UK volunteering charity CSV will train and recruit active citizens across the country to spread important information about embarrassing or taboo health issues amongst marginalised people over 50 years old, thanks to a share of the first ever grants from the Department of Health’s £6 million Volunteering Fund (Embargo: 00.01 Wednesday 1st June 2011).

The £561,000 funding to CSV will be used to support people in 12 key areas: Truro, Gloucester, Oxford, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, London, Norwich, Leicester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Leeds and Manchester. Trained “Health Champions” and Community Volunteers will encourage others in their neighbourhoods to take action on important health conditions that are often embarrassing or taboo such as prostate and bowel cancer, dementia, sexual health, mental health and depression, as well as the health needs of older people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

The three year Stripping it Bare project will be promoted through CSV’s Action Network based at BBC local radio stations. Up and down the country there will be special events and activities organised by volunteers for people over 50 years old to find out more information about their health.

It builds upon CSV’s experience of promoting health to older men through projects that include local football clubs or initiatives that see volunteers ‘prescribed’ through GPs (Case studies below).

Speaking about the Department of Health funding, Chief Executive of CSV, Lucy de Groot, said:
 
“This invaluable support from the Department of Health will further demonstrate the clear benefits of empowering volunteers to deliver important health messages to those who are marginalised or live in isolated parts of our communities. Experience shows that local volunteers bring qualities of time, trust and local knowledge that help breakdown barriers to complex and sometimes taboo health issues whether it be sexual health, screening for bowel cancer or mental health. CSV will use its experience of working with local health partners and its many other networks to recruit and support volunteers of all ages and backgrounds to spread health messages amongst older people and people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds."

Minister of State for Care Services Paul Burstow said,

“I am immensely grateful to the thousands of volunteers who already work in the NHS and social care.  The idea of a Big Society isn’t new, what is new is that this Government is making it easier for people to do more: giving people power to improve public services, putting communities in control and supporting people to help others.

For press enquires, please contact Francesca Toma or Jason Tanner on ftoma@csv.org.uk / jtanner@csv.org.uk or 020 7812 0037 / 38 or 07966 168686 / 07941 433598

Notes for editors:
CSV (Community Service Volunteers) creates opportunities for people to take an active part in the life of their communities through volunteering, training and community action. Every year CSV helps transform the lives of over 1 million people. Last year 165,666 people gave their time as volunteers through CSV. The charity worked with 13,423 learners of all ages.  www.csv.org.uk

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Case studies for how volunteering campaigns promote public health

Tea Dances – The Lunch Bunch ‘get physical’ activity group
A 90 year old former opera singer is one of the many older people (over 30 of them) who benefit from a T Dance being run by CSV’s Retired and Senior Volunteers in Middlesbrough. They are targeted at people in care or isolated in the community. As coordinator Derrick Previll explains, it’s designed for the ’50 plus teenagers’ and the activity is part of breaking isolation amongst house-bound people and promoting healthy activity. The Tea dances are an extension of a ‘Lunch Bunch’ group, also designed to beakdown isolation and counteract depression.

Mens’ Health
Male ‘50s plus teenagers’ are invited to attend men’s health sessions hosted at Middlesbrough Football Club. It attracts males who might normally be more reluctant to talk about health issues with their GPs. They are given healthy heart checks, advice on prostate and bowel cancer, help on giving up smoking and weight management – including food management such as portion size. As part of the programme healthy walks are arranged around the stadium and the docks in conjunction with an NHS health trainer. Other activities have included ‘boxercise’ and making use of Wii Machines to promote healthy activity.  

‘Prescribing volunteers’ to help people living with illness or loneliness
CSV’s Retired and Senior Volunteers prefer to be seen as a solution to helping others rather than being a problem to society due to their age.  More than 1,500 older volunteers support patients at over 270 GP surgeries, health and social care projects throughout the UK.  Mike Caswell (78) says: “When you explain what volunteers can offer, 90% of GP’s want volunteers in with them.  A lot of the work is befriending people who these days go along to the doctor’s when they just need someone to talk to.  There’s no medical cure for loneliness, and when a practice has a network of volunteers established, who are able to pick up a library book, pop round for a cup of tea, help someone with their garden, that’s a lot of work off the GPs’ and nurses’ hands.”  

