3.5 million elderly people 'at risk from winter cold'

Around 3.5 million elderly people are worried they will not be able to keep warm this coming winter, a charity has warned.

Age UK pointed to the 25,000 elderly people who die every year from the cold, which they amounts to 206 deaths a day or one death every seven minutes.

Known as "excess winter deaths" many of these could have been prevented if pensioners were in properly insulated homes, according to Age UK.

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Cambodia’s Elderly Face Increasing Hardships

PHNOM PENH—

Like many developing countries, Cambodia’s mainly agricultural society is changing fast, driven by urbanization and falling fertility rates. As young workers move to the cities, older people are staying back in the villages, where they have little support.

After Sok Soeun’s husband died 12 years ago, she left her village for the Saravan pagoda in Phnom Penh.

Twenty elderly people - most of them women - live here assisting the monks with Buddhist ceremonies.

In return, attendees donate cash that the women spend on food and medicine.

Although former civil servants and soldiers get a pension, more than 80 percent of Cambodia’s 850,000 elderly did not have formal employment and so do not qualify.

Like 73-year-old Soeun, many are widows and struggle to get by.

“My kids come here every two or three months and give me between 10 and 25 dollars," she said. "It depends - they are poor. But what can I do? It’s my fate. I’ve been at this pagoda for 12 or 13 years. Recently I started getting more ill, and so now I can’t join the religious events.”

Experts want the government to provide geriatric healthcare and a universal pension.

Annie Nut, an adviser to the non-profit organization HelpAge Cambodia, says such help is critical because of the increased responsibilities carried by many grandparents.

“Because of course when you migrate to the city or to another country it is very difficult - especially as a low-qualified laborer or worker - to bring your own children because their services are very expensive and renting a house is out of the question. So the grandparents have to take care of the grandchildren at home, and they also have to be the guardian of the households and the crops,” said Nut.

HelpAge has, with government support, set up 400 village-level groups to foster volunteer care of the elderly at the community level.

The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party has proposed a $10 monthly pension and free healthcare for the elderly.

Opposition legislator and former minister of women’s affairs, Mu Sochua, speaks of a moral obligation to help.

“As I say, our culture elevates the elderly. We look up to the elderly - and for what they have gone through with Pol Pot and they have survived, the least the [future] government of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, the least thing we can do is provide them with that minimum package starting with $10 a month,” said Mu Sochua.

The clock is ticking: a baby boom at the end of the Khmer Rouge’s rule and a declining fertility rate mean that by 2050 the country will have more than 4 million senior citizens - a fivefold increase.

KC police praised for help given to elderly woman whose home was torn apart while in hospital

Elderly men in England are less lonely these days –– and it’s all thanks to some chicks.

It all started in 2012 when one of the men living at a dementia care center kept telling the staff he missed his girls. When they realized the girls were actually hens he used to raise, one of the nurses asked Douglas Hunter, the director of Equal Arts, a charity that provides creative projects for older people, if he could bring in some chickens for the patients.

“A couple hundred quid” later and Equal Arts brought six new hens and a secondhand henhouse into the facility.

“Our main reservation was whether the staff would be annoyed by them, and wouldn’t have time to look after them,” says Hunter.

But the result was the complete opposite. The staff and the patients loved caring for the animals and the program was such a success, Equal Arts received funding to expand HenPower to eight pilot locations that ranged from assisted living facilities to care homes.

One of those location is Wood Green, an assisted living facility in Gateshead, Newcastle. The seventy two residents currently have 13 hens and 15 chicks they personally care for, giving them an alternative to being by themselves.

“Me and the wife used to go everywhere together, but when she died 10 years ago she left me on my own,” says Thomas ‘Ossie’ Cresswell, one of the residents who confessed he kept mostly to himself and was very lonely before the animals arrived. “My life has been a lot fuller since we’ve had these hens. I think I’d be lost without them.”

The program is open to women and men but has shown to decrease loneliness and depression in males especially since they tend to not socialize as much as women. Residents like Cresswell not only clean the coups, feed, water and bathe the chickens but also participate in hen-related activities like art, singing and dancing — and not just the chicken dance.

“You’d be surprised how many chicken-related songs there are, especially 1930s jazz,” Hunter says.

To be involved with HenPower, seniors don’t even have to live in one of the programs’ locations. The participants take the hens for road trips to schools and other care homes where people can interact with their beloved birds. Others like, Tommy Appleby, go to the chickens.

“I was completely at a loss; I was stranded,” says the 89-year old who was left by himself after his wife died five and a half years ago. He met a man involved in HenPower at the cemetery and since he lived three miles away from a facility participating in it, started attending. “Taking part was difficult at first. Now I love the other fellows – they really know hens.”

A recent study by the University of Northumbria showed that all males involved with HenPower showed improved wellbeing and decreased loneliness and depression. The dementia care center where it all started showed a decrease in violent behavior of 50 percent and antipsychotic drug use was also significantly reduced.

Perhaps the most heart warming part of this story, however, is the project leader’s recollection of how the seniors at Wood Green reacted to seeing new chicks hatch right before their eyes.

“We were all in the lounge, the incubator was on the bar and they were all hugging each other as the eggs hatched – it was genuinely emotional,” said Jos Forester-Melville, the HenPower project leader. “Everyone had tears in their eyes. Owen was in there with his video camera like it was his grandchildren at a school play.”

We already knew chickens were awesome and made for excellent therapeutic animals but if anyone needed a reminder, this program is giving them just that.

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Overland Park police seek purse snatcher who victimized elderly woman

OVERLAND PARK, KS (KCTV) -

Authorities are seeking help in catching the criminal responsible for robbing an elderly woman in an Overland Park parking lot Monday and it was all caught on camera.

Overland Park police said the 80-year-old woman had just gotten out of her vehicle when a man came up from behind her and grabbed her purse.

The crime happened about 4:50 p.m. in the parking lot of Walmart located at 11701 Metcalf Ave.

“I probably should keep my opinions to myself about the type of person who would do this," said Gary Mason with the Overland Park Police Department. “Clearly taking advantage of a weak and elderly person that just got out of her car and does not suspect something like this. It takes someone pretty bold and with no care in the world."

The surveillance video shows the woman pull into the parking place and the suspect spots her right away. He slowly walks around, keeping an eye on the woman, who is taking her time getting out. When she starts to get out he goes to approach her, but then she reaches back in her car.

Once she gets out the suspect runs up behind her and grabs her bag. When the suspect ran off he dropped his hat, a white hat with a blue rim that says New York Knicks on it, and the victim retrieved it.

While the video isn't the most clear, police are hoping the combination of it and the hat will lead them to the criminal.

“When you look at the surveillance video I think it stirs emotion and anger in all of us, but I don't think you'll be able to probably recognize the person unless you really know them and you can see them well, but I think the hat's going to be the main thing that's going to do it for us,” Mason said.

The suspect is described as a dark-skinned male wearing a dark-colored jacket and khaki pants.

The woman was not injured.

Anyone with information on the individual or the crime is asked to call the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS or Overland Park police at 913-344-8750.
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