Free home safety checks helping older people

Over 65s are being offered free home safety checks thanks to a Public Health Agency (PHA) partnership with Belfast City Council, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust and Bryson Energy.

Through the Belfast Handyperson Home Safety & Repair Scheme, a Handyperson will visit the older person’s property and identify areas of risk and give information, advice and support on how to make the home safer, and provide a home safety pack.

More than 300 households have already benefitted from the initiative with the handyperson having helped Belfast residents by fitting curtain rails, repairing doors, fitting door chains, changing light bulbs, fixing loose floorboards and clearing paths.

One Belfast resident who has benefitted from the home safety checks is 65-year-old Mary Drumm. The south Belfast resident said: “The handyman scheme is brilliant and something that I think can help a lot of people. I live in a three-storey house and it was just getting too much to get to my bedroom on the top floor – my knees aren’t what they used to be. I wouldn’t be able to move furniture and didn’t have any male relatives that could help. Then Age NI told me about the handyperson service and when I contacted Bryson, Vincent came out and did a full check of the house and helped me move my bedroom furniture down to the middle floor. It doesn’t sound like much but believe me I couldn’t have coped without it.”

To find out more or to arrange a visit call 0800 1422 865 (calls are free from a BT landline).