Mark Isherwood
Following this week’s launch of Age Cymru’s report on Poverty in Later Life, North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has emphasised the urgent need to tackle social isolation among older people.
The report identified a number of shocking cases, including that of a 91-year-old woman who was so poor she resorted to drying toilet paper to reuse it.
Speaking in the Assembly during this week’s Business Statement, Mr Isherwood said that social isolation is often the cause of such shocking stories and questioned the Welsh Government over its action to address the problem.
He said: “Tonight Age Cymru launches its report on Poverty in Later Life, with some frightening examples that have already hit the media today. It said that the situation is preventable if people could be supported to access the welfare benefits and income maximisation support that is available to them out there.
“For as long as I remember in the Assembly, through many different ways, in my case primarily through fuel poverty, we have been talking about the need to tackle social isolation. Many key programmes have come and gone, such as the rural fuel poverty adviser scheme with the third sector, but we are still hearing that social isolation, particularly among older people, is causing these horrific stories. Could we have a Statement telling us when we will finally bring up an integrated all-Wales means to identify the people who need this help, and provide it?”
The Minister for Government Business, Lesley Griffiths AM, said the Minister for Poverty and herself had not yet had time to read the report, but said a “ great deal of the concerns raised in the report that I have read about in the media are to do with welfare reforms that have been brought forward by your Government in Westminster.”
Mr Isherwood added: “The Age Cymru report is clear that the situation is preventable and the Welsh Government must at last move on from excuses for its extraordinary levels of incompetence, when it is good people who are left paying the price.”
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