1) Feed a hen
It was a chance remark by a resident of a Gateshead care home that sparked one of the UK’s most innovative schemes to tackle loneliness among older people and those with dementia. The man told carers he was “missing his girls, Joan and Betty and Doreen and Pat”. It turned out that the girls in question were his hens. He’d kept chickens all his life and missed the daily routine and sense of purpose that came from caring for them.
Working with local charity Equal Arts, Joanne Matthewson, manager of the Shadon House care home, arranged for six hens to be moved into the home on a six-month trial. So positive was the feedback that the HenPower programme was born and has now been rolled out in 40 care homes nationwide. It is also expanding to Australia and the Netherlands and is being trialled at a community centre in Hackney, east London, which works with young people with autism. Douglas Hunter, co-director of Equal Arts and leader of the programme, is keen to emphasise that this is “not an animal-assisted therapy project, it’s about building relationships with people”.
Hen keepers give talks at primary schools and appear at festivals and roadshows. “It’s a positive distraction, it gives them a sense of purpose, reduces isolation and improves wellbeing,” says Hunter. “We’ve got numerous older people, particularly men, who maybe haven’t been out of Gateshead for 10 years and now they’re going to science festivals, they’ve done conferences in Manchester and Birmingham, they’re registered as visiting lecturers at Northumbria University and they talk to final-year nursing students. So they’ve got a sense of self-worth and they’ve got something worthwhile to say and to contribute.”
2) Bond with a robot
To the lonely, social media technology offers dubious relief. But what if technology could go beyond simply connecting people and provide companionship in itself? This is the ambition behind Pepper, the doe-eyed robot that repeatedly sold out in Japan last year and has set a precedent for consumer robotics. More than a connective interface or a household assistant, Pepper is designed as a “genuine day-to-day companion” that can interact with its owners on an emotional level. Similarly, Paro, a responsive, animatronic seal-robot, has been engineered to provoke emotional, human connections.
These robots represent only the most conspicuous application of artificial intelligence in social intercourse. Most new smartphones are equipped with a voice-activated AI system, Apple’s Siri, for instance, or Microsoft’s Cortana, which, beyond offering directions and weather forecasts, can hold basic conversations, learn their users’ speech patterns and even give advice. According to recent forecasts, similar “chatbots” will become increasingly popular over the coming years, drawing on ever more advanced AI models and machine learning, allowing them to remember past conversations and develop relationships with their users.
Whether or not such software-powered personalities will allow people to form meaningful relationships or combat loneliness, it’s clear that artificial intelligence is reaching a new level of sophistication and intimate conversation is never more than a few clicks away. For better or worse, you’re never alone with a phone.
3) Meet the street
It’s easy to become isolated in a big city like London, but charity North London Cares is working to build a sense of community by bringing together young professionals and their older neighbours at regular social events and through one-to-one activities. Founder Alex Smith is adamant it’s not a “befriending” scheme as the benefits are two-way, with the younger volunteers getting as much out of the interactions as the older participants. A similar scheme has been launched in south London.
4) Share DIY skills
In a shed on a small industrial estate in Kirkintilloch, jars of assorted nails and screws line the shelves like racks of herbs in a kitchen. The rain is drumming off the roof on a bleak February Thursday in the west of Scotland, but in here there’s light and action: the smell of wood; the sound of sanding and planing; electric saws standing ready to whine. Three or four retired men are working, the quiet companionship occasionally breaking into friendly banter. Outside, the sign says Men’s Sheds Association’, but Blair Findleton, an affable retired technical teacher who helps run the shed, has a different description. “It’s a creche for old men,” he jokes.
In reality, all ages are welcome. The men’s shed movement started in Australia in 2007 to help men combat the loneliness and isolation that so often lead to depression. The sheds provide workshops where they can work and socialise. There are now more than 900 of the sheds in Australia and research by Beyondblue, an initiative to raise awareness of anxiety and depression, shows that “shedders” scored higher than their non-shedder counterparts in both physical and mental health indicators, including confidence, clear thinking and cheerfulness.
The movement has spread across Europe to every corner of the UK: urban and rural, deprived and affluent areas. “You can be lonely in a block of flats or in a croft,” says Jason Schroeder, chairman of the Scottish Men’s Sheds Association, who started Scotland’s first shed in the Westhill suburb of Aberdeen in 2009. Particularly, he argues, if you’re male. “Men go inward and don’t talk about problems. As a man, you can be lonely inside yourself. It’s a gender thing.”
In Kirkintilloch, the kettle is on and the men are showing off their work. They make everything in this workshop from attractive garden wishing wells and bird feeders, to intricate wooden serving platters, coasters and clock casings. The big attraction of the shed is the company rather than the machines. “Some members have their own workshops but down here there are people to talk to,” says Findleton.
