OLDER, disabled and vulnerable people have issued a plea to people not to take supermarket delivery slots unless they really need them after finding themselves isolated and with no way of getting any groceries in.
And they have pleaded with the supermarkets to do more to help those who need it most.
Droitwich resident Renate, who is 75, severely disabled and a wheelchair user, said she contacted The Standard as a last resort after being left frustrated trying to get food delivered at three separate supermarkets.
She said: “I am housebound, living on my own and I am unable to secure a delivery slot for grocery delivery at any of the major supermarket chains.”
Renate tried Tesco, Morrisons and Waitrose and there were no slots available at any of them.
Book a delivery slot for a time and date that suits you – and enjoy free next day delivery when you spend £35.
- Excellent service from starting my order (which is my 1st ever from iceland) to it being delivered, every thing I ordered was delivered and all the use by dates on the non frozen goods had long dates on. If your looking for a 1st class grocery and frozen products shop with free delivery over £35 then this is the place to shop, thankyou Iceland.
- This legislation, combined with the high cost of nursing home care and the desire of many elderly people to continue living in their own homes, has resulted in an increased demand for home care services (Johnson and Olafsdottir, 2005). Home care in Iceland includes health care and social services.
“The media reported delivery slots would be made available to the disabled, however, these are just empty words.
“I have no big needs, only water and yogurts, but I am unable to shop for these.
“I buy from Tesco regularly and now when I need items I cannot get them. I feel so let down.”
She asked if we could help suppliers more aware of the predicament disabled people found themselves in.
“I am very disappointed that nothing is done to help people such as myself.”
Sally Coombes from Bromsgrove, who is a pensioner, has breast cancer and a damaged lung, said she and her husband tried to register with Sainsbury’s as a ‘vulnerable’ resident from 8am to 11pm but found it impossible to speak to anyone.
“We’ve tried booking slots online at different times-a-day, sometimes after midnight, and still there is nothing available.
She added she was also unable to speak to Iceland and messages sent online were just met with ‘this email is not being monitored’ replies.
“We cannot leave the house and have had help from a wonderful neighbour but we cannot expect people to help us for 12 weeks or more.
“I don’t want luxuries – just a regular delivery of necessities.
“We’re happy living on beans on toast, egg on toast or soup but we need the items.”
She added she feared others who did not have computers or smart phones may be even worse off than them.
“I seriously think people could be left dying in their homes.”
Three neighbours from Redditch, aged 68, 85 and 101, who contacted the Standard said they had received deliveries from Tesco once-a-week for the last eight months and used a saver plan.
But last week the deliveries did not turn up and they are unable to get through to Tesco on the phone.
“We haven’t been able to get eggs for three weeks now.”
They claimed there was also others, including a family living across the road who were younger and had two cars, who were still receiving two deliveries-a-week.
“In these times when the vulnerable are being urged to have their shopping delivered isn’t this selfish?”
What the supermarkets had to say….
We quizzed the supermarkets concerned and here are their responses –
Tesco said it knew how important the issue was and how it was more difficult for people to get delivery slots for online shopping and was looking into how it could best support all its customers, including vulnerable shoppers.
The supermarket asked those who could safely get to a store to go there instead of shopping online so more slots would be there for the most vulnerable.
It was also looking at every opportunity to increase the number of slots and would be setting aside more of those slots for its most vulnerable customers.
Morrisons said it was expanding its home delivery, introducing new ways of delivering groceries and more slots for customers, which will also help vulnerable people and those affected by the virus.
A new range of simple-to-order food parcels, including options for vegetarians, was started on Monday.
More delivery slots were available through Morrisons.com and the Morrisons Store on Amazon Prime Now. Morrisons will use 100 further stores to pick customers’ shopping over the coming weeks.
A customer call centre was being launched to take orders over the phone so people who did not shop online can still order food.
To support the roll-out of these expanded home delivery methods, Morrisons is recruiting around 2,500 pickers and drivers and 1,000 distribution centre staff which it said would also help those whose jobs had been lost or impacted on by COVID-19.
David Potts, Morrisons’ chief executive, said: “We expect the days, weeks and months ahead to be very testing and we are determined to do our bit.
“These measures will support our very hard-working colleagues, enable us to provide more food to more people in their homes and create opportunities for people whose jobs are affected by the coronavirus.”
Sainsbury’s said it was doing its ‘absolute best’ to offer online delivery slots to elderly and vulnerable customers who had priority over all slots.
