Referrals of isolated elderly to ALONE treble
Referrals of isolated and lonely older people to the housing charity ALONE trebled last year.
The organisation’s annual report also revealed an increase in applicants to ALONE’s services with higher needs, including dementia, poor physical health and mental illness, and domestic and elder abuse.
The report comes amid growing concern, voiced by ALONE and other groups, about the specific difficulties faced by many elderly people in the current housing crisis.
ALONE also revealed that it ran up a deficit of €150,000 as it sought to deliver services to its growing range of clients, with 28 new emergency calls every month.
According to the annual report, 600 old people were assisted by ALONE last year and 104 people were housed.
More than half of ALONE’s new residents last year came directly from homeless services, while the number of referrals of isolated and lonely older people reached 107 in 2013.
The average number of residents in ALONE Supportive Housing was 91 per month, while 25% of calls to its service lines were housing related.
