The Gozo Ministry provided €1.1 million worth of Home Help Services to ineligible users between September 2019 and December 2021, data gathered by the National Audit Office indicates.
The Home Help Service provides older people and people with special needs with home cleaning help, errands, shopping, and collecting medicines, allowing them to continue to live within the community.
The service is provided by social assistants employed within the public service or by a private contractor engaged by the Ministry for Gozo
Households with a single beneficiary pay €2.33 weekly or €3.49 for a household with more than one beneficiary. In addition, the Gozo ministry pays around €9 per hour.
In a report on services for the elderly in Gozo, presented to parliament, the NAO said that around 30 per cent of the hours provided by the Home Help Service were at other places other than the clients’ private residences, including government offices, and a Non-Governmental Organisation.
The figures were even more damning when only considering Home Help services provided directly by the ministry: 60 per cent of hours were provided at places other than applicants' homes in such cases.
The NAO also found a shortfall between the number of Home Help hours allocated and the number of hours actually provided. Investigators concluded that around 17 per cent of the allocated hours were not provided to service users
"The foregoing implies that during the period in question, MGOZ provided €1.1 million worth of Home Help Service to parties rather than its eligible users. Moreover, as these services were provided to public entities and an NGO, the government was not able to recover any funds as is the practice with clients receiving this service within their private residence," the Audit Office said.
Ministry of Gozo interviewees verbally claimed that "higher authorities" had approved such arrangements. No further detail was provided to the office.
"However, in 2021, during the course of this audit, the Ministry of Gozo subsequently charged the salaries of 20 social assistants, formerly attached to the Home Help service, to other line items, such as ‘’Care for the Elderly, Santa Marta, and other government entities," the report says.
Problems were also discovered in terms of the ministry's monitoring of the home help service: the unit within the ministry responsible for the service did not keep track of deficiencies or how they were handled, and the number of site visits carried out between 2019 and 2021 on a yearly basis declined from 37 per cent to just one per cent.
See the report in full by clicking on the pdf below.