“We have proactively contacted 270,000 customers who had already given us information that meant we could identify them as elderly or vulnerable.
“Our customer careline is working at full capacity to help other vulnerable customers and we are able to give an additional 8,000 customers a day access to delivery slots over the phone.
“We have already booked in slots for 115,000 elderly and vulnerable customers this week and this number is growing every day.”
Where slots were available, not currently filled by elderly and vulnerable customers, they were offered to others in the short term, a spokesperson added,
The company was due to receive the Government database this week detailing the people considered to be the most vulnerable.
“Where these people are registered with us, we will start to write to them next week to offer them a delivery slot.
We are doing our very best, but it’s important to remember that home delivery is a very small part of the grocery market and we would ask communities to work together on this issue.
“If customers are able to go into store to shop, we hope they will also shop for someone else who lives locally if they can.”
She added regular deliveries were being received and Sainsbury’s supermarkets were now open from 8am to 8pm Monday to Saturday so the firm could focus workers’ time on keeping shelves stocked.
“We are constantly listening to feedback from our customers and will be in touch when there is anything further we can share.”
Iceland said, whilst it was seeing an unprecedented demand for its online delivery service with customers booking slots incredibly quickly as they became available, more slots were being released daily.
“We are also working hard to add extra online delivery capacity at every opportunity across all our stores in the UK.”
The company had placed a pop-up on its groceries website asking people only to place online orders if they were elderly, disabled or otherwise vulnerable, or were self-isolating.
“This is designed to make people think twice before placing an order, and consider whether or not it is absolutely vital for them to use one of our delivery slots at a time when we are seeing such high demand.
“We are calling on all of our customers to help us in supporting the most vulnerable people in our communities.
“We have appealed to the public to support our efforts to give priority to those most in need, whether that is by respecting priority shopping periods for the elderly and vulnerable in our stores, or by not placing online orders if they are capable of visiting a store themselves.
“Please show consideration for others in the way that you shop, by not panic buying and not taking up delivery slots that are badly needed by those who are unable to obtain the food and other essentials they need in any other way.”
Waitrose said it was looking into the issue and hoped to provide an update to us and customers soon.
Growing old isn’t easy in any country in the world. As a person leaves the workforce, their available prospects for survival could range from a comfortable retirement to abject squalor. Where Iceland is concerned, there are few better countries in the entire world in which to grow old, but this does not mean the country is invulnerable. In fact, as the population continues to age, new measures will be needed to ensure the elderly continue to get the high level of care they currently enjoy.
Global context
Before we take a look at what a retired person in Iceland is provided, by municipal and national offices alike, we should take a look at how Iceland stacks up against the rest of the world. The 2015 Global Age Watch Index currently ranks Iceland 7th in the world in terms of quality of care for the elderly.
Indeed, services ranging from housing and pensions to social activities and transport are well provided for by local and national government services alike. However, as with any other country in the developed world, funding for all these services rests upon the expectation that there will always be more young people paying into government coffers than elderly people drawing from them. Iceland is rapidly approaching the point where the treasury will have quite a burden to bear.
According to Statistics Iceland, Icelanders are getting older: in 1990, the average Icelander was 33. Today, the average age is up to 37.2. Currently, just over 19% of the population is over the age of 60. By 2030, that number will climb to over 25%; by 2050, over 30%. In order to continue to provide the numerous services available to the elderly that Iceland currently provides, there are a few options on the table: relax immigration, raises taxes, or both.
While this matter will have to be dealt with, and soon, the elderly in Iceland do currently have it pretty good. There still remain, however, certain groups of elderly people who are especially vulnerable.
The current situation
“Most senior citizens are doing well,” Þórunn Sveinbjörnsdóttir, the chairperson of the Society of Senior Citizens, told the Grapevine. “But there are some who are struggling; who have too little. These are usually people on the rental market. There are also people who sustained losses during the [autumn 2008] bank crash. These are the kinds of people we hear about who don’t have enough to live on by the time the 20th or the 25th of the month arrives.”
Rental prices, in Reykjavík especially, have been increasing significantly, and many have attributed this to an increase in demand from tourists willing to rent an apartment for a couple weeks or even days. But native Icelanders who rent are not the only ones at risk.
“There are also older immigrants arriving,” Þórunn said. “They need, as they are not eligible for the national pension [from Social Insurance Administration], to look to local authorities for assistance. It’s a pretty complicated system for new arrivals.”