But not about personal things, says Colin Taylor, a retired commercial diver who spent his pre-retirement years running his own garden business. “We have a laugh but it’s usually about jobs. We don’t really talk about personal lives.” His point is illustrated when a new member refuses to say anything other than that he’s making a clothes pole for an elderly neighbour. It’s a pattern of male communication that is the very reason for the association’s existence, says Schroeder, a South African who believes that women are far more likely than men to have social support systems after retirement, unemployment or bereavement.
When Findleton retired, he found himself in a rut. “I was doing the usual, watching daytime television. You retire and think you will have all these things to do but you end up sitting about.”
Schroeder calls it “time on your hands” syndrome. “A bloke with time on his hands is in trouble. In western culture, we are a manufactured society of doers. If you are not doing, or have no purpose, you are a liability.” The only places, outside of religion, that offer a welcome to men, he says, are pubs and betting shops. “Until men’s sheds.”
Each shed makes its own rules and the Kirkintilloch shed welcomes women. They just don’t have any female members. “I don’t know if we’ve frightened them off,” says Findleton. But women have been instrumental in the men attending. John Roach, a retired contracts manager who worked 12-hour days, says his daughter “marched him down” after he retired, fearing he would become a couch potato. Both Findleton and Taylor’s wives encouraged them to join up. It’s typical, according to Schroeder. “When I first went out to 50-plus clubs, it was mainly women I was talking to. They thought the Men’s Sheds Association was a fantastic idea. ‘There’s nothing for my husband to go to…’; ‘When are you opening…?’”
In the Kirkintilloch kitchen is a leaflet, Know Your Prostate. A bowel cancer awareness group has also offered a session. It’s a spin-off benefit of the sheds: an opportunity to provide informal health advice to men who wouldn’t normally visit their GPs. The sheds are also an opportunity for older men to pass on practical skills and mentoring is an important part of the camaraderie. Roach built his wishing wells and bird feeders without drawings and says most men prefer to learn that way. The workshop is littered with his prototypes: boats and lighthouses that he uses to teach others. “People chip in and help each other,” says Findleton. “There are so many trades here I don’t think there’s much we couldn’t do,” adds Taylor.
For the men in Kirkintilloch, it’s about combating loneliness while giving themselves purpose, pride and a sense of belonging that are good for their physical and emotional wellbeing. “You develop a sense of ownership of this place,” says Findleton. “You don’t just come and use the thing – you try to put something back into it.” CD
5) Break bread with the neighbours
Last year, more than 7 million people took part in the Big Lunch, a huge annual get-together in which people are encouraged to share a meal with their neighbours. The scheme, which hopes to create lasting bonds within communities, was launched by Cornwall’s Eden Project in 2009, and has seen street parties, picnics, barbecues and mass cream teas organised up and down the country. The date is set for Sunday 12 June, on the same weekend as the Queen’s official birthday, and it’s hoped that 10 million people will join in.
6) Sing together
There’s a growing body of scientific evidence that points to the physical and psychological benefits of singing in a choir. Now, a charity is looking to harness the feelgood factor of communal singing to combat social isolation. Age UK Oxfordshire has commissioned composer Bob Chilcott and poet Charles Bennett to write a choral work that explores the theme of loneliness and is designed to be performed by community choirs of all ages and abilities. The Voyage premiers in Oxford and Reading on 18 and 19 March, but it is intended that the long-term legacy will be the creation of more singing groups in the area, including Caring Choirs for carers,
7) Use a friendship app
Just as Tinder and its rivals have helped online matchmaking shed its stigma, a crop of similar “friendship apps” has now appeared, appealing in large part to young digital natives hoping to enhance their social lives
Meetup
The social events website meetup.com has an accompanying app that allows you to search for like-minded groups of people in your area. Give it your location and it will throw up a dizzying list of groups to join, from storytelling to spicy-food enthusiasts.
Skout
Skout also functions as a dating app, but was originally designed to facilitate friendships between nearby people. There are a number of unusual features, including a function by which you can shake your phone and be instantly linked to a random stranger and a separate community for teenagers.
Excuses to Meet
Like Meetup, Excuses to Meet links people with similar interests, but on a one-on-one basis. The “excuses” in question include language exchanges, video gaming and dog-walking partnerships.
Hey! Vina
This female-only app caused something of a stir when launched last month, offering a celebratory conduit for women to forge friendships. Exclusively “platonic” in nature, it stresses the importance of friendship for personal wellbeing.
Wiith
Yet to arrive in the UK, this new app has a vibrant, youthful aesthetic, perhaps engineered to make people feel less self-conscious about seeking new friends. Also based around meet-ups, it allows users to exchange and accept invitations to casual events.
