Carers face New Year struggle after cuts
SOUTHSIDE carers have spoken of how they are facing an increasingly difficult struggle to look after their loved ones in the New Year as the cuts announced in the budget hit home.
In the budget on December 6, the Government announced that it was cutting the carers’ respite grant, which is intended to help carers take a break or holiday, from €1,700 a year to €1,375.
Many carers will also be affected by cuts to gas and electricity allowances that have been reduced from the current €41 to €35 per month and from €22.60 to €9.50 for the telephone payment.
Medical card holders who previously paid 50c per prescription will now pay €1.50, while the monthly threshold for purchasing prescription drugs has increased from €132 a month to €144.
Des Coffey (48), from Tymonville Park in Tallaght, cares for his 19-year-old daughter Danielle who has Down’s Syndrome, has severe learning difficulties, is severely autistic and has kidney problems.
Neighbours must help elderly more – Norman Lamb
Neighbours must help elderly more – Norman Lamb
Ministers are considering a cap on social care feesPeople should do more to help elderly neighbours and ease the pressure on care homes, the care minister has said.
Greater community support would prevent pensioners living a “dismal existence” and going into care unnecessarily, said Norman Lamb.
He told the Daily Telegraph local councils should be helped to rebuild a “neighbourly resilience“.
He also said a deal to cap personal spending on care fees would be unveiled in coming weeks.
The cap was a key recommendation of the government-appointed Dilnot Commission report into care in England, which said it should be set at between £25,000 and £50,000, with £35,000 the fairest figure.
It’s never too late to be an advanced achiever
New year means a new you – and the age at which we are changing our lives is going up all the time. Jerome Taylor reports on the ‘advanced achievers’
Sunday 30 December 2012
After the fireworks come the resolutions. The new year is that time in our lives when we think about fresh horizons and greener pastures. But those who might be tempted to state that change is a young person’s game need to think again. With our maturing but increasingly healthy population, age should no longer be the thing that stops us trying out something new.
Take Srikumar Sen, a former boxing correspondent who, at the age of 81, has published his first work of fiction, a novel that has already won a literary award. Buoyed by the success of his debut, he has now at work on his second book.
Dame Joan Bakewell, the previous government’s voice for elder people and a critic of society’s lack of imagination when it comes to the country’s ageing population, says retirement is no longer about finding a hobby to keep you occupied. It is an opportunity to grab a new lease of life. “It’s enormously reinvigorating to find a new interest or activity as you grow older,” she says. “It stops you slowing down and getting stuck in a routine. It keeps people young and it opens up new friendships, gives people skills they perhaps didn’t know they had.” She adds: “Things are much more flexible and they’ve got to get more so. Our country has got to harness the skills of older people. Employers have got to get more flexible, use the skills that are there and keep old people young.”
