Sir, – The reduction in Government grants for personal security alarms for older people is worrying (“Anger over cuts to alarms for elderly”, Home News, January 10th). Worrying, in terms of what it says about our approach to supporting older people in the community. Worrying, in terms of what it says about our understanding of issues around safety and independence for older adults. And most of all, worrying, in terms of the potential implications it has for older people living in their own homes.
Government policy is to keep and to assist older people living in their own homes and in their own communities.
Yet it is increasingly difficult to see how this objective can be realised when there are more and more cuts to supports for older people living in the community.
The reduction in Government grants for personal security alarms is just the latest cut to a set of supports that, at best, can only be described as minimal anyway.
During the course of conducting various research studies at the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, it was always clear to me that older people considered such alarms as being crucial to their wellbeing.
Older men and women that I have spoken to vividly described the sense of safety that came from having a personal alarm. But this was not just with respect to being worried about break-ins: people were sometimes concerned about particular health issues they may have, or concerned about how they would contact someone if they had an accident or a fall.
In one recent study on deprivation and later life that I was involved in, older participants went so far as to say that these alarms were key necessities of life.
For these reasons, let us hope that the Government will rethink the cuts to personal alarms. And, indeed, protect instead of cut what is necessary to support older people living in their own homes and in their own communities. – Yours, etc,