8) Read and write
It may seem counterintuitive to recommend a solitary activity such as reading, or writing, as an antidote to loneliness, but the power of literature to create a sense of shared experience, of being understood, is well documented. And, increasingly, book clubs and literary festivals are offering readers a chance to recreate that sense of connection in the real world, by interacting with authors and meeting like-minded people. The Manchester children’s book festivalwill take that process one step further this year by launching a cross-generational poetry competition, inviting children and young people to collaborate with an older person – parent, grandparent, carer, older sibling – to write a poem. It is the idea of poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who hopes it will help to bridge the generation gap and raise awareness of the work that the British Red Cross does in tackling loneliness. Deadline for entries is 29 April.
9) Live together – but not too together
“It’s the weekends that can be difficult,” says Shirley Meredeen, who has lived on her own in London for 36 years. “If I’ve not spoken to anyone for two days, I’ll feel low. But then I’ll ring a friend…” It is crucial, she emphasises, to work at friendship while young, to build up “credit” against future loneliness. “The trouble is people die off – my address book gets smaller all the time.”
At 85, the least interesting thing about Meredeen, who is engaged and engaging, is her age. The first thing I notice are her dangly earrings – they make a statement. Why look dreary? And, if you’re lucky enough to be mentally hale, why not have fun and see off loneliness? With this in mind, Meredeen co-founded the Older Women’s Co-Housing group and, this summer, she will move into the first co-housing building for older women, in Barnet, north London. It will be a big day – it has taken 17 years to reach this point – and Meredeen has kept faith with the project throughout.
The idea came from another remarkable woman, Maria Brenton, an academic funded to research into older women and collaborative housing. Brenton became inspired by a Dutch model (there are 200 senior housing communities in the Netherlands) and smiles as she recalls the first meeting, in 1998, at which she presented the senior-co-housing concept to a group of older women. “Six of them went off like excited starlings to the pub afterwards…”
Their plan was to create a democratic community that would preserve privacy and protect against loneliness. Everyone would have their own front door – this would not be a commune, but residents (aged 50 plus) would meet regularly to share ideas, occasional meals and tasks (gardening/cleaning/legal issues – you name it) and be committed to mutual support. The housing would be socially inclusive (17 flats for sale, eight for social rent). Meredeen says: “We have two Iranian refugees and a Scandinavian, all different classes.” The selection process is slow, thorough and collective.
The statistics about loneliness in the UK are stark and, says Brenton, we are doing “sod all” about it. Fifty per cent of us do not know our neighbours. The majority of people over 75 and living on their own are women (she puts this down to “the cultural habit of men marrying younger women and women’s longevity”). Older women are often “isolated, self-neglectful and depressed as hell with no stimulus”. No wonder loneliness is bad for your health – “equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day”. It increases the risk of depression, dementia and heart attack – an expensive burden on the NHS. Co-housing cannot prevent dementia but, she says, “even if residents do have to shop out to care for people with dementia, it will be much later than if they had they been living on their own”.
Their project has been supported by the charities Housing for Women and the Tudor Trust and by Hanover Housing Association, the developers that provided the capital to buy the Barnet site. But Brenton describes opposition from Barnet council to a development for older people in the borough and multiple other hitches.
The more she talks about their struggles, the more the scandal of our national indifference to old age comes into view. “It’s ageism,” she says. “We don’t want to look at facts. The local authorities know the figures but their heads are in the sand.” Older people themselves “aren’t demanding enough”, but she knows why: “There’s no solidarity because of the class system. Between the well-off old and the working class, undereducated old – between bridge and bingo – there are still huge divisions.”
Meredeen has no problem about being demanding – or proactive. After retirement, she founded Growing Old Disgracefully, a network for older women living alone. “Many women of my generation had never written a cheque or driven a car – they’d depended on their men. When their husbands died – or left them – they were completely bereft. What we’re saying is: it’s not too late to start living your own life.”
She sees the Barnet scheme as a pilot: “We don’t want anyone else to wait 17 years.” And, already, it is being swamped with attention. Men have been asking, why can’t we have something like this? To which, Meredeen chirpily replies: “Why don’t you do it yourselves?”
After saying goodbye to this invigorating duo, I went to spy on the Barnet site. Like an unopened present, it is still under wraps – boards, sheeting, glassless first-floor windows. But I couldn’t help saluting it as I passed: it is such a triumph that it exists. KK
10) Get creative online
Sometimes it’s helpful just to know that you’re not alone in your loneliness. The Unselfie Project is an online awareness-raising campaign to show the many different faces of loneliness. People are invited to send in an anonymous photograph of themselves holding up a short message or drawing that illustrates how they’re feeling. The gallery of photographs can be seen at webofloneliness.com, the website of a US-based non-profit organisation whose mission statement is to increase awareness of the effects of social isolation, carry out research into the condition and to support those suffering from it.
Since launching in 2001, the site has expanded to include an online support group with more than 3,000 members (the majority of whom are aged between 18 and 40), social media feeds, blogs, research and advice, as well as recommendations for films, books, music and artworks that tackle the theme of loneliness. The website also provides a platform for users who wish to channel their sense of solitude into creative outlets by publishing submitted artwork, music and poems.
