Friendly call service expands

“Good Morning, this is your friendly call service. How are you this morning?”

This is a call received every morning by 650 older people throughout the north side of Dublin to ensure that all is well with them. The calls are made from a call centre in Buzzardstown House in Mulhuddart and organised by a local Dublin 15 voluntary group - The Friendly Call Service. Originally known as “Good Morning Blanchardstown” the name was changed last year to reflect the growth of the service to cover a much wider area. Indeed such has been the success of the project that new branches of the service are being established in communities throughout Ireland with similar projects now up and running in West Cork, Kerry, Tipperary and Bray in Co. Wicklow.

The success of the project was recently marked when local TD and Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan visited the project to make presentations to a number of older people who had recently completed a computer course organised by the group as well as making presentations to staff of IBM and Intel to mark their involvement in the further expansion of the project.

Speaking at the event, chairperson, Gerry Lynam said “In 2001 a group of us took part in an information exchange visit to Derry City Council organised by the Community Department of Fingal County Council. We visited the Creggan in Derry where we saw a service they were running which consisted of making a simple phone call service to people living alone. They had copied the project from a similar service in Glasgow.

“We took the idea and enlarged it by connecting it with the health services, the local authorities and the gardaí. We also looked at how we could collate and collect the information we got through the service for development purposes. When we started we were making about 20 calls a day. We now make about 650,” he said.

The service has now linked up with both IBM and Intel and thanks to the introduction of a data programme developed by local IBM staff, they can now monitor the health and well being of clients.

According to Gerry “with the assistance of IBM and Intel we will be able to monitor clients’ blood pressure, heart rate, weight changes, sleep patterns etc. The service will also be able to keep older people out of hospital and nursing homes make them more active in their community. That’s my vision of this service in the future.”

This point was further echoed by the manager of Friendly Call, Danny Bell, when he spoke to Community Voice. “As a community we seem to feel that we have a God given right to decide what old people need such as giving them meals on wheels, bringing them to an occasional bingo session or outing. However we believe that we can encourage them to become involved as volunteers in their own community. As well as meeting their immediate needs we try to give them a greater independence and to involve them in modern society with the use of computers and the internet and other skills.

“We are also looking at the resource that older people are in our society. We want to identify and exploit their talents and transfer them to younger people in areas such as parenting skills, community work, history, artistic activity and so on,” he said.

Another new innovation in the pipeline for the service is the introduction of an internet cafe for older people. According to Danny, “we will also train them to use the facilities and we will also be training some of them to become trainers themselves. In this way they, in turn, can train other older people to use the services.”

Twelve clients of the service recently completed a computer course at the centre and Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan presented them with certificates for their achievements. Praising them for their success in mastering the mysteries of the computer technology, the Minister said “Ireland would not be what it is today without the work and sacrifices of older generations.”

However he remarked that he was “always suspicious of the ‘E’ word. “I spend a lot of my time stopping staff in my department employing more of those dreaded consultants to look into so-called e-projects.”
He also explained how he “lamented the passing of the letter. As a means of communication it always seemed to be much more mannerly than e-mails. People write things like ‘dear Brian’ and ‘yours sincerely.’ I find that the most abusive representations I get always seem to come in the form of e-correspondence,” he said.

The Minister also commended IBM and Intel for their input into the project. “With the changes in our society and the loss of smaller shops and businesses a lot of assistance that local groups used to get locally is now gone. It is tremendous to see these new companies recognising their social obligations to the local community as well.”

Responding to the awards Anne Flanagan, one of the clients of the service who received her E-certificate of merit from the Minister, thanked the tutors on the course “for being so patient and taking us into the modern world of electronics. Thanks also to the ladies of Friendly Call for their morning phone call and we now look forward to the new Internet cafe.”

Dan Carroll from IBM told the attendance that “it’s very special to be part of a great community like this. It is great when we can see our employees engaged in worthwhile local projects like this where we can put the skills of our employees to work in their local communities.”

Referring to the proposed new internet cafe, Evelyn Pender of Intel said “the use of the internet and technology is even more important for older people than for business as it provides them with a gateway to information and knowledge and a way to stay involved with their community.”

The Friendly Call Service is a free and confidential alert and good neighbour service to older people and anyone feeling lonely, isolated or vulnerable. It is available to all members of the community, without reference to age, status, social/financial standing, religion or nationality.

Anyone seeking more information or wishing to register for the service is invited to telephone 01 824 7342.

 

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