{"id":247603,"date":"2025-12-23T13:19:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T13:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/247603\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T13:19:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T13:19:11","slug":"they-kept-me-going-when-i-was-sick-id-be-dead-only-for-friends-of-the-elderly-how-one-charity-helps-ease-loneliness-at-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/247603\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They kept me going when I was sick, I\u2019d be dead only for Friends of the Elderly\u2019 \u2013 how one charity helps ease loneliness at Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Members and volunteers at festive party tell how the organisation has helped them stay connected\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ellen Byas (83) has been a member and volunteer for decades\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/f6617f15-c157-47b4-b464-0f362170cf4a.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Ellen Byas (83) has been a member and volunteer for decades<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Ellen Byas (83) has been a member of Friends of the Elderly for nearly 20 years and has volunteered for decades. On the day before the charity\u2019s Christmas party, she helped an older person in urgent need.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cI got a phone call when I was in the hairdresser, hearing somebody in a bad need for food, coal, heating, electricity and everything,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Members and volunteers at festive party tell how the organisation has helped them stay connected Ellen Byas (83)&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,16838,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,1842,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-247603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-christmas","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-sarah-burke","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-world","23":"tag-world-news","24":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115769086363614759","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}