Care & Repair: Free DIY jobs for Older People

The Care & Repair Programme provides DIY jobs to older people free of charge and a Trades Referral Service where a list of local tradesmen is available to older people for larger jobs. A Hospital Discharge Service has been piloted in Cork. It provides work in people’s homes which enables them to be discharged from hospital.

As part of Age Action Connect, Inform and Support response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Care & Repair was rebranded as HomeSafe in March 2020, focussing on assisting older people who needed work done in their homes in order to be discharged from hospital and on work deemed essential for the health and wellbeing of older people during the pandemic.

Outputs and Outcomes:

In 2020, a total of 2,408 older people accessed the programme.

In the first quarter of 2021, we have completed:

• DIY Service jobs for 58 clients, during which we did 92 jobs requiring 110 hours of volunteer labour.
• Hospital Discharge Service to 5 clients, during which we did 10 jobs requiring 5 hours of labour. This service is now available in both Cork and Dublin.
• Trade referrals to 313 people who needed to employ professionals for larger jobs.

We are looking forward to ramping up our work as COVID restrictions lift over the next several months. While our current activity still focuses specifically on older people with urgent and necessary repairs, and outfitting our volunteers with extra training and PPE, we expect that we can reach many more people through this programme when COVID is no longer a barrier to service.

This summer, we’ll be doing some COVID-safe outdoor gardening work for our clients. Many older people who call Age Action struggle to maintain their outdoor spaces. Our team takes on jobs like clipping overgrown hedges to ensure that our clients can enjoy their gardens – and this year, with continuing COVID restrictions in place, that access is more important than ever!

If you know anyone who could benefit from Age Action’s DIY support, please get in touch to see about opportunities for us to help. And, if you are a medical professional or know a medical professional who is looking for support to help discharge patients to a safe home, call us and ask about our Hospital Discharge Service!