The point about older immigrants in Iceland is one immigrant councilor for the City of Reykjavík Barbara Kristvinsson is familiar with. She spoke with us about some of the obstacles these people face.
“One of the difficulties they encounter can be the language, as always. It’s a hard enough system for Icelanders to understand in their own language,” she said. “If you’re over the age of 67, you shouldn’t be getting social welfare payments from the municipalities anymore. You should be getting a pension from the Social Insurance Administration (Tryggingastofnun). But these people don’t have any right to Tryggingastofnun. People are still trying to figure out the legalities of that, and they can be tricky legalities, because these immigrants have to prove that they don’t have rights.”
Barbara also mentions some of the social effects of being a senior immigrant in Iceland.
“I think that integrating is tough,” she told us. “It’s hard enough having to integrate in a foreign country, but try having to integrate into a nursing home, where you’re maybe not going to get your daughter to cook you food from your home. They can’t engage in the usual small talk of getting to know inter-family connections. It’s very lonesome and isolating.”
Reykjavík is taking steps to address this issue. Recently, the city announced it was going to be participating in the global Age Friendly Cities campaign, which aims to make the capital a better place to grow old in. This will include increasing access to health services, but also increasing social events for seniors, making information more accessible, and other programmes. This campaign is to include senior immigrants—not only as part of the target audience, but also among the campaign organisers themselves.
“Maybe the laws [concerning pension funds] will be reviewed, in light of how many more elderly immigrants there are,” Þórunn said, adding that she has seen casework for these people increase.
What we’re doing right, what we could do better
We asked Þórunn to break down for us what Iceland is doing well for its senior citizens, and what it’s doing not-so-well.
“Where we’re doing well is we’re living longer,” she said, and the facts speak for themselves in this case—an Icelander who is 60 years old can expect to live, on average, for another 25 years. “At the same time, we’ve been fighting for many years for these people to have a little more money.”
In fact, the national pension fund’s full monthly allowance amounts to 25,700 ISK. As anyone who has gone grocery shopping in Iceland can attest, this may not necessarily be enough to even eat off of, let alone pay for other goods and services that a senior citizen might want to enjoy. At the same time, the combined powers of the local authorities and the state provide the elderly with services as transportation, home-delivered food, social events and activities, home cleaning services, visiting nurses and, should the need arise, collective living run by municipalities and private companies alike.
One of the more recent examples of services for the elderly that have drawn national attention are the home-delivered meals provided by the city. These meals arrive cold, and need to be microwaved to be warmed up. Many senior citizens complained that these meals were unappetizing, or that they had difficulty preparing them for themselves. The criticism was so concerted that Reykjavík Mayor Dagur B. Eggertsson took it upon himself to eat these meals every day for a week, after which he concluded that the food was of the highest quality.
“Some people found the food good, others found it bad,” Þórunn said. “Some other people found the packages difficult to open, or found it complicated to heat the food up in the right way.”
This might be particularly the case where elderly single men are concerned. As Þórunn explained, these men belong to a generation used to having their mothers, and then their wives, attend to such matters as cooking and cleaning. Upon reaching retirement age, and perhaps outliving their spouses, they find themselves at a loss when it comes to being able to attend to these basic needs—assuming they are even physically capable.
“We want increased respect”
While access to information about services for the elderly from the City of Reykjavík is fairly easy, for Icelanders and immigrants alike, the same cannot be said for the Ministry of Welfare. It was fairly easy to find a list of available services, and how to apply for them, on the Ministry’s Icelandic page, but this information proved impossible to find in any other language.
Counselling services are available, both locally and nationally, for elderly immigrants who want to know their rights, but Þórunn believes Iceland could do even better.
“We want increased respect,” she told us, when asked what the major goals were for Iceland’s elderly. “And that goes for the immigrants, too. Those who are new to Iceland also want respect from others. We also want society to understand how important it is to have this group, too,” she added, pointing out that the elderly are often tasked with babysitting younger relatives, picking them up from school and other family matters.
It should also be pointed out that not only do senior citizens comprise the highest percentage of voters for the ruling coalition of the Progressive Party and the Independence Party; senior citizens vote in higher percentages than any other age group in the country, according to the latest data from Market and Media Research.
As Iceland’s population continues to age, being able to maintain, let alone improve, these globally high standards will prove increasingly challenging for the Icelandic government. As seniors continue to go to the polls more than any other age group, upcoming parliamentarians will need to have some idea of how to keep these standards high as demand grows. Not solely from the point of view of winning votes, but more importantly, to maintain the health of the country overall.
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