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Independent lives ‘lead to loneliness’
The number of socially isolated older people will increase by a third to 2.2 million by 2021 if current trends continue, according to a new Demos report called Home Alone, produced in partnership with WRVS. The report concludes that positive lifestyle trends such as independence and freedom may have a darker side which can lead to loneliness.
The report highlights increasing risk factors, such as childlessness and divorce, which can lead to loneliness. Other loneliness factors are harder to measure and their impact has not yet been considered. For instance, women traditionally have a stronger role than men in keeping families together. Working women may have less time for these bonding activities, leading to greater family fragmentation.
Demos concludes that projecting current trends on social isolation may actually produce an under-estimate of the scale of the problem for the next generation of older people. For the ‘Friends generation’, friendship has become as important as family. People have higher expectations for their social lives which may increase feelings of loneliness if they have fewer friends in later life.
“Living alone may represent freedom and independence for younger people but starts to be a major risk factor for loneliness and isolation as they get older,” say the report’s authors, Helen McCarthy and Gillian Thomas. “Friends become a scarcer commodity with age, as your contemporaries move away and it becomes harder to make new friends.
Home Alone argues that social policy should help people develop ‘resilience’ to the risks of loneliness. These include encouraging volunteering, membership of clubs and groups, and acquiring new skills. The most extreme form of loneliness is becoming socially isolated and housebound. This group of people are among the most disadvantaged in our society, yet their plight has not been properly understood by government.
Services aimed at older and housebound people often focus on material needs without recognising the importance of social contact. For example local authority Meals on Wheels services, which WRVS often deliver, frequently focus on efficiency and do not measure time spent with individuals.
"WRVS has always known the value of social contact,’ says Mark Lever, chief executive of WRVS. “We deliver meals on behalf of social services who are increasingly attracted by the diminished cost of delivering frozen food. Whilst this is an economic way of delivering food it does not recognise that those who are less mobile or housebound struggle without the daily human contact that a hot meal service can offer.”
Government figures estimate that there will be nearly 13 million people over 65 by 2021. Best estimates on social isolation, which is defined as not having weekly contact with friends, family or neighbours, suggest that 17% of over 65s are currently socially isolated.
Recommendations in Home Alone include
- Community centres serving older housebound people should be created in each of the top 10% most disadvantaged council wards;
- Success of community regeneration programme should be judged on enabling people to get out of their homes and enjoy their communities.
- Promote volunteering to over 65s.
Notes to editors
- Home Alone: Combating isolation with older housebound people is published by Demos on Wednesday 30 June 2004.
- Demos is an independent think tank with an interest in changing demographic trends. Related reports include The New Old: Why the baby boomers won’t be pensioned off and the forthcoming Silver Service.
- WRVS, one of the UK’s largest voluntary organisations, provides a range of services enabling people to live independantly in their homes and communities and reducing loneliness. It works with other charities and organisations, local authorities and the NHS.