Home Carer in Ireland
If you are considering home care for an elderly relative, the most important step is finding a carer who is qualified, trustworthy, and compatible with your loved one’s needs and personality.
TrustedCarers.ie is Ireland’s dedicated platform for connecting families with verified, experienced home carers across Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford, and nationwide. Carers on the platform include:
- Elderly care assistants for personal care, companionship, and daily living support
- Live-in carers for full-time home care without residential placement
- Respite carers to give family members a break
- Specialist carers experienced in dementia, Parkinson’s, stroke recovery, and other conditions
All carers are independently vetted. Many hold QQI qualifications in healthcare and are familiar with Garda Vetting requirements. Families can browse profiles, read reviews, and make contact directly.
👉 Browse home carers near you at TrustedCarers.ie
Useful Government Resources
- HSE Home Support Service: hse.ie/homecare
- Fair Deal Scheme (Nursing Homes Support Scheme): hse.ie/fairdeal
- Carer’s Allowance: gov.ie/carersallowance
- Carer’s Support Grant: citizensinformation.ie
- HIQA Standards for Home Support: hiqa.ie
- Age Friendly Ireland: agefriendlyireland.ie
- Citizens Information – Care of Older People: citizensinformation.ie
TrustedElderlyCare.ie is part of the TrustedCarers network — Ireland’s leading resource for families seeking professional, verified home care. For more advice on home care options, financial supports, and finding the right carer, explore our guides or visit TrustedCarers.ie to find a carer today.
