Help at home scheme

Help at Home

The Help at Home Scheme aims to help older people maintain independence in their home and is funded by Shropshire County Council.

There are two elements to the Scheme.

1. Providing practical help
The Scheme employs paid workers called home support workers. They carry out some everyday tasks that an older person may find difficult to manage. These tasks include:

vacuuming and dusting
cleaning inside windows
bathroom and kitchen cleaning
shopping and collecting prescriptions
laundry and ironing

There is a small weekly charge for this service.

The paid element of the scheme providing the practical help has currently reached a point where all funding has been committed. The Help at Home scheme is currently taking referrals for the service but there is an eight to ten week waiting list.

Who is eligible for this service?
A person has to be:

over 65
not in receipt of personal care
living in the County of Shropshire
in need of help and support

2. Volunteer Befriending Service
Age Concern has a team of volunteers who can visit older people in their own homes and provide a friendly social visit. Volunteers can help by:

having a chat
accompanying on walks and shopping trips
helping with small tasks
playing scrabble/cards
befriending

The befriending element of the scheme, which is operated by volunteers, continues to grow with the recruitment of additional volunteers.

An additional service on offer is telephone buddying. Telephone buddy volunteers come into the Age Concern office in Mardol Gardens on a Monday morning to ring older people for a friendly weekly chat. The prospect of a telephone friend is proving very attractive to many older people who often feel lonely and isolated.

All home support workers and volunteers have received training and have been Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checked.