Age UK Wakefield District’s Befriending Service

We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded a grant from the Henry Smith Charity to support our work with lonely and socially isolated older people in our district.

We will build on the success of our existing Befriending Service, which has been a key service in our Organisation for over 25 years and which has tackled isolation and loneliness amongst local older people successfully, by providing one-to-one home visits. The service relies on a team of volunteers who are matched with lonely older people.  Our Befriending volunteers are carefully selected and matched with a client who has been assessed for the service. The volunteers provide weekly visits of up to an hour per week offering conversation and companionship, sharing interests and hobbies, and reporting back to the Befriending Coordinator any issues or concerns about the client or highlighting the need for referral to other services. Befriending relationships are monitored and reviewed throughout the year with both the client and the volunteer.

At the start of the pandemic we successfully transferred all active home visit Befriending relationships to weekly telephone calls, the volunteer provides a telephone call once or twice a week to their client rather than visiting them at home.

Over the next three years, with support from the Henry Smith Charity, we will be developing the Befriending Service so that we can help even more older people to find connection and friendship again. We will ensure that we continue to tackle loneliness and also to improve the mental wellbeing of our older people, help them feel more optimistic, feel more confident about living independently and be better able to manage their physical health; and have increased resilience.

The service will seek to work more closely with its volunteer team to create new roles such as the Befriending Service Support Volunteer Role, to help grow the service.  The project will build upon and foster greater connection within our Age UK teams working with vulnerable older people, including Connecting Care and Time for Tea.

We have successfully recruited a Befriending Coordinator - Justin Steers, to work with us on this project.  Justin will be joining the Organisation on 7th September 2020. Justin started with us as a Volunteer Befriender in May 2019, and has also helped on the Time for Tea Project and Bluebell Service during lockdown.

We hope you join us in welcoming Justin to the organisation.

Tracey Shaw, Volunteer Manager.