Cork City's Friendly Call sees a 27% increase in demand

9th April 2020

Cork’s Friendly Call service, where volunteers make a daily call to people living alone, has seen a 27% hike in phone calls since COVID-19 restrictions began.

Friendly Call is run by Cork City Partnership. It is one of the 30 plus organisations that are taking part in the Community Response Forum (CRF), coordinated by Cork City Council, which ensures that vulnerable members of the community or those living alone can access vital grocery, medicine and fuel deliveries and social care supports.

The service is making up to 60-80 extra calls a week with the increased number of referrals coming from the CRF helpline, Alone, public health nurses, hospital discharge coordinators, social workers and other HSE staff.  There has also been an increase in the number of self referrals – some of whom are people with existing mental health needs who  find the current restrictions challenging.

The Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. John Sheehan visited the project at the Parochial Hall in Churchfield as he wanted to thank the Cork City Partnership team for their “Trojan efforts to support the wider community”.

“These staff and another 40 volunteers are now making daily ‘friendly calls’ to people who derive great benefit from that daily check-in. Ten of these volunteers joined up in recent weeks  as the Cork City Volunteer Centre have been a great support. It’s something that I hope we will carry with us after all of this ends: the sense that we are all in this together and that we can make a huge difference in our communities when we all come together”.

Brenda Barry, from Cork City Partnership, said: “ Apart from making phone calls, we are  helping clients by shopping for groceries and dropping them off for people with no family. We are walking dogs, collecting prescriptions and we’ve dropped in  St Vincent de Paul and St. Vincent's GAA hampers to others.  We had volunteers drop a cake and Easter egg into a 93 year old man this week for his birthday. We ring him regularly and he was delighted with the surprise at the door. We are also working with Gardai to make arrangements to help people to collect pensions".

Friendly Call operates Monday to Friday. Volunteers are trained, Garda vetted and supported by experienced mentors. It is funded by HSE Social Inclusion and Cork ETB and receives additional funding from companies around the city. Cork City Partnership receives Local Community Development Committee/Cork City Council funding. Other agencies around the city have also made staff available to Friendly Call.