Help open eyes to abuse through your lens - Keaveney

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"The Council of Europe have ran such projects that have had winning entries from Donegal. It has been a great pleasure to see Donegal artistic endeavour succeed internationally and there is no reason why the HSE project has not got wider potential.

Aside from the platform it gives for people to explore the medium of short film, the topic of this competition is also an important one to address.

The aim of the call is to bring an awareness to the issue of elder abuse for films through producing short films of between 30 to 60 seconds in duration before Friday 29th October 2010.

The films can be made using digital cameras or mobile phones or professional film making equipment.

The HSE elder abuse services received over 1,800 referrals of alleged abuse in 2009. This is a significant number of referrals from a very vulnerable and usually very cherished sector of our community. What is worse is that the HSE older peoples services personnel believe that the number of older people suffering abuse may be much higher than this.

This project will help raise public awareness of this issue and how people can access more information and where they can go to seek help and advice.

I would like think that now, at the start of an academic year that this might be a competition that our schools might take a special interest in. Who knows what talent it may unearth in the course of supporting our older members of our community?" commented Senator Cecilia Keaveney, member of the Arts, Education and Science committee of the Council of Europe.