Eamon Timmins, Chief Executive Responding to Isolation and Loneliness: Housing and Community Perspectives November 26 , 2015
Jan 18, 2016
Eamon Timmins, Chief Executive
Responding to Isolation and Loneliness: Housing and Community Perspectives
November 26 , 2015
A wake-up call
A hidden problem
• Official statistics
• SVP Commission on Older People
• Where are all the lonely people?
Why is this such an issue?
• Not unique to older people
• But some factors add to the problem among older people
Why should we worry?
Risk factors in an early death:
•Obesity (20%)
•Air pollution (5%)
•Excessive drinking (30%)
•Loneliness (45%)
What’s the solution?
• Charities will fix it, providing visits, accommodation, activities, and classes
• Govt intervention
What’s Age Action doing?
• Care and Repair – 29,000 jobs this year
• Computer classes – 3,000 older people trained this year
. . . Age Action’s work
• Advocacy groups
• Life-long learning groups – 17 across Ireland
• BUT IS THIS ENOUGH?
YOU are part of the solution
• Loneliness and social isolation are society issues;
• Promote inclusion and awareness.
Do older people have a role?
• Prof John Cacioppo: “part of the biological warning system”
• Recognise the signal, understand and respond
Thanks!
• 30/31 Lower Camden Street, Dublin 2
• Tel 01 4756989
• Website: www.ageaction.ie
• www.facebook.com/AgeActionIreland
• www.Twitter.com/ageaction
Waterford contact details
• Care and Repair: Waterford Area Partnership 051-844844
• Getting Started computer classes:
021-4536554 email [email protected]
• Life-long learning groups: Waterford city Josephine Murphy 051-871037, [email protected]; Tramore Mollie Hunt [email protected]