Coronavirus Appeal – Please help!

You may be aware that the British Government is making £750 million available to charities. While this support is appreciated, unfortunately this will be split across hundreds of thousands of charities across the country, and will take time to filter down. Age UK Birmingham and Age UK Sandwell need  to protect older people right now. Donations are still essential to keep the emergency front line services running and to reach as many people as possible.

A message from our CEO…

Older people tell us that they feel scared and totally isolated by the new lock down and don’t know where to turn. We have over 1,200 people waiting to be called by one of our befrienders. People like Florence, (89) with early onset dementia, who is concerned about her mental wellbeing, and knows that a regular call could make all the difference.

In these challenging times Age UK Birmingham and Age UK Sandwell has had to move swiftly in response to the current health crisis, and we have been working hard with our teams and our volunteers to redirect our resources to create the following Emergency Services for Older People, their Carers and Families.

We will continue working hard to support all older people across our communities, and I would urge you to please circulate our offer of support amongst friends, family and colleagues, and to keep safe and well. I’d also like to say a huge thank you to the many offers to help, support and volunteer, as well as the kind financial donations we are receiving to support our effort.

Alison Beachim, CEO

Emergency Support Services:

Telephone Information & Advice Service:

Supporting older people with ongoing issues and concerns around welfare, benefits and access to other statutory and social services.

Telephone Befriending Call Service:

Providing twice weekly calls from one of our dedicated volunteers to offer reassurance and comfort over the coming weeks, also to identify any additional health and wellbeing needs and refer on to our professional support teams and other referral agencies as needed.

Shopping / Prescription Service:

Offering referral across to other existing shopping support providers, undertaking shopping where alternative support may not be provided, and offering a prescription pick up and drop off service.

Community Support: 

Providing and/or identifying locally available support for citizens including referrals to established channels of obtaining essential supplies (including shopping services, food banks, religious organisations etc.) and other support service including general advice and guidance, befriending services, buddying, online socialising etc. 

For any of the above services please contact us by:

Emailing: info@ageuksandwell.org.uk 

or call   0121 437 0033   Monday to Friday 9:30am - 4pm

Please will you support Age UK Birmingham and Sandwell with a donation right now?

It means that we will have the cash flow to respond to dealing with Coronavirus, even if that means changing around our services. If you can help us to scale up our efforts to respond to this crisis, please click below:

Please keep checking back here as well as our Twitter account and Facebook page (see links below) for further updates.

Service Disruption

With the recent announcement from Central Government with regard to COVID-19 ("Coronavirus"), we now need to make a change to the way we deliver some of our services. It’s with regret and concern for the safety of our older people that we will pause the delivery of community based accessible activity.

Unfortunately we will have to suspend all face to face information and advice services, which means the usual outreach Information and Advice sessions at locations across the Borough will not operate.