Befriending home visits. Befriending home visits to the homes of older people in the local community

Description

Mullingar Homecare Services, we are a charity supporting older people in the local community Our focus is to help older people stay in their homes and combat isolation.
Our team is made up of friendly and dedicated workers who are trained to work with older people and provide the support they need.
We deliver meals on wheels to the homes of older people and also do welfare and befriending visits to older people’s homes.
During our visits we help with domestic chores, hoovering, mopping, taking out ashes and a tidy up depending on the client’s needs. And most of all we spend time and have a good old chat, this breaks the isolation for many.

Aim of Initiative

Combat isolation and provide assistance to older people to continue to stay in their homes by helping them with food delivery and household chores. While offering a chat and friendly visit.

Who is it aimed at

Older People

3 Steps critical to success

1. Having a dedicated kind and caring team who genuinely want to help older people.
2. Funding from Pobal to support Mullingar Homecare Services financially.
3. Support from the Board of Management who volunteer their time to Mullingar Homecare Services.

3 Challenges in Planning / Delivery

1. Costs, are our main challenge as we can only cover areas that logistically we can afford to travel to on a route.
2. Time, having to allocate time to each client to ensure we can get to see all our clients in a given day.
3. Transport: We have only one vehicle to travel to our clients restricts how many clients we can travel to each day.

3 Outcomes / Benefits

1. Nourishment: We have touched the lives of numerous older people who look forward to our visits. We delivery meals from St Domicks, bringing nourishment at a cost that is more affordable than cooking for one person.
2. Warmth & friendship: We help taking out ashes, setting the fire, and taking in fuel bringing warmth and and always a friendly chat. The social aspect to our visits has been the most impactfull, seeing the joy in the faces of all our clients when we arrive.
3. A helping hand: Taking the burden of household chores which may have become more difficult with age. By doing hoovering, mopping, and a tidy up as per clients requests.