One of the biggest emerging challenges for our ageing society is how to deal with loneliness, with research suggesting over a million older people in the UK are lonely (pdf). We spoke to three people who dedicate their working lives to combatting loneliness, about what they do, the people they meet and what they think about social isolation.
‘The hardest part of the job is locating the most isolated people’
– Chloe Smee, regional development officer for Contact the Elderly
We provide a monthly Sunday afternoon tea party – Sunday being the loneliest day of the week and the day that people have their fondest memories of happy times with family.
I work in north, west and east Yorkshire, bridging the gap between isolated older people and volunteers in the community, who host tea parties in their own homes for eight to 10 people. That’s what’s unique about what we do: when you reach a certain age it’s all lunch clubs and day centres, and to be welcomed into somebody’s home, and feel like family for the afternoon, is really meaningful to people.
I meet with volunteers and try to explain loneliness to them. It takes many forms: often it’s those who live alone who experience loneliness, but it can equally be someone living in sheltered housing. It’s often triggered by the death of a spouse, families moving away or no longer being able to drive.
I also do a lot of work with referral agencies – GP surgeries, charities, local councils and the general public – in order to identify the people who are over 75 and chronically lonely. That’s the hardest part of the job: the most socially isolated are often the hardest to locate. The key thing is to try to provide intervention before loneliness becomes too entrenched, and affects people’s mental and physical health.
It doesn’t sound like a lot, a monthly tea party, but it can be a real springboard for people in terms of their confidence. I recently met a woman in south-west Leeds; she is still physically active and very independent. But she really knows nobody. She told me the only people she speaks to each week are the greengrocer and the fishmonger. She said she was losing the art of conversation. That sort of thing makes people really vulnerable.
After her first tea party she wrote to me and said: “It was a new experience for me to be with so many people and to feel so comfortable. There was a big smile on my face for the rest of the day. My confidence has diminished over the years but I’m hoping it will return now that I feel like I belong.”
‘There are a lot of activities for older women, but not many for older men’
– Sally McLachlan, senior engagement manager for Friends of the Elderly
I support our volunteers, grant services and befriending teams, as well as overseeing the Football Friends programme, which helps to combat the issue of loneliness among older men. Independent Age has estimated that by 2030, 1.5 million older men will live alone.
It’s a five-week programme that gives over-65s the opportunity to explore their football club’s history and meet other fans in their community. The idea is that people can reconnect with others over their love of football. They also learn how to use social media so they can stay in touch with fellow fans after they finish the programme.
My favourite thing about my job is spending time with the older people we support, by visiting our care homes, helping at our sheltered housing events or running a Football Friends group.
One of the first participants was 67-year-old Don, who found himself experiencing loneliness after suffering an injury shortly after retiring. He told me he was shocked at how quickly he had slipped into a routine of not leaving the house or speaking to anyone. He had become isolated without even noticing. He looked for activities he could get involved with, but said that although there were a lot of options for older women, there weren’t many for older men. Discovering Football Friends changed his life, he said.
There is a lack of awareness around the issues older people can face. Our research shows that the number of older people experiencing loneliness will increase by 40% by 2030, unless measures are put in place now to tackle the issue.
Poverty is also a very important predictor of loneliness because poorer older people tend to face more challenges, such as having lower levels of mobility and less access to technology. It is vital that services tackling loneliness offer accessible, cheap and locally delivered activities.
‘The difficulty for us is how to get the conversation off hospital beds’
– Paul McGarry, strategic lead for Greater Manchester’s ageing hub and Manchester city council’s age friendly team
For the past 15 years, I’ve lead Manchester’s ageing programme. This involves everything from marshalling resources and working on big strategic questions around how much housing we have to build, transport for older people, and jobs for older workers, right down to the grassroots – how to create age-friendly places and reduce social isolation.
The difficulty for us on the ageing agenda is how to get the conversation off hospital beds and the deficits of ageing. Older people are almost universally described as “the elderly”, or “the frail elderly”. It’s a really disappointing exercise in labelling people, creating an otherness about them that is dehumanising. Older people are active citizens who work, create wealth, lead communities, become grandparents. We want to change the narrative around ageing.
Inner-city Manchester has some of the highest levels of loneliness of anywhere in the country, but there’s often a taboo around it. People don’t want to talk about loneliness. You have to describe it in more positive terms: how to be involved, for example.
Across Manchester we have a whole series of neighbourhood-scale projects that focus on social connection. We have older people setting up their own clubs, taking over former council buildings, organising creative writing sessions and trips out of the city. A Brownies group in south Manchester has just introduced a new badge, awarded to girls who develop relationships with older people in their community and can demonstrate they understand the causes and impact of loneliness.
It’s bottom up: you need a bit of resource, but actually many of the answers lie in our communities and in existing services. You’ve got to listen to people: if they say “we don’t want tea dances, we want a nightclub”, then you have to do that.
In December I had a selfie with Derek, a 90-year-old who lives on the Old Moat housing estate in south Manchester. He has written a list of 10 top tips to stop being lonely, including learn to use a computer and make friends with your neighbours. We published it, and it’s been shown to all kinds of organisations.
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