Age UK Norfolk COVID-19 Emergency Appeal

Right now, hundreds if not thousands of older people are facing extreme isolation in Norfolk. Many of them won't have anyone to talk to for weeks on end; but we believe no one should have no one.

Thanks to the kind support of individuals and organisations across our county, we receive invaluable donations each year to help support our services for older people, in particular our flagship Information and Advice service and our much cherished Telephone Befriending Service which support thousands of people each year.

This year, our services are coming under continuing pressure as more and more older people in Norfolk turn to us during their time of isolation and worry throughout the ever evolving situation with COVID-19. We urgently need the support of people across Norfolk to help us meet the demand for our services so that we can be the reassuring voice our older people need to hear.

Many organisations are faced with having to wind down their operations but here at Age UK Norfolk our work is far from over. We have been working hard to ensure that our advice line is still operational despite a switch to remote working and we have recruited additional telephone befriending volunteers so that we can increase the number of older people we call for a friendly chat.

We are already dealing with thousands of requests for advice to our information service every year; in 2017-2018 over a 6 month period we saw a 64% increase in calls to the advice line. Our Telephone Befriending service already makes over 4,000 hours of calls to lonely older people per year and in the current climate, these figures are likely to rise exponentially.

The future is uncertain and as we face loss of income from our retail charity shops, we need your support more than ever to help us so we can continue being there for older people in their time of need. We would be very grateful if you are able to make a donation, however big or small, to help us support older people in Norfolk through these troubling times.