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Speaker’s Corner In Achill, they’ve created their own alternative to the extended family support system.
“In Achill, they have an alternative to the extended family support system that once existed naturally”
Speaker’s Corner Denise Horan
WHAT a difference a generation makes. Back when our parents and grandparents were young, concerns about what would happen to their own parents and grandparents when they got old and lost some of their faculties hardly troubled them. There would always be someone at home to care for them; that’s just the way it was. Grandparents shaped the lives of – and often part-reared – their children’s children, and in return their children shepherded them through the winter of their lives. Life was simple back then. Not everything was better, but the complications that modernity spawned did not have to be dealt with. Sure, lives and dreams were often put on hold for the sake of family needs. Many were forgone altogether. Bitterness and resentment probably surfaced at times, or simmered beneath it as a constant threat. But, generally, caring for those unable to care for themselves was accepted as a part of life as natural as growing up. Exactly when the change came is difficult to pin-point. It crept up gradually, transforming from the rare into the occasional, before finally becoming what we have now – the norm. Now, looking after elderly parents in their twilight years of limited activity and failing health is not simply accepted as part of the deal of being an offspring. It’s not callousness that has made it so, just life’s growing demands. With every adult struggling to keep up with the hectic pace of his or her own life, little time remains to worry about the fate of ageing relatives. Recent figures released by pharmaceutical group, Pfizer, bear this out with a practical example: 45 per cent of adult children do not know that their parents are on medication. Of those that do, one in four do not know what it is and only one in three know the dosage. Most adult children are not being willfully neglectful, just time-pressed – and wracked with guilt because of it. In Achill, they’ve created their own alternative to the extended family support system that once existed naturally. The alternative is called St Colman’s Care Centre, which is operated by a voluntary committee, who look after the needs of older people and people with disabilities in Achill. Imbued with a strong sense of community and with passion for providing care, the committee – and the employees and helpers – provide respite and palliative care, meals on wheels, a laundry service and wide-ranging medical care to those who are most in need. Not that Achill’s older and disabled people have been abandoned by their families. Achill is simply encountering the same difficulties as everywhere else in today’s changed society, with children pursuing careers away from home and choosing not to live with their parents into adulthood. Achill does have a significant number of older people, and is also more vast and expansive than most other areas – as well as being 44 miles away from the county hospital – making the problem potentially more acute. That negative potential has never fully been realised, however, thanks to the vision of those who set up St Colman’s 21 years ago – when the change was starting. Today, the care centre in Keel, the nearby sheltered housing complex and the residential St Fionnán’s nursing unit in Achill Sound are all thriving, thanks to HSE funding, contributions from those receiving care and financial support from the community – at home and abroad – and the common sense approach adopted in administering care. No one in need of care will be left without it, that’s the St Colman’s motto. What a wonderful comfort for all those adult children, nieces and nephews unable to be near their families on a regular basis – many living thousands of miles away – to know that their loved ones are in the safe hands of caring people, who tend to their needs while preserving their dignity. If only this common sense approach to community care would become a little more common.
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