A community that cares
The pandemic has had severe knock-on effects on mental health and wellbeing. Working in the home care industry we come across a lot of elderly people who are isolated from the community.
Feeling lonely can happen to anyone, any age and at any time. However, the older you get the harder it is to overcome this feeling. Loneliness can have severe knock-on effects on other areas of life.
It doesn’t take much to be left feeling alone and vulnerable and whatever the cause of loneliness, it all ends up with the same outcome. A serious decline in physical and mental health and wellbeing. This year has been extremely difficult for everyone; the pandemic has caused severe knock-on effects on mental health and wellbeing. Working in the home care industry we come across a lot of elderly people who are isolated from the community. Sometimes our Care Assistants are the only people our customers see.
Almost 2 million older people are expecting to feel lonely this Christmas – including almost a third of older widows and widowers, and more than half the older population are concerned they won’t see friends and family this Christmas.
(Age UK, 2020)
Someone who feels lonely may also find it hard to reach out. Pride can get in the way when it comes to asking for help. More often to not an older person suffering from loneliness will have too much pride to ask for help.
Loneliest Christmas yet
Christmas 2020 is set to be the loneliest yet and Bluebird Care South Tyneside have made a stand to make a difference.
As you may have seen we are running our #GiveAGift2020 Christmas campaign to combat loneliness in our communities. We ran three social polls in the lead up to our campaign to help us gauge the interest from the people living in our community.
We asked three questions via our social media platform:
- Do you know an elderly person who would benefit from a gift giving service this Christmas?
- Would you be interested in donating to a gift giving service to the elderly who are lonely this year at Christmas?
- If you know someone who would benefit from a gift giving service this Christmas, please get in touch with us via private message
The findings we got from those polls were extremely heart-warming. It confirms we live in a community that cares and looks out for one another.
Although not many people knew first hand someone who would benefit from a gift giving service we received a lot of positive feedback on how they think it’s a good idea and how important something like this is for the elderly who are alone. We also managed to get some good contacts to organisations and charities whose service users would benefit from the gifts.
When we asked about donating to a gift giving service, we had a huge response from the community saying that they would be interested in donating to a gift giving service. 92% of people said they would be interested in donating to a gift giving service for the elderly this Christmas.
Lastly, we asked if anyone would like to put forward someone who they think would benefit from the gift giving service, which we got a handful of responses. Knowing people are looking out for others in their community is so uplifting and we cannot wait to get our Christmas gifts delivered.
The gift is giving
Christmas is a time for giving and at Bluebird Care South Tyneside we think no one should go without a gift this year. By engaging with our local communities and through your kind donations, we want to help older people who might not otherwise receive a gift at Christmas time. We want to finish 2020 on a high. We don’t want anyone suffering from loneliness and if we can help by giving gifts to those who need it most, we will.
We are working with some truly great organisations across Newcastle and South Tyneside, who do endless work with the elderly and lonely to help them feel apart of the community again.
We are proud to be able to help such good causes this Christmas.
To donate to Bluebird Care’s #GiveAGift2020 campaign, please visit: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/giveagift2020
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3. Assessment
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