Popular charity Friends of the Elderly offers older people a social outlet and some company
TWO WOMEN sit chatting amicably in a brightly lit granny flat in Ballinteer in Dublin, cups of tea in hand and biscuits on a plate between them as they talk about current affairs, old movies and their favourite TV shows.
Despite an age gap of more than 50 years and the fact that they’re not related, the pair act like old friends although they have known each other for only four months.
Audrey McCoy started visiting 83-year-old Mary Dunne through Friends of the Elderly after Dunne, who used to act as a volunteer for the charity herself, rang up to see if someone could accompany her to a hospital appointment which her son could not attend. The two hit it off and a week later Friends of the Elderly called McCoy to ask if she would visit Dunne on a regular basis.
Although Dunne lives in a granny flat next door to her son she looks forward to the company since she developed mobility problems a year ago.
“I feel that there’s somebody coming, you know that kind of way. I don’t go out a lot now. I used to be going on trips and all the rest but I’m not able to do it now because I have this cramping in my feet and I can’t walk so well. So then it’s great when somebody comes, it breaks the monotony of the day.”
Audrey now calls in at least once a week as well as phoning even when her work as an actress takes her on foreign trips. Having grown up with elderly aunts and having wanted to volunteer, Friends of the Elderly seemed a natural choice and she takes a lot from her visits with Dunne.
“I think I’m an old soul myself and we have a lot in common personality wise. I really enjoy the visits – to me it doesn’t feel like volunteer work. I look forward to seeing Mary and I find that Mary’s as interested in getting to know me as I am in getting to know her,” she says.
Friends of the Elderly, which celebrates its 30th anniversary later this year, visits over 400 elderly people in homes around Dublin. The elderly people who receive home visits are usually isolated and are often referred by social workers, home help staff, relatives, concerned neighbours, GPs, even taxi drivers and postmen.
“A typical example would be an elderly person who has just come out of hospital,” spokesman for the charity Dermot Kirwan explains. “It could well be that, for the first time in their life they’re relying on visitors for social contact. It just transforms their life overnight so the days are long and empty and often they’d go two or three days without seeing anyone.”
When they receive a referral, Friends of the Elderly then tries to twin an elderly person with a volunteer in their area.
“We’re like matchmakers. We would then go over with the volunteer to introduce them to the elderly person and then let the friendship develop at its own pace.”
Kirwan, himself a volunteer, visits a gentleman who has rheumatoid arthritis weekly and has had first-hand experience of the difference the charity can make to an elderly person’s life.
“If you think, one visit a week, one phone call a week, a Christmas card, a birthday card and a couple of postcards, that means an awful lot to a person, makes a huge difference. You can transform a person’s day by picking up the phone for a two-minute chat,” he says.
Friends of the Elderly, currently operating in the greater Dublin area, has 510 volunteers each of whom is interviewed and Garda vetted before he or she is allowed to visit an elderly person in their home.
The number of applications to become volunteers has doubled within the past year, part of which Kirwan says is down to the recession. “There are people who have been laid off who have no work,” he says.
For others, volunteering suits their working week. “It would be a perfect example where people are working long shifts but working short weeks and they have time on their hands.”
As well as visiting people in their homes the charity also hosts up to 150 people in its premises on Bolton Street each Wednesday.
One regular attendee, 82-year-old Kathleen Thornton, started coming to the Wednesday club after her husband died seven years ago. She takes the bus in once a week to socialise with friends, listen to music and try her luck in the raffle.
“I look forward to it,” she says. “The people here are all very nice and you’re with people of your own age and you’re not on your own, you know? Then if it’s your birthday they’ll announce it and if it’s a big birthday they’ll give you cake and everybody wishes you a happy birthday.”
On Tuesdays the same venue hosts a gentleman’s club where older men can play darts and dominoes or just read the paper. Kirwan explains that it is particularly difficult to get older men to overcome their isolation.
“It’s very hard [isolation] because elderly men are not clubby social types because that generation identified with their work . . . one of the big challenges is to find activities which the older men would find interesting,” he says.
The charity also attempts to bring young and old together. It has set up school programmes for primary and transition year students who engage with the older people in different ways. For example, old people who are part of the Friends of the Elderly database receive a hand-made birthday card from a schoolchild for their birthday.
It also holds day trips and Christmas parties and drafts in extra volunteers who act as drivers to take the elderly people from A to B.
Kirwan says that the people who volunteer, both as drivers and visitors, are caring people who are making “a virtue out of a necessity” in carrying out their charity work.
“If you work for Friends of the Elderly and you take responsibility for the friendship needs of an elderly person, you make a commitment.
“That person is relying on you for that friendship whether you call once a week or three times a week . . . that says something about you as a person if you take time out of your own life to spend time with others who can’t get out of their homes,” he says. “And it’s a two-way street – you get back more than you put in.”
“That person is relying on you for that friendship whether you call once a week or three times a week . . . that says something about you as a person if you take time out of your own life to spend time with others
