It's brrr - help your older neighbours stay warm and connected this winter

Please note: this post is 114 months old and The Cares Family is no longer operational. This post is shared for information only

“It’s been so good to have a conversation with you. I’m retired, my family has passed away, I live alone. I normally don’t have anyone to chat with.” Tony, 69.

This week I got to know Tony in a betting shop. Friendly, knowledgeable and enthusiastic, circumstance has left him isolated.

I met Tony through our Winter Wellbeing project, which we launched on December 1st. For the second year running, we’re helping our older neighbours to stay warm, active, healthy and connected during what can be a very isolating time. High food and fuel bills, health challenges, bereavements and the general January blues can hugely increase immobility, loneliness and anxiety during winter.

So we’re working with our friends at Southwark and Lambeth Councils and Age UK. We’re heading out and striking up conversations with our older neighbours in bookies, greasy spoons, libraries, food banks, community groups, launderettes, GP surgeries and pubs. We’re knocking on doors – on estates, sheltered housing units, and private accommodation – and we’re asking if we can help make winter that little bit easier by:

• Delivering blankets, scarves and gloves to those who are really feeling the cold.
• Supporting neighbours whose circumstances are particularly difficult and unpredictable with small grants.
• Helping people to access the healthcare and local authority services (eg handymen, mobile libraries, home improvements) they need.
• Inviting older neighbours along to our Social Clubs – dinner parties, film nights and tech workshops – and other free and exciting events in their area.
• Asking whether they’d like one of their younger neighbours to visit them once a week through our Love Your Neighbour programme.

These conversations are so important because while social media, Google and word of mouth are how many younger people discover the local events (Christmas markets, pop-up shops, great Indian restaurants) that make our short winter days and long nights joyful, social media and Google aren’t things that the majority of older people are comfortable with or able to access.

And once you stop getting out and about so much, word of mouth recommendations decrease too. Meanwhile finding a good value plumber to fix your boiler can be difficult enough – take away internet searches and reviews and the struggle is amplified.

You can help us to minimise these struggles, help people to stay warm and curtail the creep of wintertime loneliness by getting involved in the project yourself.

We’re very grateful to the fantastic volunteers from Ernst & Young and Octopus Investments who will be helping us with door-knocking and blanket deliveries between December and February. And you can be part of it too! Contact [email protected] if you’re interested in joining us for a day or two of door-knocking.

One week in and we’re already seeing what the Winter Wellbeing project can do. We’re welcoming Tony along to his first South London Cares Social Club this month, and hope to match him up with a volunteer for one-to-one visits.

We’re so excited for Tony to chat away with our wonderful volunteers – and for our volunteers who’ll have the pleasure of delving deeper into some of the wonderful stories I first heard in a Ladbrokes in Lambeth.