Older adults with intellectual disabilities face exclusion, TDs and senators to hear 

Oireachtas committee on disabilities will hear today how some are likely to experience 'frailty, exclusion, and complex health needs' far earlier than the rest of the population

Prof Martin McMahon, associate director of the Trinity Centre for ageing and the life course in intellectual disability. Picture: TCD.ie

Older adults with intellectual disabilities are likely to experience “frailty, exclusion, and complex health needs” far earlier than the rest of the population, an Oireachtas committee is set to hear.

The Oireachtas committee on disabilities will hear today, Wednesday, that these early onset difficulties “are not inevitable consequences of disability” but rather reflect barriers placed in society which older intellectually disabled people encounter.

Martin McMahon, associate director of the Trinity Centre for Ageing and the Life Course in Intellectual Disability, is set to tell the committee that survey evidence from the Irish longitudinal study on ageing (Tilda) shows “progress” has been made, in that many older adults with intellectual disabilities are “socially connected, have close relationships with family and friends, and are active in their communities”.

He will add that many people in such a position “remain at risk of exclusion from the ordinary things in life that most people expect — education, employment, transport, technology, social participation, and meaningful community involvement”.

Addressing that risk will require a combination of “education and incentives” for ageing-focused resources, Mr McMahon will state.

“The healthcare evidence is equally clear,” he will say, showing that adults with intellectual disabilities experience frailty at much younger ages, with those aged 50 to 64 often displaying frailty levels on a par with over-75s in the general population.

'Before We Die' 

He will note that family care for adults with intellectual disabilities has become “increasingly complex” as the parents of those adults continue to age, with just over half of the respondents to the intellectual disability supplement of Tilda being parents — all of them over 66 and some aged 86 and older.

Mr McMahon will state that, when those parents age or die, care will often transfer to siblings, many of them who are older adults.

Roughly one third of the Tilda respondents reported experiencing financial struggle.

Carers are predominantly women, with many of them having limited help and low satisfaction with access to respite care.

“Family care is therefore a long-term and often unsupported part of the system requiring greater State planning and support,” Mr McMahon will argue.

The Irish Examiner has recently reported multiple situations showing how a lack of planning for the death or ageing of family carers of older adults with intellectual disabilities typically leads to those adults being placed in emergency situations when their carers become infirm or die.

Mr McMahon will say the current moment is a “timely” one — as Ireland assumes the presidency of the EU — to “place the ageing, health, and inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities firmly within national and European policy priorities”.