Sarah J spoke with the Campaign to End Loneliness

Laura Ferguson

Half of all older people (about 5 million) say the television is their main company and recent estimates place the number of people aged over 65 who are often or always lonely at over 1 million.

To combat this, a Campaign to End Loneliness was launched in 2010, focused on ending loneliness and creating connections in older age. To find out more about the current situation and what can be done, Sarah J spoke with Director, Laura Ferguson.

Sarah J: What is the campaign to end loneliness about?

Laura: The campaign to end loneliness aims to help to maintain and create connections in older age so that people who are older are able to keep their friendships and keep healthy as they move through older age. We were launched by four older aged charities; Age UK Oxfordshire, Council in Care, Independent Age and WRVS. We're delivering our projects from 2012.

Sarah J: That's really exciting. Now in terms of some of the research, I've seen some statistics suggesting that about 23% of older people are saying they only have monthly contact with friends and family and about a third of the people were saying that they really want more done to tackle loneliness.

Laura: Yes that's right. Research has been done over decades by specialists in loneliness in older age and it has shown that the number of lonely older people in the UK is not dropping despite a lot of work happening across the country in local areas to keep older people in touch with others, either through befriending or group activity base. Because the older population is rising, the numbers of older people compared to the younger people in the UK is growing. If we don't address loneliness then we are going to have a larger proportion of our population who are older and lonely. What we've launched with last year was not just the numbers of older people who are feeling lonely, which are around 10% who always feel severely lonely, (that really heavy feeling of loneliness), but also up to about half of older people who feel lonely sometimes. It's not just the numbers that are important; it's the fact that loneliness has a really negative impact on people's health.

Sarah J: In terms of that negative impact what kind of things are we talking about?

Laura: Researchers rate loneliness and social isolation as comparable a risk to mortality as obesity. In terms of it being an indicator of how long people are going to live, it's right up there with some of the other public health issues that generally people know more about. What we found was that people just did not realise the health impacts of loneliness and therefore probably weren't taking action to keep their friendships alive so that they could keep themselves alive.

It's a really major thing. There's been further research as well into other health aspects. The link between loneliness and early Alzheimer's has been shown. The link between many mental health conditions like depression has been made. We think it is very important to prevent loneliness, obviously to help people who are lonely now but also to prevent loneliness in those who are approaching older age as well as those in older age. Once you reach older age other factors start to come in, like the possibility of not being able to leave your house because of mobility issues and the possibility of not wanting to leave your house because you feel more afraid in your own neighbourhood and all other sorts of factors that can make loneliness in older age particularly vicious.

Sarah J: So is your work about finding the relevant research and also what people are wanting and then challenging policy based on the research that you're finding to make more of an impact?

Laura: That's a really good summary of what we're going to be doing. We do base our work on the evidence of what works. We work closely with researchers. Our launch publication was called Faith Guarding the Convoy, which is all about keeping that convoy of people around you as you move through life. We base the background for the campaign and the work of the campaign on the research work of five researchers across Europe; so we are very research based, but I've got to say that we are also very action oriented. In 2012 we've got three projects coming up, all of them individually based. We want to impress on local decision makers first of all that policy and health decisions and health purchasing needs to be more aware of the health risks of loneliness and what can be done to prevent loneliness and therefore prevent some of those future health risks. That's one piece of work we'll be starting in six local areas. We will also be working with local organisations who already work with older people to share what works in reducing loneliness; to share examples so that the good practices that are already out there; the good things that are already happening can be shared more widely. Then finally we will be working with those not yet in their older age to help them maintain their connections for their older age so that they can avoid loneliness.

Sarah J: Perhaps for all of that to work, as a nation we should have some very clear guidance about what will actually impact older people's lives to reduce loneliness?

Laura: Absolutely. From there we then need to work backwards; we're going to be saying to individuals what they can do to prevent themselves from becoming lonely, but also what you can do in your communities to really strengthen your neighbourhoods and your streets and friendships to keep connected. This needs to go right through to organisations, local authorities and businesses as well. Whatever we can do to make sure those small things and big things are going to keep people connected; particularly people who are in or moving towards older age. Everyone can take action to prevent and combat loneliness and keep us all better connected.

Sarah J: I recently read a quote by Gavin Pull, the Executive Director for the Centre of Social Justice and he argued that this situation is a national disgrace. It sounds from what you're saying that every single person within the community and nation needs to take some responsibility to reduce the loneliness of older people?