Friends in deed for older people

A pilot programme placing au pairs with older people offers companionship as well as valued care, writes ISABEL CONWAY

‘GOD HANDPICKED this lovely caring young woman and sent her to our rescue,” says Marie, whose 93-year-old uncle in Co Meath is looked after by Estrella, a Spanish au pair, offering a lifeline to one Irish family who only discovered a new and untapped resource – the “eldercare au pair” – by chance last September.

The story is familiar: an aged bachelor, active all his life, who fell and fractured a hip joint. With nobody at home to care for him during his convalescence, he was admitted to a private nursing home.

“In less than two months in that place, his weight dropped from over 10 stone to seven stone, and when the surgeon who had operated saw him again, he barely recognised my uncle,” recalls his niece Marie.

“It was costing €950 a week in this nursing home where he was supposed to be looked after properly and brought back to health. In fact, there was dreadful neglect. We got him out just in time and took him back to his own home.”

The abuses of the home-help system highlighted in RTÉ’s Prime Time investigation mirrored to an extent this family’s own later experience – though there was no cruelty involved.

Marie tells how the private home help they hired afterwards for her uncle was “all smiles to us, but making dinners for her husband when she should have been minding my uncle, even making her Christmas cakes there and doing as little as possible for my uncle, [although] she was earning a very good wage”.

Like many families, this one had other elderly relatives and children and teenagers, as well as jobs to juggle, so they faced a major dilemma with their uncle. He was “by no means an easy person, fiercely independent and private” back in his own home, needing continued care, supervision and companionship too.

By chance, Marie’s sister happened to access the website of the Dún Laoghaire-based Au Pair Study Centre, one of Ireland’s largest and longest-running agencies linked to language courses, and saw that they had several people on their books who were more interested in becoming an au pair “for seniors than for juniors”.

So Estrella (21), recently arrived from Spain, came into their lives and has proven “ a godsend”.

The busy daily roster of au pair duties – often involving young children, with their specific demands and relentless energy, coupled with a lot of responsibility and other duties in households if both parents are working – is not every foreign au pair’s idea of bliss.

“We have about 12 au pairs on our books who only want to work with seniors, and there is a waiting list of recipient families, both in Dublin and in rural areas,” says Julie Kelly of the Au Pair Study Centre.

“It is an untapped form of assistance that can work ideally when properly supervised, with a realisation on both sides that patience and give and take are vital. You notice that the connection can be great, bringing back laughter and new life into older people’s lives and homes.”

The Au Pair Study Centre has a website detailing the duties of an au pair for seniors, with suggestions that include conversation and companionship, organising and planning daily activities, preparing and serving meals, organising grocery lists and shopping, assistance with walking, logging a daily journal monitoring bodily functions, diet, activities and so on. “Under no circumstances,” says Kelly, “should the au pair handle finances or administer any medication.”

It is still a new service to Ireland, a “pilot project” under assessment, offering the language-student au pair an affordable option – about €60 a week pocket money, with full bed and board, time off for classes and other conditions – but for the family, it compares favourably to expensive alternatives in traditional home help, she points out.

Other agencies in Ireland are also receiving requests from foreign would-be au pairs interested in taking up positions, providing companionship and non-medical homecare for seniors who need assistance with daily living.

Ireland’s strict immigration regulations mean that many au pairs from countries outside Europe, particularly the Philippines, Malaysia, Columbia and Brazil, are not allowed in, according to Kelly.

“It is vital that the au pair service is regulated; agencies have been calling for this so that protection on both sides is there, supervision is tightly controlled and standards are maintained.”

The Netherlands and a number of other European countries where human trafficking and cheap migrant labour are increasingly hidden beneath the guise of “au pair recruitment” are working on a system of regulating the sector to prevent abuses.

In Denmark, “eldercare au pairs” are a growing trend, and expected to be regulated and given the same legal standing as au pairs for families with children.

New rules there allow retired couples who do not need special nursing care to invite a foreign au pair to live with them and do 18-30 hours per week of cleaning, cooking and shopping in exchange for room and board and a minimum of €409 per month.

Opponents claim the proposal does little for cultural exchange, arguing that many of the 3,000 au pairs in Denmark are economic migrants from countries such as the Philippines whose earnings are sent home to support their own families. They say an underclass of underpaid domestic workers is being created.

Yet au pairs surveyed by online newspaper the Copenhagen Post were positive about the idea of eldercare openings. One au pair from the Philippines said: “It provides a good opportunity, but it takes a good ear to listen and a gentle heart to care for the elderly.”

As for elderly people in Denmark, they were very positive in an opinion survey conducted recently about the plan. Many said elderly couples could use the help with cleaning, cooking and gardening, but that they would enjoy the conversation also.

It is a view likely to be shared by elderly people in Ireland, who might even embrace an opportunity to hone their foreign-language skills and participate in a cultural exchange, while gaining companionship and a helping hand.

Some names have been changed.