During #LonelinessAwarenessWeek I’ve been thinking about @age_uk ‘s efforts to tackle loneliness & admiring the breadth & depth of organisations across the country doing their best to combat loneliness as it touches people’s lives in different ways #LetsTalkLoneliness 1/

Age UK has been working to combat loneliness for a long time. One of our inspiring founders Dorothy Keeling who with others set up the Old People's Welfare Committee in the 1940’s wrote “We’ve learnt a great deal from our work for old people… 2/

‘’We realised the great monotony of the lives of the elderly, especially those living alone, and the total absence of any colourful occupation. Not only, too, were many of them desperately lonely, but the feeling that they were no longer wanted was very common” 3/

of course old age doesn’t have a monopoly on loneliness but some of the circumstances that become more likely as we age; bereavement, poor health, disability, lack of mobility are particularly hard to counter, by 2025 over 2 million older people will be facing loneliness 4/

So much of what the Age UK network of 130 charities & partners @AgeCymru @AgeScotland @Age_NI does - from activity classes, lunch clubs, @SilverlineUK welfare checks, carer’s groups, dementia cafes, computer classes etc etc -has a common thread of combatting loneliness 5/

Age UK continually reviews our impact and tries to understand what works to make people less lonely. 5 years ago we published an important piece of research called Testing promising approaches to reducing loneliness http://bit.ly/2Cq9pOt  with the excellent @EndLonelinessUK 6/

We know that to tackle loneliness we need to use our community connections to find people who need our support (older lonely people don’t often ask for help), pro personalised 1:1 support (the same solutions don’t work for everyone) and linking them into local services 7/

Our work on loneliness resonated with a newish MP called Jo Cox who contacted @age_uk in early 2016 to ask us to support her with a project to tackle loneliness... as everyone says Jo was a radiant, energetic but deeply practical person who wanted to make a difference 8/

Jo’s legacy in tackling loneliness and so much more is astounding @age_uk is so proud to have been a founder member of the @JoCoxloneliness commission - working with @SeemaKennedy and @RachelReevesMP and so many others was a great privilege 9/

The @JoCoxloneliness commission achieved two particularly exciting outcomes, the cross government strategy to tackle loneliness https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-connected-society-a-strategy-for-tackling-loneliness which owes much to @Theresa_May & the appointment of the dedicated & enthusiastic first loneliness minister @TraceyCrouch 10/

The strategy is now being led by the brilliant @dianabarran who as loneliness minister is championing loneliness across government and this week launched the tackling loneliness network 11/

There is no doubt the covid pandemic has increased loneliness – but for @Age_UK the conversation with someone asking us for help might begin with a request for help accessing cash or someone to deliver shopping - quite often its much harder to admit to loneliness 12/

If you want to help us end loneliness now or you’re feeling lonely yourself here are some ideas #LetsTalkLoneliness https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/health-wellbeing/loneliness/ 13/13