Volunteers also help transport patients to surgeries and enable the GP to see an average of six patients in the time it takes to undertake a single call-out.  Mike’s main focus in London is involving older volunteers with medics training to be doctors at UCH. They help doctors understand what it is like to be an older person and how best to relate to older patients. Volunteers also help doctors understand how involving older people in volunteering can help counteract depression, loneliness and promote physical well-being

Volunteers supporting people with mental health problems
CSV’s Action Network has an established track-record of engaging local communities in health promotion. In Leeds, it worked with people living with mental health issues as part of the BBC’s Head Room initiative. CSV helped empower a young man to talk about living with schizophrenia by making a film about his experience while another woman described what it had been like to be a patient at the notorious High Royds Hospital. As part of the awareness campaign, CSV worked to encourage more volunteers to get involved with the local Primary Care Trust in Leeds.

In West Yorkshire, CSV’s Action Network is currently training volunteers to help people living with mental health issues to use computers as part of a scheme run in partnership with adult social care services in West Yorkshire. It is this type of project that helps forge links with harder-to-reach groups and could be used as a vehicle for addressing important health issues.

Cooking classes boost social activities for pensioners
In South Manchester pensioners are teaching themselves how to cook healthily as part of project funded by the South Manchester Healthy Living Network.  CSV Action Network arranged to video their activities to highlight the importance of healthy eating and being active in communities. Some older men are often socially excluded from society but enabling them how to cook with their peers they meet new people, have fun and live healthier lifestyles.

Background statistics on issues of isolation amongst the over 50s

According to ICM research commissioned in 2009/10, up to a third (33 per cent) of older people over the age of 65 in England experience loneliness. (Agenda for Later Life, Age Concern and Help the Aged, - now Age UK 2009/10)

According to research by the Office for National Statistics, one in three people over the age of 60 years will go a whole week without speaking to anyone, with a staggering one in ten people spending up to a month without any human contact. (Quoted in Mature Times (2010) http://www.maturetimes.co.uk/node/11664 )

The link between isolation, loneliness and poor physical and mental health is well documented. The Social Exclusion: Breaking the Cycle report found that 1 in 6 people aged 65+ are affected by depression and 60% of people aged 65+ have a long standing illness.  All of these people are likely to be experiencing isolation and social exclusion. (2004)

Social isolation affects about 1 million older people, and has a severe impact on people’s quality of life in older age. (A Sure Start to Later Life: Ending inequalities for older people, Social Exclusion Unit, 2006)

Additional research by Help the Aged (now Age UK) shows that:
•    Over half (51%) of all people aged 75 and over live alone.

•    11% of older people have less than monthly contact with family, friends and neighbours.

•    Researchers have found that the relationship between social disconnectedness and mental health appears to operate through feelings of loneliness and a perceived lack of social support.  Older adults who feel most isolated report 65% more depressive symptoms than those who feel least isolated. (Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, 2009)

•    Isolation, loneliness and loss contribute to poor emotional wellbeing in later life. This may be expressed as reduced life satisfaction, low-level depression or worse. The pathways, far less their causes, are not recorded by the NHS. A significant degree of under-reporting of mental health problems among older people is thus widely suspected (Allen 2008, UK Inquiry into Mental Health and Well-being in Later Life 2007). The failure to detect and treat mental health problems properly affects all age groups, but the distinctive features for older people are the 'normalising' of depression by some health and care practitioners, as well as the much reduced chance of being offered a range of treatments including talking therapies (UK Inquiry into Mental Health and Well-being in Later Life 2007). '

•    In January 2011, the Office of National Statistics reported: As life expectancy increases, so does the number of years a person can expect to live in poor general health or with a limiting persistent illness or disability.  In 1981 males at birth could expect to spend 12.8 years of their life with a limiting persistent illness or disability, compared with 13.7 years in 2007. For females these figures were 16.0 and 17.1 years respectively. Similarly, years of life spent in poor general health between 1981 and 2006 rose from 6.4 to 8.7 years for males and from 10.1 to 11.0 years for females.  Therefore older people increasingly need healthcare support and the sooner they are enabled to access support, the more effective the interventions can be.