St. Patrick’s Day presents an annual opportunity to recognise the heritage and culture of the Irish diaspora, but for The Irish Elderly Advice Network, based in and around Hackney, Irish identity is celebrated all year round.
The 1940s and 1950s saw significant Irish immigration to Hackney: today, 2.1 percent of Hackney’s population is Irish, more than double the percentage for England as a whole, according to a profile of Hackney, published by the borough’s policy team in 2013.
Established in 1993, The Irish Elderly Advice Network is a charity which aims to alleviate poverty, isolation and distress among London’s elderly Irish community through welfare, housing and cultural provisions.
The charity operates across all 32 boroughs of London but is particularly “proud” of its Hackney base, established in 2019, which is in Stoke Newington. The Network supports more than 6,000 Irish people across London and more than 300 in Hackney.
The history of the Irish community in Hackney
Nora Mulready, CEO of The Irish Elderly Advice Network, explains that a lot of social inequalities within Hackney’s Irish community are a result of Hackney’s social makeup. “Hackney used to be a poor, working-class borough – a lot of Irish people didn’t have very much money when they emigrated and ended up living in Hackney because it wasn’t very expensive. It’s part of the history of working-class immigration, in a sense.”
Mulready says that many elderly Irish people in Hackney aren’t living in adequate housing. “A lot of older people, particularly single people, are in situations where they’re in their 70s and sleeping in a room in a shared house because they’ve been there for 30 years, but it just doesn’t work for their lifestyles anymore. And sometimes people even end up homeless.”
The charity works in collaboration with a large number of housing associations in Hackney to help the elderly get sheltered housing, which will provide them with the security they need. The charity also provides an “advice bureau”, which is geared towards supporting older Irish people who need help filling in forms.
Mulready explains that the characteristics of the elderly Irish community in Hackney are such that many older Irish men need significant disability benefits. “Their bodies have been very badly damaged through all of the really hard manual labour. I did an application for a Hackney man this week: he was only in his 70s, but his hips had both completely gone and that was because he used to carry really heavy machinery on his shoulders all day.
“In the 60s,” she said, “there were no health and safety regulations, and these men would be digging underground foundations with the weight of their bodies leaning into the concrete. Back then, they might spend, you know, four hours a day doing this kind of work. Now the health and safety regulations say the maximum you can do at any one time is eight minutes. So, basically people’s bodies were used as labour – it was very dangerous and so now we see a lot of people whose bodies are in a very bad state.”
The Network’s cultural and social initiatives
The Irish Elderly Advice Network has a strong cultural ethos which underpins its welfare provisions. The charity aims to “enrich people’s lives with music, theatre, songs, lunches and trips”. Mulready emphasises that the idea is to create an “uplifting” community, which moves away from the “older people’s social provision where we give them bingo”, and instead to create a space which celebrates Irish cultural heritage: “…it’s ended up being like quite an empowering group to be part of”, Mulready says.
The charity also has several outreach projects in Hackney which support its cultural initiatives. The Irish Pensioners Choir recently performed at the London Mayor’s St Patrick’s Day parade in Trafalgar Square, and their Irish Elders Theatre Society meets regularly to rehearse at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hackney. The Network recently organised a group trip to the cinema to see Kenneth Branagh’s new movie, Belfast: “…we try and take a holistic approach to everything that we do”, Mulready emphasises.
Fostering relations amongst Hackney’s Irish community
The charity recently collaborated with Hackney-based charity Mind, which funded their mental health project with other Irish people over the last year. A phone befriending service has been set up whereby members of the Irish community make weekly phone calls to older Irish people who have either been referred by a friend who has mentioned that they’re a bit lonely, or by their GP.
Mulready says: “…we might meet someone for an appointment about their Blue Badge permit for example, but then in the course of talking to them, you realise that actually, what they really need is people around them. And the impact of those phone calls has been absolutely huge.”
Contributing to the vaccine effort
During the vaccine rollout, the Irish Cultural Centre also became a vaccine hub: “…that was very important for us as an organisation to be helping with the vaccine”, Mulready explains. “We had an older Irish vaccine ambassador, because we were trying to encourage people to get vaccinated. It was important for us to work closely with Hackney Council on delivering the vaccine. They’ve been very supportive of our work – Hackney’s Mayor, Philip Glanville, actually opened our Irish Cultural Centre a few years ago.”
Irish Elderly Advice Network launches our Irish Elders Cultural Centre in #Hackney. Thank you to @theirishworld & @theirishpost for covering launch event, and to the @mayorofhackney for his support. Exciting times for us as we open a new frontier in our work. Tweet/DM for info. pic.twitter.com/vj6CmNl7O9
— Irish Elderly Advice Network (@IrishElderlyAdv) September 13, 2019
In May 2022, the Network will launch its Irish elders’ mental-health empowerment month. NHS professionals will give training and will create a mental-health ambassadors programme, something Mulready and her team are “really proud of”. She emphasises that the older generation is often unaware of mental health problems being genuine health conditions, “…instead they have this pull-yourself-together, stoic attitude, and so there’s a stigma around mental health being a real thing”.
The Irish Elderly Advice Network’s overarching objective is treating the elderly with respect. “We see older people as completely dignified individuals. There’s no infantilisation of older people within our organisation – that’s really important for us.”
Find out more on Twitter @IrishElderlyAdv and on The Irish Elderly Advice Network’s website
