Older & Bolder closed June 2013 This is an archived website
Vital messages about impact of Home Care cuts
Older & Bolder has received thousands of personal postal messages from older people around the country who rely on home care services to stay living in their own homes. Most of these people are not on social media sites.
If you use Facebook or Twitter you can play an important role in sharing these messages to a wider audience that otherwise wouldn’t hear them.
Please Use the Facebook and Twitter icons at the bottom of this page to share these messages with your friends and to encourage them to sign our petition to reverse cuts to home care services.
Together we can resist these distressing cuts.
Many older people have used our campaign to speak clearly on the devastating effects a reduction in Home Care services would have. Here are some of their messages:
- I could not survive at home without home help because I have severe and very disabling arthritis. Any cuts to this service would put my health & safety in jeopardy. These are cuts too far!!!
- My request is simple - one to two hours of home help weekly to do a little of housework for eg hoovering as I cannot do same with arthritis. They say they only cover personal needs now but surely a clean room is every bit as important.
- I don't need home help, home care, or respite, but what is happening strikes fear into my heart for neighbours, family and friends. And I fear for when I am less able than I am now - I thought I had planned well for my future.
- I am in my ninetieth year and apart from hearing loss I find I can live at home and hope to continue to do so. In the future I shall need home help and medical care. I also need my pension to be safeguarded.
Another encouraging theme has been the support and recognition by younger, healthier Irish people of the need to rescue home care services for those who rely on them and for their ‘future selves’. Here are some of their messages.
- My Grandmother who suffered a stroke four years ago has recently been informed by her home help that her hours are being cut back from 5 a week to 4 due to local HSE Budget cuts. There are 168 hours in a week that we as a family have to support and care for my grandmother. 5 hours from the HSE is paltry, reducing to 4 is simply insulting.
- I look after an uncle who survives on one hour's home help a day, five days a week. That has proven critical in managing food and nutrition and keeping the house clean - such that has now been out of hospital for 7 months...the longest since major surgery in May 2008. Many of the other hospitals stays were because of infections picked up to which he is very susceptible.
- Home Help is essential for my mother, who lives alone in an isolated rural area, she is in her mid 80s, and the home help every morning is a lifeline, assisting with showering & any other needs. She had a series of TIAs & a hip replacement in recent years, the home help is vital to giving her a quality of life at home.
- As a carer for my 81 year old mother I can see the difference that being at home has done for her, even though she is in total heart failure. I believe that she would be gone a long time if she was in a home or hospital. I hope that your government will keep all their promises and home helps in place so my mother can enjoy the quality of life that she has now.
- Dear Taoiseach, I note from my enquiries on behalf of a relative, that there appears to be no home help currently available to elderly in the community, no matter how vulnerable. Unless one is occupying a hospital bed which the authorities want to free up, nothing is available. This needs to change.
