Overview
Elder Home Share: How Lived Experience Shaped a Social Enterprise
Growing up, Saoirse Sheridan shared a home with her grandmother. As a child, this felt entirely normal to her—they shared everyday life, conversation, and companionship. It was only much later that she understood how formative that experience was, and how deeply it shaped her views on ageing, independence, and what it means to feel secure in one’s own home.
Years later, life brought Sheridan back to those early lessons in an unexpected way. As a mature student studying entrepreneurship, she found herself facing a very practical challenge: finding affordable accommodation. At the same time, she became increasingly aware of older people living alone—many of whom wanted to remain in their own homes but struggled with loneliness, isolation, or a sense of vulnerability.
It was at the meeting point of those two experiences—ageing and housing—that the idea for Elder Home Share emerged.
The Social Challenge
Ireland’s population is ageing, and more people are living alone for longer. While many older people are physically independent, living alone can bring quiet but significant challenges: loneliness, anxiety, and fear — particularly at night.
Families often feel caught between wanting to respect an older person’s independence and wanting to ensure they are safe. Traditional options can feel limited. Residential care may be premature, while formal home care does not always address the emotional need for companionship and reassurance.
What is often missing is a middle ground — support that allows people to remain in their own homes, while not being alone.
Solution
Elder Home Share was created to offer that middle ground.
The service matches older homeowners with carefully vetted live-in companions who provide companionship and a reassuring presence in exchange for accommodation. Companions are not carers; rather, they are people willing to share daily life — conversation, meals, and the comfort of knowing someone else is in the home.
Each match is supported through a structured process that includes interviews, reference checks, trial periods, and ongoing monthly check-ins. This support is essential, as home sharing is deeply personal and relies on trust, respect, and clear expectations on both sides.
At its heart, Elder Home Share is about mutual benefit, dignity, and human connection.
Impact
What began as a simple idea has now been operating for 10 years. Along the way, founder Saoirse Sheridan has learned that building a social enterprise is not about scale alone, but about consistency, care, and listening.
Every home share is different. Each arrangement brings its own dynamics, needs, and learning. That reality has shaped the way Elder Home Share operates — slowly, thoughtfully, and always with the individual at the centre.
Over time, Sheridan has observed how sharing a home can restore confidence, reduce fear, and allow older people to continue living where they most want to be. She has also witnessed how companions benefit from stability, belonging, and the opportunity to contribute in a meaningful way.
SEI Journey
- Impact Programme Awardee 2018-2019
In 2018, Elder Home Share became a Social Entrepreneurs Ireland (SEI) Awardee, a significant milestone in its development.
SEI’s support provided space to reflect, learn, and strengthen the organisation’s impact focus. Just as importantly, it offered a sense of belonging within a community of social entrepreneurs grappling with complex social challenges.
Being part of the SEI network helped affirm that this work mattered — and that small, relationship-based solutions have an important role to play alongside larger systems.
Looking Ahead
”As Elder Home Share marks a decade in operation, I find myself reflecting on how it all started out with my own need for accommodation and loving memories of my own Gran Ivy. I look back and remember older people who I have home shared with what it has taught me and how that has fed into how I build out Elder Home Share.
Over the past ten years, I have seen first-hand how loneliness, ageing, and housing pressures intersect in people’s lives. These challenges are not going away any time soon. What continues to motivate me is probably the joy of rentrepernship which always tends to come back to people and connecting people.
I hope Elder Home Share will hold its own as we go forward and I am grateful too for how it supported me with a roof over my head in hard times and gave me a deep understanding of what elder home share has to offer to the homeowner, their extended family and the home share companion.
Saoirse Sheridan
