Campaign highlights older people’s fears
ANEW sur ve y has gained an insight to issues of most concern to older people in Ireland today.
In a week where some older people have spoken of being too afraid to leave their homes for fear of Hallowe’en shenanigans, it turns out that loneliness is what people worry most about.
The Know your Neighbour campaign which is run by Macra na Feirme found that 27 per cent of older people surveyed are worried about living alone and having limited contact with others.
In 2016 this is a worry, to say the least. People have such busy lives, which are awash with modern technology, where there is someone absorbed in social media everywhere we look, yet there is a valued section of society which it appears, is being forgotten.
Macra is one of the best rural organisations in the country for promoting inclusion and the Know your Neighbour campaign has been particularly successful.
It is easy to suggest getting out and looking after our older neighbours, but it is harder to put it into practice. Older people don’t want pity or token gestures. They want to feel valued in their communities and that they can call on a neighbour or friend if they need to.
The loneliness is a difficult thing to combat, especially when we take rural locations, lack of transport into account and how difficult it is to encourage somebody living alone, to let someone in and make a change.
It’s not easy growing older in Ireland. For a country that is one of the most developed in the world, older people in particular are right to be concerned. Our healthcare system is nothing short of shambolic and incidents of crime in both rural and urban areas have taken their toll on many a vulnerable older person living alone.
It angers me that those who have worked their whole lives, raised the next generation, contributed to society, should feel such a lack of faith in their own communities and the services available to them.
To be in the latter stages of life and worried about access to health services or that you might become a victim of crime is wrong and it will take a lot more than a fiver in the budget to correct this.
We shouldn’t need a PR campaign to encourage us to look after the older members of our community but if it helps in any way then it is worthwhile.