Olympic Stairlifts Launch NI Elderly Social Group Map

Olympic Stairlifts are delighted to announce the launch of our new elderly social group map to help combat loneliness in the elderly community. The map enables users to discover social groups for the elderly based on location.

Attitude to Growing Old Survey

The launch of the map follows a survey conducted by Olympic Stairlifts to understand the public’s attitude to growing old.

The results showed that 1 in 4 people here are most worried about growing old. A worry only topped by physical or mental health concerns.

For 2/3 respondents growing old was a considerable concern.

However, just 44% of people said they visited their elderly relatives only once a month or less.

Launch of Social Group Map

Recognising that our modern lives are busy and many of us commute and live far from family, Olympic Lifts decided to tackle the issue of how we can better support our elderly, even if we’re far away.

The new online service aims to utilise technology to help older people leave their homes and find new groups or friends and activities to join, by first connecting them online to the services available.

The map functionality will enable older people or their family and carers to discover clubs and gatherings nearby as well as providing the contact details so they can call to enquire or set up a visit in person.

Click here to view the elderly social group map.

John Patterson of Olympic Lifts explained why they felt a duty to work on this project;

Our technicians install stairlifts for older people nationwide every week. We see first hand just how isolated they can be. And we know too the strains of their families, trying to coordinate care for them, sometimes from far away. We use technology ourselves every day – to help our drivers get to jobs, to help us log order data, to help us design stairlifts to fit unusual spaces – so we felt that we could use the same technology to help our customers to find and enjoy all that’s going on in their local communities”.