Just Another Day
Watch the full length director's cut of our Just Another Day film, which shows the everyday monotony of loneliness
How we are tackling loneliness
It's a shocking statistic, but around 1.4 million older people find their days repetitive and admit holidays just pass them by.
December 2017 saw Age UK embark on our most exciting winter campaign to date. Our No one should have no one winter campaign called upon people across the country to pledge their support and donate to help Age UK be there for lonely older people all year round.
Throughout the year, Age UK delivers support to older people through our vital services like the Age UK Advice Line (open every day, including Christmas Day) and Call in Time, our national telephone befriending service, which provides regular calls to isolated or lonely older people, in many cases this being the only conversation they will have all week.
How we are tackling loneliness
Increasing awareness
We teamed up with Channel 4 for an extra special Christmas episode of Old People's Home for 4 Year Olds to raise awareness of the major issue of loneliness.
The hit show gripped the nation earlier this year with its ambitious six-week experiment, which saw a nursery group share a classroom with older people in a retirement home in Bristol. The Christmas special reunited the children, all of which have now started school, and the older volunteers as they prepared for a Christmas concert. The show helped to educate it's 2.43 million viewers about the complexity of loneliness and saw an overwhelming amount of positive conversation, awareness and support for Age UK. One in five who watched the show were encourage to take action as a result.
Influencing politicians
As part of the Jo Cox Commission on loneliness, we have been working to shine a spotlight on loneliness and calling for action from the Government.
In January, following the recommendations of the Jo Cox Commission, the Prime Minter announced a new strategy to tackle loneliness and social isolation – including appointing a ministerial lead on loneliness.
Programmes and innovation
Testing Promising Approaches to Reducing Loneliness is a programme run by local Age UKs to test and improve loneliness service provisions. The first phase of the programme had three main aims:
- Understand: to better understand an individual's loneliness through conversation and respond to the individual's needs.
- Reach: to identify and contact hard-to-reach older people who are lonely; by empowering local health and community services to be aware of loneliness and its indicators and to be equipped with information about local loneliness services. Partners made good use of the Loneliness Heat Map to aid targeting and identification.
- Support: to provide wrap-around, tailored support to older people who are lonely by offering practical and emotional solutions that builds confidence and resilience.
The second phase of the programme is currently in progress and we are looking forward to seeing the results.
How you can make a difference
Each and every one of us can make a difference in our communities
Support our work
Help us make sure that no one has no one
Help someone you know
Find out what you can do to help someone who may be lonely.
Also in this issue
Read more articles from the Winter 2018 edition of Life magazine.
